sir-magoo

We used a company called Mondoguide (mondoguide.com) last year. The tour we did also went to Pompeii, Amalfi coast and Sorento, but I think they also do shorter ones to just Pompeii. For what is worth, going all the way Amalfi coast made it a bit rushed, so I would go for a shorter version to Pompeii only next time I went.

They were quite a good company with bus transfers, and a guide through Pompei itself.

We are on one of the other ships in the harbour throughout the day (Syd/Syd cruise). Bit disappointed about no fireworks, but that was a small, 10m end to the day, rather than the primary focus. From last time doing the Aust Day cruise, the rest of the day out in the middle of the harbour was really good watching the boat dress-ups, ferry races, flyovers from the F18's and A380's and everything else happening on the harbour.

I do feel sorry though for those from Brisbane who are now missing out on the fireworks, which was one of the highlights when docked at white bay for the day.

I also suspect it was a last minute change enforced upon P&O. They advertised that they now have some form of dress up with a $10k first prize (total $20k in all prizes), which I have never seen advertised before. No interest to me, but I suspect that is what they were formally spending on fireworks.

I read in another post a few months ago that Princess changed the rules and you can no longer change/cancel a FCD booking. https://boards.cruisecritic.com.au/showthread.php?t=2483545

This is one of the posts from that page:

September 2015

" The FCD is fully refundable if your new booking is cancelled prior to final payment date, unless it is used in conjunction with a non-refundable deposit booking. "

April 2016 and September 2016

" Once applied to a booking, the FCD is considered money and is subject to the terms and conditions in the Passage contract. "

We probably going to drive up and park long term at the airport in Sydney. Will be cheaper than $500 flights.

Maybe have a look at the wilsons park under the opera house too. We have parked there a few times, they have a cruise special at around $20pd, and a nice easy walk around to OPT.

Can anyone give me some advise on the best way to get to Rome from the cruise port, we are a family of 6 that includes our elderly gran who is able to walk just not miles, would we be best to go on the train or just get a taxi? We mostly want to visit the colesium and the roman forum! Thanks

We did the train a couple of weeks ago, was surprisingly easy. It is about a 20m walk from the shuttle drop-off point to the station, so possibly your gran could get the taxi for that portion, but easily walkable for the average person.

Only tip that I would have is pre-print a copy of the schedules and train map. Just makes it a little easier on the day.

Hi All

 

I have been thinking of an Antarctica trip towards the end of next year. Just got an armload of brochures from my local TA. Also they are sending me a comparison checklist to help compare.

 

Doing a search shows that some here have been on such a trip, so looking at advice, insights, comments etc from those with experience.

 

One degree of uncertainty is my degree of upper body mobility in relation to some of the physical demands of different types of trips (cervical spine double discectomy and fusion in the next couple of months.

 

Comments, jealousy, etc welcome.

Hi, there is an Antarctica forum under the ports of call area. I booked for Antarctica next year and got a heap of info from reading through that section of cruise critic. Lot of people in there with a great deal of information.

I did a similar san francisco to sydney cruise 2 years ago. I deliberately chose the port side so as to avoid the direct afternoon sun (with the assumption a lot of my trip was heading south, or south-west.) We like sitting out on the balcony in the late afternoon.

Thank you for this review, it was great reading. I look forward to your more in dept update later.

Interesting your thoughts on getting to Ushuaia earlier. We are on a similar Ponant cruise next year and have chosen not to take the included flight there, and instead go down there a couple of days earlier. To me, it just seemed a better option to spend those few pre-cruise days there instead of BA.

Hi, just wondering what the wine prices are like on Aussie Princess cruises - have only done O/S ones to date and price was in $US - looking for an idea for what to budget for a cheapish bottle. Price of cocktails too?

We were on over Xmas and I found the pricing in $AUD very similar to the prices we saw in $USD on our previous cruise. Could easily find bottles of wine around $30 (or even under down to around $27 I think). Didn't drink a lot of cocktails, but around $11-$13AUD from memory for the ones we were drinking.

We stayed at Hougoumont a couple of weeks ago before boarding a cruise. Rooms aren't huge, but are very nice and modern. Communications in the lead up to the stay were good, the staff there were fantastic and it was a nice easy walk to the port from the hotel.

Yes we were on the Pearl last year for Australia Day. Was a great day out there in the harbour with all of the ferry races, planes flying over us, other boat races and fireworks.

Hi all

 

OK, so I invested quite a bit of money in AUD to get shareholder benefit. I have written to three different email addresses within Princess and am being comprehensively ignored.

 

I tried the shareholderbenfit email address and the info@princess email address.

