abbydancer2003

Hi all, I thought I would treat you all to the sunsets from Samoa, from our somewhat unique view out the back of the ship. They were taken about an hour apart. I hope you enjoy them.

Thank you, sweetie. I think calling it Disneyland is not the right word. It's more commercial, but it's a real village, but one where the residents have made it a much bigger production. A fake village would not have children and chickens running around. I think everyone there, performers, cooks, servers, etc, are locals who don costumes to show their culture. They live in the village. They have just figured out how to make some money from their culture. They are not actors from LA brought in to stage a village. It was fun and the food was great.

My points showed up today, around lunch time in Fiji, which is the 16th. Right now, I can't see my point history at all, it stays on upcoming cruises. Might be because I'm on ships wifi. I have a spreadsheet with my points from each cruise, plus a field where I sum my current point count and all the cruises I have booked that I think I need to reach Zenith. With this, it's now enough that without any more power up or Go Green, I'll reach it on the cruise I think I will in a year. Clearly I need a life.

I don't have my power up yet, but I did get the points for the last cruise today (we're on the second leg of the b2b2b. Ended on the 9th, but we're on the other side of the dateline, so 8th in Miami. Crossed a threshold - now 3 digits to zenith.

We missed 3 ports last year on a Princess cruise thanks to Hurricane Lee. We got about 1/3 of our base fare back as FCC, plus 100.00 OBC. I used the FCC to pay for over half of my 7 day Sun Princess cruise in 2025.

Greetings from our new room, an aft corner sky suite. You'd think it would be a let down from a Royal Suite, but, other than missing the second half bath, we're very happy. Our butler is good, a little less proactive than in the Royal, but we're getting everything we ask for. We order coffee every morning and by the third day he has the set up ready to go, so it arrives quickly and hot. I do like having both a balcony and a window. Glen heard that we'll arrive around 3pm tomorrow. We have a tour for the full day, so I guess we'll walk around for a while. Once I finish my 3/27 live, I'll post some of my highlights here as well.

Great review - thanks. Maybe I'm missing something, but why didn't they just print a new one when, apparently, they had trouble finding them? (I'm not convinced they don't do that). Our turnaround was Tuesday and and we got our old cards today. And so far, this cruise has been nothing like what people booked. We missed first port due to leaving Sydney 15 hours late, and now we're turning around due to a medical emergency. 2 of 6 gone, 3 of 7 if you count Maui replaced with early arrival into Honolulu. Fun stuff.

I’m happy you made it in, and I hope your ride is better than ours. We’re on the Solstice and yes, we are missing the first port. We’re also sailing in 30 foot seas which may not sound like a lot but it is. I think we’ll see a lot of casual footwear at formal night. I was on the Majestic in 2022. It’s a great ship.

Here's the next day. Should I complete? Megatrip Day 16. Yorkie’s Knob (Cairns) Friday 2 Today is our second of two private tours on this cruise (4 ports, two ship/two private). It’s a tender port, and Ann and I have arranged that the Retreat Concierges will take all of us off. Ann and I agreed to meet at 8:15 inside the entrance to the Club, and we asked the rest to come at 8:30. We ordered a light breakfast in the room at 7, and Walter brought it soon after, and at 8:10 we were ready to go. I ran into two of our group outside the club, and brought them. Everyone was there by 8:30, so Mar took us out. We boarded the tender, but had to wait for it to fill, but by about 8:40 we were on our way. The tender ride here is close to 30 minutes, so we arrived at 9:10. Our tour is at 9:30, so all good. Dorinda contacted the company, and they had us wait at the entrance to a boat club. At 9:15, Chris, our guide arrived, and off we went to Cairns. (The r is silent). Apparently the two biggest industries are sugar and tourism. We passed sugar fields on the way in. Our first stop was the St. Margaret’s Cathedral. This church has, by far, the most interesting stained glass windows I’ve ever seen. The front two commemorate WW2. Here’s one. The story of creation is told along the walls, and it’s the scientific one. Some pictures. And the other entrance piece. If they interest you, you might want to see more info at their website. Following that, we drove and saw some of the sights. Because we were running a bit early, we stopped at the park at the lagoon. Curiously, there is a cruise dock in town for smaller ships, so I don’t know why we don’t tender to there. Maybe somebody knows? There were a number of birds there, and we saw this cute baby bird. Our next stop was the museum, which was a small museum about the history of Cairns. We were given an overview by a museum guide and we got some time to explore. They acknowledge and feature their indigenous population. Our next stop was the Botanical Gardens. We did not have time to see all of it, but Chris was very knowledgeable about it, and we saw lots of plants. We also saw the local turkey vulture. There are some very old banyan trees. Apparently they build around a host tree, and eventually the host dies. And of course there are chocolate trees (technically cocoa) And some wild ginger And no botanical garden would be complete without some flowering plants. After that, we headed to a nice cafe for some tea (coffee or soft drinks also available) and a scone. The scones were large and flavored with lemon and dates. We had one gluten free person in our group and they had a treat for him as well. Our next stop after that was a lookout over the city. There was a board there that listed all the hills in the distance. We had a great view of Cairns. Our ship is somewhere off to the left. Our final stop was a Palm Cove beach, a resort area on the ocean. It was about a 25 minute drive, and we had about 15-20 minutes there to use the restrooms and look at the water. Lots of restaurants and hotels there. I’m not sure it was worth the drive, but it was only about 20 minutes back to Yorkie’s Knob, and we arrived about an hour before the last tender. We were able to get on the next tender, which turned out to be a local larger boat. It was about thirty minutes back, and probably smoother then the ships tender, but there were a lot of people to unload, so it took almost another 30 minutes to get off. Because we hadn’t had lunch, I went to the lounge once on board and had some tea. Then back to the room to watch them hoist the last tender. That took quite a while as there was significant wind, and the crew in the tender could not connect with the ropes to hoist the boat. The rescue boat came out with a couple more people to help and they finally got it done. We changed for dinner and went to the lounge for a while, then dinner. I started with the glazed baby veggies, and it’s the only picture I got tonight. Dinner was uneventful, other than I forgot what I had, and we have another earlyish start tomorrow, so we called it a night.

