ozziepost

We did our very first cruise on the Jewel from Barangaroo which was indeed our very first overseas trip and over time did quite a few on her. The Jewel was our introduction to cruising and we have many fond memories of those trips and the many others that followed.

Vale Pacific Jewel you will be missed and never forgotten.

Hi

The first Itinerary from Sydney is a fairly standard SP  cruise giving you a mixture of sea days and port visits. Noumea is where you will dock alongside a wharf and the rest are tender ports all of which are fairly easy to DIY although I would recommend the ships tour to Amadee Island from Noumea all those ports with the exception of Mystery Island (Vanuatu) are part of New Caledonia. The second itinerary from Brisbane is the one that would interest me as some of those ports with the exception of Dravuni Island  and Port Vila and Noumea (we were there last year) I haven't been to for awhile. Santo and Port Vila (Vanuatu) you dock along side  a wharf Denaru and Dravuni Island (Fiji) are tender ports Noumea of course is in New Caledonia. Either way you wont go wrong.

Edit: I've just seen Aus Traveller comments who has given some great advice.

Sigh; I had two cruises booked this year that were cancelled and would have done another couple nest year. Sadly I think the closest I will get to going on another cruise is doing a trip on the SPOT to Tassie when it relocates to Corio Quay  North Geelong in 2022. 

Crikey we did the British Isles cruise on the ship in 2016 and vividly remember when we docked at Greenock. We had the day to ourselves and did the ships tour to the Edinburgh Military tattoo in the evening it was a late night as we didn't get back to the ship until about 1 am. The tour was well organised and they had every thing laid on for us when we returned - hot food and hot chocolate you name it it was there for us. The Caribbean Princess was a nice ship and we have lots of memories of that trip, our first visit to the UK.

Thanks for posting the photo's

Cheers Neil

We caught the train from London to Portsmouth in 2018 where we spent 3 nights as I am a naval history buff. HMS Warrior can be seen as you get off the train and managed to do a cruise on the harbor that day which was interesting enough as one of the new aircraft carriers was alongside at the dockyard. The next day we spent nearly a full day at the Naval Dockyard exploring the Warrior, the Victory and the Mary Rose exhibition and managed to fit in a visit to the Spinnaker tower.

On our final full day we caught the ferry over to the submarine museum then back to the dockyard to finish off the day. The next day we caught the train over to Southampton to embark on the Sapphire Princess for our Western Med cruise. My one regret was that we could have spent a few more nights at Portsmouth as it is an interesting place to visit but there's only so much you do in the time you have available.

When we got back home in Aus I was looking at the reviews of HMS Warrior on Trip Advisor and low and behold there was a photo of me in the boiler room of the ship taken by someone who was there at the same time as we were.

I would love to go back to the UK to do another cruise but sadly due to Covid19 it wont happen.

22 hours ago, Aus Traveller said:

If the ship has power, they can face into the waves, reducing the risk. Several times cruise ships have been in 14 metre seas and survived.

 

Several years ago, the Pacific Sun (I think it was the P. Sun) was nearly lost north of NZ in really bad weather. The captain warned passengers and crew that he was going to reposition the ship in relation to the waves, but as the ship changed direction, an enormous wave hit. They were close to losing the ship. I don't know if the video is still available on U Tube, but it is pretty spectacular.

You jogged my memory about the Pacific Sun incident as I remember reading a comprehensive report about the incident a few years ago.

I'm not sure if the attached article is the same one I read but it is somewhat detailed  and makes for interesting if not sober reading. (Just be aware it is 58 pages long.)

 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/547c6ff4ed915d4c10000059/PacificSunReport.pdf

We had flights booked with Virgin which were non refundable for our cruise from Sydney on the Sun Princess in April. When I received notification from Princess that the cruise had been cancelled because we had booked through our local travel agent our TA had to arrange the refund of the cruise for us which although it did take sometime we received a refund in full from Princess plus the deposit we had paid on our cruise in September on the Sapphire Princess.

She also lodged a claim with Princess for the non refundable flights we had booked for the April cruise. Our TA later received correspondence from Princess denying our claim for the flights on the basis that we should have been entitled to a credit voucher from Virgin which incidentally was useless to us due to the fact that the company had gone bust and it was likely that we would never fly with them again. Our TA suggested that she contact Virgin and obtain a letter to pass on to Princess stating that we didn't want a credit voucher and that we wanted a refund for the cost of the flights. I got an email from our TA last week stating that they were still waiting on a response from Princess regarding our claim and would let me know of the outcome as more information comes to hand.

The amount of the flights was not a lot of money and I am resigned to the fact that I will just have to write the amount off.

As they say patience is a virtue

In respect to our TA IMO she has gone above and beyond what I would expect and has done a great job in dealing with the refunds involved with the cancellation of the April and September cruises.

Cheers

As much as I would like to think otherwise because I really enjoy cruising I very much doubt if we will do another cruise again I think Covid has put an end to that.

I took out a policy with Australia Post TI in December for our cruise in April. Princess cancelled the cruise about two weeks before we were to fly into Sydney to join the Sun Princess. As soon as I received notification that Princess had cancelled the trip I contacted Australia Post insurance who told me that if I had cancelled the policy within two weeks of taking it out in December I would have received a full refund they informed me that I would only get a part refund which is explained in their PDS  provided I had no outstanding claims. As it turned out I got 75% of the premium paid refunded to my credit card which I felt was fair enough.

I read somewhere that the Pac Dawn and Pac Aria have been sold to CMV now that Cruise and Maritime have gone bust not sure what will happen  to the ships.

