OzKiwiJJ

No worries, he gets lots of strange spelling of his name. We'll have to catch up for a drink onboard. No fancy suite for us this time unfortunately but we scored a nice balcony cabin thanks to my Princess Planner. There were no balcony cabins available online and haven't been for some time but I rang my Planner today to ask her to keep an eye out for one for us and she came up with one immediately. We're very happy with that!

Yep! Rolf will be tagging along with me to carry my bags! 🤣

I think the confusion comes because theoretically there are no gratuities on Australian cruises booked in Australia so gratuities are never mentioned. I am 99.9% certain that if the onboard currency is AUD on a repositioning cruise to Asia that was booked in Australia that there are no added gratuities - that was certainly the case in 2018 and I don't expect it to have changed. Anyway we've just changed our Feb 2025 Diamond Princess cruise to do the cruise up to Japan so hopefully that will be the case.

That's exactly what we thought too. It's no big deal to upload a current statement when we put in a claim for the OBC

We did not get a chance to accept the successful bid, we were just advised of our new cabin. Luckily we love the location.

And that won't show up if the gratuities aren't extra so it's a good way to check if you will need to pay them. I'm fairly certain that repositioning cruises from Asia, where the onboard costs are in AUD, and that are booked in Australia, don't have added gratuities but I could be wrong. We've only done Australia to Asia,

Once in Osaka we managed to get from the port to the nearest railway station (just a short walk down the road), travel on two lines to get to the shinkansen station, travel down to Himeji where we spent a few hours sightseeing, then got ourselves back to the ship. It was all very easy, although we did get a bit lost in the shinkansen station for a short while. There were people at the first station who spoke English and helped us work out where we would have to change trains.

There was an option where you could give them your account details, I think. Otherwise I guess you'll have to upload a statement every time you claim the OBC.

True. Luckily I'd downloaded the release brochure for that cruise so I knew what the original base price for a mini-suite was. We got a very good deal. Plus at the time we booked a mini-suite was out of our price range but our circumstances changed so we were able to afford the bid

There is some degree of risk as you may end up being in a location you don't like but if it means getting a much nicer cabin for your cruise you may decide the risk is worth it. It was for us. We're about to embark on the 110 night world cruise out of Australia on Coral Princess. We had originally booked a BA balcony cabin - we usually book this category on a class of ship we've never cruised on before - and on Coral this was on the midships bump so had a very small balcony so we weren't 100% happy with the location after doing some cruises on Coral in 2022 but it would have cost more to change it. Just after Christmas we got the offer to bid for an upgrade. Since it's a very long cruise we decided to try for a mini-suite upgrade for the extra space and comfort. The minimum bid was a bit higher than we'd hoped for though. We raised it as much as we could afford but it was still a low bid. Late last month we received the dreaded "You've been out-bid" email, offering us the chance to increase our bid. No thanks, our original bid is all we could afford. Four days later we received the "Yay - you got your stateroom upgrade!" email. We now have an almost perfect starboard mid-aft mini-suite with a large (but uncovered) balcony. We've very happy with that.

They've stated that one dining room would be for Traditional dining, the other would be for reserved bookings and walk-ins. The Bordeaux MDR has the Reserve Collection dining in one corner so that reduces the available space for general dining. I guess they'll calculate which of the options will be the least popular and assign that to Bordeaux. In the Australian region late traditional dining, usually at 7:45pm or 7:30pm, was popular when we started cruising in 2014 but once Anytime dining was introduced in our region there seemed to be more empty tables or spaces at tables than in the past. We had mixed success with Traditional dining - we loved the concept but more than 50% of the time we ended up with tablemates we didn't really click with or, in at least two cases, dining most nights at a large table by ourselves.

We loved our cruises around/from Japan last year. However we did book excursions through the cruise lines (Princess and Regent Seven Seas). Apart from one Princess excursion (Nagasaki) they were are very good and reasonable value for money. We had balcony cabins on both cruises. In some ports where our cabin overlooked the wharf it was great to go out on the balcony to watch the locals entertaining us as the ship prepared for departure. We had a couple of days in Yokohama before the first cruise but were too tired to really enjoy them. We also had two days between cruises which we spend in Tokyo, happily bouncing around the Metro system.

Even if you book a Plus or Premier fare (in AUD) the gratuities aren't included. They are only included if the Plus or Premier fare was booked in USD.

Yes, we had to.

It will probably be the standard US wine list - US, European, a few AUS/NZ wine and other regions. Furthermore if you have the Plus package they just list the wine type, ie chardonnay or cabernet sauvignon, with no other details. After trying three on Diamond last November - the pinot noir, pinot grigio and chardonnay - we switched to buying decent wines by the bottle with the 25% discount.