Valmac

Cyclone Gita will be in mid Tasman at midnight Mon.19th on a line from North Cape NZ to NSW/Qld. border, moving quite fast to south. Arcadia is in Bay of Islands 19th.

By midnight Tue. 20th Gita will have dissipated over North Island.

Will not affect QE that is not due in Auckland until 23rd from east.

Arcadia will miss the cyclone by probably deviating a bit to the north of it - even so it will be a rough ride to Sydney.

By the way - rocking & rolling is a DANCE - not the motion of a ship.

Better sea ships than Vista class are the ex HAL - P. Eden & Aria.

Good weather info on windy.com

We are boarding Arcadia in Auckland on 19th. She sails at 10pm. On the 20th Arcadia is due in Bay of Islands so Gita hopefully will be further away!

Thank you for your info. I always say a bit motion makes you feel like you are actually on a ship, hopefully that's all it is!! Looking forward to it!

We sail from Sydney on Sunday towards the cyclone... hopefully Ovation of the Seas will handle well!

She does handle it well. We sailed across Bass Strait Jan 2017 on her! Wouldn't have wanted to be on anything smaller!;)

• We are leaving Auckland on Monday onboard Arcadia... might be a bumpy ride :cool:

We are also leaving on Arcadia from Auckland in Monday. Fingers crossed for not being too affected by Gita!:eek:

:eek:

We are leaving Auckland on Monday onboard Arcadia... might be a bumpy ride :cool:

We are also onboard from Auckland!

Fingers crossed for not being too much affected by Gita!:eek:

Have checked our NZ port schedules but not showing any extra bookings as yet for 16/17 season but showing 5 cruises booked for NZ port for the 17/18 season.:)

We travelled in March on Solstice in a GTY Balcony cabin after paying for Inside on booking in Nov. We got our cabin allocation immediately although TA was not advised. I found out by looking up our booking. It was a 1c cabin 8320 aft. It was perfect for us! Would definitely do this again. :)

A lot will also depend on your budget.

 

We like pier one and Holiday Inn for location but they aren't cheap.

 

But nor are they the most expensive around, they are however in great spots, I love watching the ship arrive in the morning and a gentle stroll to board.

We agree! Stayed at Holiday Inn in March for our cruise. Walk everywhere easily from there, so central. Lots of restaurants nearby. Look out the window or up to pool area to see your ship in morning. Worth any extra cost for convenience and cab savings. Recommended!:)

We always assumed that balcony cabins had the sofa next to the door and the bed next to it. We found out accidentally on Cruise Critic that alternate cabins on Celebrity Solstice have that and the other cabins have the bed right next to the sliding door. But Celebrity could not tell us which way our cabin was configured! We prefer the sofa by the door, as most ships seem to have, so we can sit and look at the passing sea or whatever there is to look at. (We were lucky that that was the configuration we did have) Deck plans with correct bed positioning would help in a situation like this.

I originally posted this on another thread. Since then I have seen on the deck plans of Voyager of the Seas that they also have beds by the door. We have been on Dawn Princess, with the bed not by the door. Are there other ships with all/some Cabins with beds by the door? It may seem silly to ask this, but we do like to spend some time in the cabin and if the balcony is unusable we don't particularly want to sit on the bed.

We sailed on Solstice last month and by looking at deck plans could work out which configuration our cabin would have. On either side of our cabin on the plan there was a square shown in those cabins which indicated the sofa could be used as an additional bed. This meant that those cabins had sofas by the door. Our wasn't, as they alternate. Hope this makes sense and helps.

We have just been told that Cyclone Pam has developed in the South Pacific and with our cruise heading to Noumea , Lifou and Isle de Pins this weekend , will Solstice sail into this or make other arrangements? Looks like it will be a rough cruise.:eek:

From what we've seen in media here in NZ it's supposed to have moved on through by the time we sail. But we know cyclones are unpredictable and I guess our itinerary will be changed if not. I'm preferring to think that it will be the case and the seas less rough!! :confused::cool: