Railwaylass

Cheers, Roseanna! You've now got me as excited by the potentials of the gift shop as I am by the visit to Hobbiton itself!

Did your Hobbiton tour company pick you up at the cruise port? My cruise isn't until April of 2026 but I'm already looking around a bit and the companies I've contacted so far have said that they won't pick up from the cruise port... Did you enjoy the tour?

Many thanks for your thoughtful answer and my apologies for the delay in acknowledging it! I took your expertise onboard and had just about decided to fly in to Hurghada, spend a couple of days there, and then go on to Luxor for a week pre-cruise as there is so much to see and it is nearer to the cruise embarkation port. Then MSC cancelled this cruise due to the unrest. They offered a different cruise at the same price with 4 extra days and keeping all of our perks, which sounded great. Then a few weeks later they cancelled that one. I had thought it odd that this alternate cruise was still being offered as it went to the same Egyptian ports as the original one so I wasn't particularly surprised. I'm a bit cynical so I figure that MSC wanted to hold on to customer's deposit money as long as possible, lol. So now we are booked on a 12 night MSC cruise from Rome to Kiel, as it fits within the dates we need and the itinerary is pretty good, but this time the perks we were offered before were not transferable. Again, it's MSC so I'm not surprised. Truthfully, I'm expecting this one to be cancelled or amended in some way as it's a leg of a much longer cruise that is coming up through the Suez Canal! We shall see... Thank you again and hopefully we'll be able to make use of your stellar advice for Egypt not too far in the future!

Just wondering if you have found a tour operator to take you to Hobbiton from either Aukland or Tauranga? My cruise is pretty far in the future, April 2026, but I'm already looking around as Hobbiton is a can't be missed visit for my friend and I and apparently Princess doesn't offer one. None of the tour operators that I've researched will pick up from the ports for some reason. If you've been successful in booking I'd love to know the tour provider!

We're booked on an MSC cruise out of Safaga and terminating in Venice, in March of 2025. A long way off yet but I love the planning part! My plan is for my DH and me to fly into Cairo and stay in Giza for a week before the cruise, so that we can really take our time at the monuments, go inside a few, take a boat trip on the Nile and visit the new museum. I've been on a couple of shore excursions in Egypt before and obviously didn't have time to enjoy things at an unhurried pace. DH has never been and he's going to love it! But, this means arranging transport to Safaga, about 500 kilometers distant I believe, for the start of the cruise. There aren't a lot of options that I've found so far. Go Bus Egypt looks to be the equivalent of our National Express coaches here in the UK, or Greyhound in the US. It's about a 7 hour overnight trip and only costs about £9.00. I think that it would be a really cool experience. But, as adventurous as we both are, I'm really not sure if this is a viable option for us. We speak only English and a lot of the journey looks to be through remote areas. When I was in Egypt before I didn't feel unsafe at all - on the one hand, I feel that away from Cairo might even be safer areas, on the other hand, we'd be on a bus in the middle of the night in a country where we might have trouble communicating. We'd also arrive about 7 in the morning so it's doubtful that we could check in to our hotel so early (we'd get there the day before the cruise, I wouldn't tempt fate and arrive the day of!). Another option to consider is a private car/driver. I've not done a lot of research of companies yet, but the cost looks to average out at around £50.00, which is very inexpensive, and the journey time is a couple of hours less. We could make the journey by day, which would be better. My hesitation here might seem a bit silly, but the thought of just me and my husband in a car with a stranger, trying to be sociable for 5 hours, is not something that either of us would really enjoy. DH is not great at conversation and I'm an introvert who pretends I'm not, which is really hard to maintain for that length of time when there's no one else to take the pressure off. There's a certain anonymity on a bus, you're just one of the crowd, lol. A plus for this option would be that possibly we could initially go from Giza to Luxor and stay a couple of days, and then get another car/driver to take us on to Safaga. Car hire isn't an option as I don't drive and my husband wouldn't have the confidence. It was hard enough for me to convince him to hire a car for a day trip in Greece a few years ago! Has anyone out there made this journey, and if so, how? Any options I've missed? I'd love to hear suggestions/thoughts from people who have had more experience travelling in this part of the world.

My only real desire in a cabin is for an unobstructed balcony in a quiet spot, which the one I got appears to be. We've got limited funds and want to use the money for fun stuff. I waited a bit too long to check on this cruise with my cruise consultant - they'd had a promotion going for a while and I called on the final day - and this one Balcony Aurea was the very last balcony available that they had been allocated for now. They held it for me whilst I checked around and turns out this was a really great deal. I got this BA cabin with the perks, plus drinks package, WiFi and $100 onboard credit for less money than a balcony with no package on any of the other sites I checked. Even without the Aurea perks I feel I've lucked out! 😁

Cheers! I wish that there was a private pool too, lol!

Just booked the Musica for a cruise that is quite far out - March 23, 2025, Luxor - Genoa. We wound up with a Balcony Aurea cabin, which is identical to a regular balcony but supposedly has some perks. Anybody out there been in one of these cabins? Did you get/enjoy the perks?