Mega Trip Day 14 - Sea Day 6 - Thursday 2 Random ocean view to start the day We had the half hour change to get to “not Darwin” time, so slept late. After our usually morning coffee, we decided to go to the Captain’s Club breakfast in Tuscan. For the first time for me, the fruit, meat, and breads were a buffet at the entrance (my understanding is that they used to do this on all ships. I also don’t recall it on this ship in 2023. I had a bit of fruit, and then decided I wanted a bagel. No bagels on the buffet, so I was told to ask the waiter. He brought on with a lot of cream cheese. Since there’s cream cheese on the the buffet, next time I’ll have the waiter bring the bagel and get my own cream cheese. On the way back, I noticed that they’d posted the brand new menu and show for Le Petit Chef. We should have waited. We went back to the room, and noticed an interesting ship to the side. At 11:15 we had a bridge tour. We walked over a bit early, but Glen realized he’d left his cruise card in Tuscan, so he went back and I met the group in the elevator lobby. Glen arrived in time for the security check. As usually an officer explained how things worked on one of the side terminals. On Princess, they show you the main terminal and I have a picture of Glen in the captain’s chair. No matter, here we are enjoying it. After the tour it was lunch time, and today it was back to the first days lunch. Glen ordered the beet soup, and said it was more like a goulash and not much beet flavor. We both had the NY steak, and main dining’s strawberry shortcake for dessert. Next item of interest was trivia. Music today was 70’s and hard. I suspect we’ll do really well next cruise. Following that, I decided to tweak our specialty dining for the remainder or the cruise. I wanted to do a second Tuscan, a third Murano and the new LPC menu, that starts tomorrow. So I headed downstairs. First thing I wanted to do was confirm when the new LPC menu starts, as I absolutely only want to to do that. Arriving at the restaurant, there was no-one there, but a waiter came out of the crew door, so I asked him. (He was our tuscan waiter for breakfast, but now in LPC garb). He confirmed tomorrow and offered to tweak all my reservations. I decided to move Tuscan to tonight, LPC on the 6th, and Murano on the last night. We went to the lounge prior to our Tuscan dinner, and then headed over. We had the same server, and found out she’d had a great time with family in Bali. Her assistant brought oil and vinegar as the bread dip, which was a little surprising. He told us the basil had gone bad, and they hoped to get more in Sydney. They did give us some Rosemary and Thyme (fun fact: The song by Simon and Garfunkel has a lower vocal that’s a strong anti-war song. I learned this in the class I just finished). We split the antipasto plate to start. It’s really better to do when you have more people. I tried the filet mignon, as was recommended and it was really very good. For dessert I had their zabiglione strawberry shortcake (apparently theme of the day for me). It was very nice and light. Glen had tiramiso and said it was too sweet. As we were walking back to the room after dinner, I remembered that I’d asked Pradeep, our waiter if I could have the baked brie from Blu tonight and he’d arranged that. I felt bad for not showing up, so I went to Luminae to apologize. Everyone was very appreciative that I did that. Tomorrow starts our next round of port days, so early to bed.

