cruising to fiji at Christmas

We are thinking about booking a cruise from Sydney to Fiji and New Caledonia for Christmas next year. Is this a good time to go to Fiji and any suggestions of what to do?

Thanks

Hi :)

We just did a Sth pacific cruise ex Bris this Christmas. We were in Fiji 24 Dec. I felt guilty as we were dawdley tourists & the locals were harried & rushing to get their shopping done before Christmas. Absolutely loved having Christmas Day on the water, but I would suggest if you pick a cruise that is in port Christmas Day, a lot of shops will be closed.

I think December - March is 'traditionally' the rainy season. Although I travelled there in December and it was beautiful weather. A friend just came back from there and had one week of rain - so who knows.

I stayed in Denarau. Definitely visit the remote islands if you can Treasure Island, Castaway etc.

We're booked on the Sun Princess cruise departing Sydney December 16.

It looks like a good itinerary - six sea days including Christmas Day, and six port days.

There wasn't a lot of choice of cruises to Fiji / New Caledonia and we thought the Sun Princess one suited us best. It is cyclone season but hopefully we'll be lucky with the weather and/or the ship will avoid anything too nasty.

Most other cruises out of Sydney at that time cruise NZ and, since I'm an ex-pat Kiwi, we felt we wanted to go somewhere other than NZ for our first cruise.

Sun Princess haven't yet announced what excursions they are offering for that cruise. We are planning to explore Noumea and Suva on our own but may look at an excursion to one of the outer islands at the Denarau stop. Not sure about the other ports, they seem to be fairly small islands.

I've started a roll call for that cruise http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1969262

and hopefully that will be a good place to get info on shore excursions once more people join the roll call.