joejoe 59

Yet a female can wear sandals or sparkley thongs & it's OK.

We got off Encounter after a 10 night cruise to PNG in August. It wasn't school holidays & was mostly an older demographic like Princess. I noticed many people liked to dress up at night & looked beautiful especially the 2 formal nights & Gatsby. We went on fully aware it was a $100 a day P&O cruise, we were pleasantly surprised & would definitely cruise on them again. We mixed our dining up by rotating through the 3 resturants with one pantry dinner. I'm coeliac & still found enough variety. Hubby ordered icecream with his desserts in the dining rooms & always got it. I take on my own gf biscuits & chocolates so always a sweet treat at hand if i wanted it. We have cruised with Princess & Rcl as well in the last year & honestly food standards have dropped on all of them. Princess charge double per day , you can buy a lot of biscuits icecreams & eggs Benny for that. On Quantum there were added foods on the menu & no fresh cream to be had. We cruise on Princess again in January out of Brisbane, it will be really interesting to compare it to our recent P&O cruise.

Yes we do have vouchers so it looks like I'll have to wait to board. I didn't want to add my credit care because we have the plus package (old) specialty dining vouchers & $350 on board credit.

Thanks for your instructions. I followed them & can see where I will eventually be able to book, but I think my problem could be because I haven't added my credit care like Geoff mentions in the next post.

Yes that's when I got that message.

OK I just tried what you said & I get a pop up saying...Please check back closer to your journey date to use this feature. So obviously now I know it's not just me😄

Thanks for replying. I am Elite & can prebook the main dining room, which I have done already. I was hoping to book a specially restaurant beforehand for my husband's birthday but can't find them.

Yes you can definitely do Mystery Island in Vanuatu on your own. You would get more info relevant to the area on the Australia & New Zealand board's.

Good

I don't have the ability to even look at specialty restaurant's, do they only become available closer to the cruise? We have 120 days until our Tasmanian cruise. We have 2 included specially dining vouchers.

Absolutely no smoking inside, not even your balcony. There is a designated area out on one or two of the open decks only.

Thankfully in Australia nobody is allowed to smoke inside, that goes for cruise ships departing & sailing in Australia

Had you previously booked with them in the past? I know prior to covid when I tried looking up prices on that us site I was denied.

Have you tried Royal Caribbean their beds are as hard as a plank. Princess & p&o are wonderful.

We were told by someone on board that there was a problem with drugs being brought in from png & to expect delays...& delays we had.

You can buy wine by the bottle starting from $36.00 you can take it away unopened from the restaurants & take it anywhere you want. I bought 5 bottles on a 10 day cruise🍾🍷🍾

We were on this same png cruise. We started lining up to leave the ship at 7.15am & got into our car at the port at 8.45am. We had wooden products & fruit... preservative free prunes which I wasn't willing to ditch unless they told me to. We ticked the box for both, our cards were signed & we moved on. We were very surprised nobody wanted to check them. I actually commented in the car that you would hate to be caught up in the back log. We came back from NZ in March & getting through customs & boarder security was completely different & fast.

We have received no updates regarding the new pricing here in Australia. We have the old plus package & cruise in January.

We have the old plus package , still haven't had any info from Princess regarding what's included or been taken away from us.

I think everyone on the old priced drinks package should go to the service desk & ask for activation charge to be removed, just on principle.

So I've read the link that Geoff put up regarding the new packages but still I'm a little confused. We booked our cruise for January 2024 in March 2022. We got the plus package at $30 as many others did. I can't work out if I'm going to be charged for a room service cup of tea or coffee for instance if I don't upgrade. I'm definitely not upgrading so what do you all think? In my eyes I didn't think they could change the contract once agreed on🤔

Thanks for that info.

That sounds like a good idea. Is the bank far from the port & easy to find? We cruise png in August.

P&O strongly recommend cruise insurance for all cruise's but not enforced unless travelling to Noumea, as they require passengers have it.

In defence of the lady that had no luggage...Rcl do not sell underware in their shops or anything much suitable. I forgot to pack undies for my hubby on our recent nz cruise & he had to wash & dry them overnight until we got to our first port & could buy a pack of bonds undies for $34 nz so her money wouldn't have gone far. The shops on rcl are very expensive brand name stuff like bags & jewellery very little clothing. We were on Quantum. Princess & P&O have a much better selection of regular clothing to buy. I would have gone op shopping if I had a chance & just got rcl to wash it for me before I wore it.