Mega trip. Day 13 Sea Day 5 Wednesday 2 We were up early today, since we went to bed early last night, thanks to the early start yesterday. We called Walter for coffee, and then went to breakfast. We both had omelettes, but I wasn’t very hungry so didn’t eat a lot. We decided to next go to the lounge, and spent an hour chatting with people. As usual, at around 11:20 we met Brenda and Robin for coffee and chatted with them until their lunch time. I really just wanted some soup but both main and Luminae had broccoli cheese, so we went to Sushi so I could have some Miso soup. I had that and tried the beef ramen slider. I ate most of both. Glen had the shrimp tempura Udon. The miso: The slider: Next up was rest and then trivia. The music trivia was Beach Boys, and our team knew several. One song threw us, “Disney Girls”. I knew it from the Art Garfunkel cover, but couldn’t come up with the title. We didn’t win, but did OK on general trivia. We went back to the room afterward to read - we do spend a lot of time in the room because it’s so nice and we can watch the ocean. Since tonight was Evening Chic, we decided to go to the show at 7, and let the butlers seat us. It was an Australian singer named Lisa Woodbrook, and she was pretty good. She did sing a variety of genres, but she did an upbeat version of one of my “should be banned forever” songs. - My Heart will Go On. (I wish this song would go on to obscurity.). Next stop was Luminae for dinner. I had tomato soup (I guess today is in fact soup day) and prime rib from main. It was pretty good, but I’m still not hungry, so I ate a little. After dinner, we called it a night.

I got to do Qsine once, with friends. I wish it was back, since LPC is never very full.

Thanks all. MegaTrip - Day 12 - Darwin AS - Tuesday 2 Today is our second stop, Darwin Australia and 1/2 hour off of most places. Today we have one of 2 ship tours on this cruise, booked late because nothing was available on the Black Friday sale, and I couldn’t find any good private excursions. We chose to visit Litchfield National Park, which is famous for Waterfalls and Termite Mounds. It’s a ways away, and so our meet time was 7am. Nothing else will be that early. We set the alarm for 6, but managed to sleep through it. Fortunately the doorbell rang at 6:09 with Walter delivering our breakfast. I saw we were in Darwin. We had to be at the theater just before 7, so we got dressed, finished breakfast and headed down. We got our numbers and then sat at the theater for a bit until they got clearance around 7:20. They called groups 1 and 2, so we followed the crowd out where we waited until the gangway actually opened. We walked through the outside path to the terminal, where there was a very cursory bag inspection, and then onward to our bus number 2. We got seat in about the 7th row. Our guide was Derek, and his mike was not quite loud enough. Our first stop was at a gas station/cafe. I used the restrooms, and wandered around. There were lots of birds, I think they were white parrots. After that, we drove to Litchfield Park. It was about a 2 hour drive total. First stop was their famous termite mounds. We saw two different types, meaning different types of termites. There was an informational display all about termites. Wow! Apparently there are workers, and queens and children. Learn something new everyday. And the type of mounds vary by type of termite. These guys build cathedrals. You can't really see them in the picutes, but there are termites crawling all over them. After about a half hour there, we went to the first of our two waterfalls. There was a close viewing platform but Derek took us to a lower one with better views. I believe we were at Tolmer falls. And from a bit further away.. It was very pretty. The landscape is pretty interesting as well. Next stop was lunch. On the way there, I got somewhat overheated, which happens once in a while. I did manage to make it to lunch without passing out, though. Lunch was a buffet at an outdoor cafe. Apparently, though, the cook a limited amount of meat/fish because our guide started with “who likes chicken, counted and made the rest fish. Not exactly accurate but I don’t think it matters, since maybe some who like chicken also like fish. The buffet consisted of pasta and potato salad (the potato salad made me nervous since it was outdoors and the buffet was cooled by bottles of frozen water, not on ice. There was then chicken and fish, bread, and some watermelon. I had a few bites of chicken with some bottled bbq sauce but mostly had watermelon and water. After lunch we went to our second waterfall. Wangi Falls. It was the more impressive of the two. The falls are gorgeous. Following that, we started back to the port. We did do a stop at a hotel/gas station/cafe which has a crocodile out back, but it wasn’t visible (and I’ve seen them in the wild so it didn’t matter. They did have some gorgeous emus, thought. It took a little while to get back, and we stopped in town to drop off a couple who hated to explore the town. Derek did point out some things for us as we drove through town. We were dropped off around 3:30, and quickly made our way to the ship. Once on board, I rested for a while, and then watched sailing on the balcony. We had booked Le Petite Chef tonight, because I thought iit was a new menu. We were seated promptly at 8:30, and the staff was nice. However, when the show started, I realized it was the very first ever show, with a couple of menu tweaks. The meat course was filet mignon, and they could not cook it right in two trrys. The second was medium, which we could live with, so we ate it. Glen did like the little footprints on the plate of his ice cream sundae. They then told me there was a new menu and show on the last few days of the cruise. If we’d known that, we would have waited. The manager did tell me he’d give me a nice discount if we came back next cruise. After that, back to the room and collapse.

Weather was hot but dry today in Cairns. Nice to see you on CC!

We're probably closer, as we live in Mountain View, but our complex is in the Los Altos school district.