On 7/31/2020 at 5:15 PM, christodan said:

Thanks. Will definitely do that !

Look out for the self styled prince at one of the places you visit on the cruise. He wheels out his throne with a top hat and its mud crab emblem and then there's his royal corgis (they're not corgis really but a mixture of this and that in the way of dog breeds) good for a laugh and one of the highlights of the trip we did. 

15 minutes ago, christodan said:

Never heard of it. I might take my family on that in the holidays.

This is the link to the Riverboat Postman cruise. We just caught the train from Central when we did the trip and after doing the cruise caught the train to CQ and hopped on a ferry to Manly to fill in the rest of the afternoon it was a very pleasant way of enjoying a day in Sydney.

https://riverboatpostman.com.au/

As you get closer to your trip as well as CC post a question on the Sydney forum of Trip Advisor. There are quite a few regulars who will be only too willing to assist in providing ideas for your visit that will assist in preparing a draft itinerary. We have done quite a few cruises from CQ and White bay and were totally peed off when our April and September cruises were cancelled this year. We often spend a couple of nights either side of a cruise when doing one from Sydney and always find plenty to do.

If you want to do something that's a bit out of the ordinary that's fun half day out look at doing the Riverboat Postman's cruise on the Hawkesbury River. This trip involves delivering mail to communities on the river and includes morning tea and lunch and is really good value for the price you pay for the trip.

 GSR have a 14 night trip called the Territory Complete on the Ghan next year its quite expensive but by golly I'm looking at it as we had two cancelled cruises this year. I'm going to wait and see what happens with Covid and will wait until Dec/Jan when I hope to book the trip, might even catch the Overlander from Geelong to Adelaide and have a couple of nights there before boarding the Ghan and fly home from Darwin. I'm not really into train travel but this trip looks like one of those unforgettable experiences that should be done if we are able to..

Hi we had two cruises booked with Princess through our local TA one was in April and the other in September this year.

I received both refunds today with the only outstanding item being our flights with Virgin which is still being processed by Princess. I had used FCD's for both trips which will be refunded when the 2 year limit expires unless they are used for a future cruise. Overall a great job by our local TA.

I agree with the comments above. We have done many cruises on P&O ships before graduating to Princess plus one on both the Carnival Spirit and Radiance of the Sea. For a first timer looking at cruising I would look at P&O and Carnival with cruises around 10 nights duration. This will give you a fair mix of ports where you dock alongside and tender ports where you are taken ashore in the ships boats as well as giving you an insight into shipboard life.

Cruises into the islands are a great experience for kids and a slightly longer cruise to NZ are well worth exploring for your first cruise.

When we did the Fiji trip on the Majestic in October there always seemed to be someone waiting to be served at the Lobster Bar the food looked alright from memory about $20 a serve we didn't try it ourselves though.

We had booked the Southern Australia cruise on the Sapphire Princess and managed to get a balcony cabin at a good price. It was quite a nice itinerary and one I was looking forward to doing but considering the current situation with COVID19 and restrictions on domestic interstate travel I expected this cruise would be cancelled at some stage. Princess sent me an email yesterday confirming that cruise was indeed cancelled. I had only paid a deposit and will be seeking a refund as we don't intend to do another cruise in the foreseeable future. To those that had booked the trip on the Sapphire leaving Sydney on the 19th September I don't like your chances of that that cruise going ahead as that would have been the day we disembarked in Sydney. In the current environment TBH I cannot see cruise ships being allowed to do trips from Australia for some time let alone this year. 

We are still waiting on the refund for our cruise on the Sun Princess in April that was booked through our travel agent. Our return flights to Sydney were non refundable and our agent has also lodged a claim with Princess to refund the cost of the flights as well. Its been about 60 days since the refund was applied for but in the current circumstances with COVID19 its just a matter of being patient I would hope that we will receive the amounts owing in the next month or so.

I saw the doc on Cadbury's history at Bournville last Saturday night considering what else there was to watch it was good viewing. I'll be watching the Cadbury's story in Australia this weekend but 3 hours??? I hope I can last that long.

Grrr we were supposed to be spending Easter at sea on the Sun Princess but that was cancelled. I only live an hour away from the Great Ocean Road and would often head down there at Easter for a day trip or up to Bendigo for the Easter parade. With non essential travel banned we will be staying at home and catching up on some reading time - it's a difficult time for all.

Stay safe and healthy everyone.

There is a couple of anchorages they could use in Corio Bay plus they could refuel at the refinery pier if needed. It would certainly be nice to see a couple of them anchored off the Geelong foreshore.

11 hours ago, subaru94 said:

You should do we have booked a cruise for May and get onboard credit for Princess if we go ahead with the cruise, amount depends on length of cruise, hope this helps.

Just checked the Princess website it looks like we did get the extra OBC which will be very handy.

I've booked two domestic cruises with Princess for this year one of these will be next month and it will be interesting to see if we get the extra OBC for that trip which will be nice. The other one I picked up as a result of the sale for the Sapphire later in the year I normally book inside cabins but managed to get a balcony on the Sapphire for much less than I have paid for some inside cabins.

Have no intention  of cancelling either and am looking forward to doing both. As far as I am concerned Princess are being very generous with the new cancellation policy.

I usually book inside cabins but when I saw the sale Princess are having for the Sapphire I managed to get a balcony cabin for much cheaper than some of the inside cabins we have had in the past I lashed out and grabbed one. We are doing the 12 night Southern Australia cruise in September. We previously did the 14 night western Med cruise on the Sapphire in 2018 she's a nice ship.