OzKiwiJJ

We're into day 2 of the crossing to Mauritius. It's still cool but just warm enough to have our first day in the Sanctuary. We've noticed the Bordeaux MDR has been a lot quieter after 7pm over the last three nights. Prior to that it was chocka at that time, and Good Spirits is quieter too. The early show times may account for the pattern change or maybe people have just found their ideal evening routines. We've been doing morning trivia and progressive trivia with mixed success but we're having fun. Afternoon tea has just arrived so bye for now!

You're just as likely to get better pours if you get to know the bartender well - as we did on Royal Princess in 2017. We ended up having predinner drinks most nights, along with a couple of our dinner companions, at the small Princess Live bar. The bartender must have liked us as he started free-pouring the spirits when making cocktails. His Captain's Bounty cocktail, which has four types of rum (usually a half nip of each) was lethal! 🤣

Consequently the cabin is narrower where the sofa is. I means they can squeeze more cabins in per deck.

However I believe they are now considered a non-native invasive species in NZ as they are invading habitats of native birds. Very sad as they are so pretty and they are a legume so nitrogen-fixing in soil. At one stage they were planted in cleared forestry sections to improve the soil before replanting.

Then you haven't understood the situation. Cabins A,B,C,D get allocated to the 11 nighter. Cabins E,F,G,H get allocated to the split itinerary. That's what the booking system gets told and the software isn't designed to allow willy nilly selections between those cabin groups, it would be too chaotic to program. It might be possible to do it though a Princess Vacation Planner or a big and very good TA, who have the knowledge/ability to manually over-ride the booking system.

It isn't anything new. I vaguely recall tickets being required at a port or two way back. They were probably shuttle bus ports.

We've rarely had a problem choosing a cabin in a location that suits us. We've only had to settle for a guarantee cabin once on Princess, for a last minute booking, and even then we ended up exactly where I thought we would. Even our upgrade bid for our current cruise put us in our favourite location. Am I just lucky? Maybe. We prefer cabins around the mid-levels, with cabin decks above and below. We prefer mid-aft but are happy with any location that is not too far forward.

It was probably more impressive watching it than it would have been doing it. Congrats on winning trivia. We're doing OK on Coral but with just two of us we don't have much hope of winning against the bigger teams. We're also doing progressive trivia and the trivia host for that is just plain evil, in a nice way of course.🤣

Explorer looked quite impressive doing the 180° turn before heading out.

Bon voyage!

I think it was more to spread out the flow of people outside the terminal. Pacific Explorer was also in port, doing a changeover by the number of passengers arriving with suitcases as we were heading out for the day. It was a bit chaotic. The disembarkation groups on Coral moved fairly quickly so it wasn't a big issue.

You really don't need to tip the waiters on Australian cruises, especially not American-style tipping of a token amount every time you see them. However if you do get a waiter that is especially good it would be better to remember their name and mention them in the post-cruise survey. If you really want to tip then $20 at the end of the cruise is always appreciated but not necessary.

We're on Coral parked right next to you 😊 The food on Coral has been excellent.

Check what deals the cruise line is offering for your flight. Sometimes it can work out cheaper than booking direct with the airline. For example we got a business class fare Sydney to Auckland on Qatar, which codeshares with Qantas, at only a little more than Qantas wanted for an economy seat on the same flight. The Qantas business class fare for that flight was several hundred dollars more.

We're just passing to the north of Rottnest Island heading east, directly into Fremantle Port.