OzKiwiJJ

What they've done is actually illegal - increasing the price after something has been paid for.

Other than the excursion price hassle and the crappy tea we've had a good day. We did well in morning trivia, not so well in progressive trivia but the question were harder. I was relieved to discover that Coral hasn't, so far, switched to the new style lunch menu currently in use on Majestic. That one is more American Diner than Luncheon in the MDR, which would have become very boring on a cruise of this length. Today it was the traditional style lunch menu with plenty of choices.

I am NOT HAPPY again! We just spent the whole afternoon trying to sort out the expected discrepancy in the shore excursion prices charges to our folio. The person we spoke to, after waiting 45 minutes in a queue, told us we had to provide copies of the emails Princess sent us confirming our excursion bookings but the only emails we received at that time showed only confirmation of the credit card payment, not the actual excursion bookings. However I had noted the price of each excursion as we booked it in my spreadsheet. I tried to forward the payment confirmation email to Princess with some added information but the email isn't going through. Grrrr! Edit: the problem appears to be with Optus! I managed to send it via my gmail account. I guess we'll end up spending more time sorting it out. The overall discrepancy is $840! Not peanuts!!!

Why? I already have 250 teabags with me. At two a day that should last the whole cruise, with a few extra for days when we have lunch in the buffet and I want a cup of tea there. However if I have been drinking more tea than expected then I can decide whether to buy more.

I have 250 teabags of my favourite Dilmah Ceylon Supreme tea with me. Based on our Japan cruise on Diamond last November I was prepared for a shortage of Twinings E.B. but I didn't expect them to replace it with rubbish tea. If it looks like I'm using more than expected of my Dilmah I'll buy some Twinings in Dover.

Possibly but the Hawaii/Tahiti cruise just before the world cruise had the later times and the demographic isn't much different on that one.

I haven't checked the buffet but they usually have the best tea in the MDRs so I doubt there will be any Twinings English Breakfast tea on the ship at all. I think Princess have been having supply issues with Twinings as the buffet ran out on Diamond in Japan last year, and Holland America had low supplies Xmas 2022.

Good morning all. The seas calmed down after a couple of hours so we had a comfortable night. As usual I didn't sleep well as it always takes me a night or two to get used to the Princess bed. It's very comfortable but has a totally different feel to our bed at home. But I am NOT HAPPY! I asked for English Breakfast tea in the MDR at breakfast. What came was Pickwicks English tea which is actually worse than Lipton's. It was very bland with a strange backtaste. Thank Goodness I packed a good supply of my favourite Dilmah tea. On the bright side Good Spirits has excellent espresso still so we're happy with that. Trivia is next on our schedule, at 10am. They seem to be running things a bit earlier than on previous cruises - 10am instead of 10:30am for morning trivia, 7pm and 9pm for theatre shows instead of 7:30pm and 9:30pm. We're also going to see what the progressive trivia is all about. That's at 12:15 so we'll be having a late lunch

Late harvest is different to a true ice wine. Both are "stickies" but the sugar levels are different. Ice wines aren't common in Australia but you get the odd one in NZ, mainly from Central Otago.

Princess have Live Chat and I can't see why you couldn't book a cruise through that. It's not much different than phoning Princess to book.

What type of cabin did you book? The lead in fares are always the lowest category of cabin ie inside cabins and increase for each cabin class, quite significantly in some cases

We missed sailaway - we were so tired we just went straight into dinner. Apparently we're going to be going through 5-6 metre seas tonight. It's definitely getting a bit bouncy. Hopefully it will rock me to sleep.

Most cruise lines quote their fares per person. Usually there is a notation close to the fare stating it is per person, and for Australian cruise that it has port fees and taxes included in the quoted fare e.g. How did you find out about the cruise?

We put on a lowish bid for an upgrade to a mini-suite and were lucky. 😊 Just as well - we've got far too much stuff with us. We've just had a coffee in Good Spirits, they've got nice new chairs there.

The only "household" chores we'll be doing is keeping our cabin tidy and putting out our laundry each night. 😊

Yes, onboard with a VIP check-in - don't ask, it was just luck. We've had the traditional embarkation lunch with some very nice pinot noir. Now we're in our cabin waiting for our luggage to arrive.

We've planned for a minimum of four days but could handle longer. I think the trick will be to put a small bag load in every day rather than sending in bigger lots less often.

Yes, that one is shockingly small but the one that was on the old Golden Princess, although a tad larger, was actually worse due to the placement of taps, dispenser bottles and the grab handle. It was difficult to wash without banging an elbow on something. At least the Coral shower had better placement of those items so my elbows remained unscathed.

We've stayed in the Park Hotel Shiodome a couple of times. The rooms are a reasonable size for Tokyo. We had a huge room (by Japanese standards) at the Yokohama Royal Park Hotel. Even the bathroom was very big. If my memory is correct the Westin in Kyoto also had very decent sized rooms but it was a long time ago when we stayed there.

For some ports there isn't an alternative - that's the only port there is.

We've stayed at the Auckland Waterfront Serviced Apartments a couple of times. They are on Princes Wharf, direct opposite the Hilton - really great if your ship docks at Princes Wharf instead on Queens Wharf. They are lovely one bedroom apartments with great views over the harbour towards the Harbour Bridge. Full kitchen plus a washing machine and dryer in the smallish bathroom.

It's not just the hardness of the seats, it's that you have to lie in an odd position when trying to sleep. I tweaked a muscle in my back trying to get comfortable on one of the flights which annoyed me for days. It didn't really go away until I forked out for a very expensive massage on the Regent cruise. I'd rather have the older style seats where your legs fitted straight in front of you, even if the seat didn't go entirely flat. But I think they get more seats in each cabin in the current configuration. I'll be posting in the Bon Voyage Coral Princess World Cruisers 2024 thread here.

Princess cabins aren't the best of the mass market lines, especially since they removed those chairs from the balcony cabins. However I think they have some of the best storage, especially for clothes in that walk-in wardrobe area, but not in the bathrooms - I really liked Celebrity Solstice for bathroom storage as everything except what you left on the counter was in drawers or in a narrow cupboard which seemed much more secure in high seas.

At the moment the cruise lines need every dollar they can reasonably get to help offset the cost of the pandemic. Note: I do not include outrageous (1000%+) mark-ups on wines as reasonable.

But if you book in Australia with an Australian priced Plus or Premier fare the gratuities aren't included. The only way you could get the gratuities included would be if you booked a standard fare, then upgraded to Plus/Premier onboard in USD and, by the way, it works out about the same give or take a dollar or two.