 

I'll save boring you with what I think about that :mad:, and just ask:

 

Does anyone have a magic contact where I can get someone at Princess to actually do what they glibly promise in their onboard sessions about shareholder benefit?

 

Of interest is that in the same email I also asked for the credit to be applied to a P&O Australia booking and that has actually been done, so it's the Princess Australia arm of CCL who are not doing anything.

Just call them. I had the same issue earlier in the week after two emails over three weeks. When I called, they asked when I sent it, and the from address. The call centre then checked with somebody else and found my email. After about 20 minutes of arguing with them (they were miss-reading the statement and thought it was from January not the current September one), they finally credited it to me and I could see it in the personalizer.

Relevant to my previous post, we're currently leaning Ponant as a decent compromise of:

 

• Ship size (smaller ship equals more chances and longer times ashore??)
  
• Comfort (I mentioned the balcony thing, right :))
  
• "All inclusiveness" - Ponant seems to cover everything with their prices - gratuities, drinks, trips ashore (I understand some lines charge extra fees?), etc.
  

All input gratefully accepted.

I can't give you a definite "go Ponant" recommendation as I haven't been yet, but after several weeks of similar investigation earlier this year, I came to the same conclusion that Ponant was the right one for us too.

In the end, main reasons were:

- They look like nice ships. There is also a "mighty cruise ships" that shows one of their journeys which should give you a pretty good idea of the journey.

- There are cheaper options elsewhere, but they mostly seem like 3 or 4 berth cabins, and we want a twin. The "twins" options on the cheaper ships were coming back higher than Ponant did for us.

- The reasonable prices extended to balcony cabins, and we really wanted a balcony if possible.

We ended up booking a trip to Antarctica and South Georgia in Feb 2018. Good luck with your investigations! Try to get some of the early bird offers as they are up to 30% off which helps a lot. .

Hello all,

 

I'm doing a huge review of my recent trip to Iguazu Falls, Antarctica and Around the Horn. With tonnes of photos.

 

 

It's on the Royal Caribbean page....so I though I would let you know.

 

Trip was on Poseidon Expeditions ship MV Sea Spirit, and was the MOST amazing experience ever. I saw so much - Whales, Ice, Penguins, Seals..........

 

Here is the link if your interested.

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2342959

 

Cheers,

 

Raina

This was a great review, it is great to see fellow Canberran's journeying around the world :-). I have read it about 5 times over the past couple of months, envying all of the wonderful photos each time.

We have now booked a similar journey. Not until Feb 2018, and on a slightly different ship (Ponant), but we are really looking forward to it.

Thank you again for the inspiration!

Hi, just wondering if anyone has any more recent experiences of getting to White Bay now that P&O run a shuttle bus and Captain Cook Cruises run a ferry.

We've got a cruise next month and I'm trying to figure out the best way to get to White Bay. At the moment the Captain Cook idea quite literally floats my boat.

A taxi from Town Hall is probably the next favoured option.

I'd be interested to hear of other's experiences. Thanks.

Tracey.

We used the White Bay ferry back in January. I would happily use it again. It is basically immediately outside of the train station at the circular quay end (although we just parked our car under the Opera House), and it lands pretty much at the back of the ship at the White Bay end. You do need to walk around a car park to get to check-in, my guess is that is about a 500m walk, and it is on paved paths.

Hello all.

 

I thought I would revive this thread and let everyone know that Wilson's Harbourside carpark still has long-term parking available for people going on cruises.

 

My husband and I recently went on a 4 day cruise with P&O that departed from White Bay on 13 June 2016 (a public holiday). We drove to Wilson's Harbourside carpark and found a parking space. Then, we went to the pre-paid ticket collections counter and called the number on a sign that said "For assistance please contact security on 9552 2330 or 0434 307 950 or use intercom on autopay machine".

 

My husband called one of the phone numbers and spoke with a female security officer/parking attendant. She came to the pre-paid ticket collections counter and we filled out a form for long-term cruise parking.

 

It cost us $16 per day. We had to pay for a minimum of 10 days, despite only staying for 5 days - so it cost us $160, but that was still cheaper than paying the normal daily carpark rate. Cost us ~$15 for a taxi to White Bay, and it was easy to find a taxi to take us back to the parking lot after the cruise ended.

 

For my part, I'm very glad that this car park is still offering a good deal on long term parking for cruise-goers. Would definitely park there again, particularly if going on a longer cruise :)

The last couple of times I cruised out of Sydney (earlier this year) I just parked in the Wilsons under the Opera House. Was a 4 day minimum, and was $20pn. Nice easy walk around to OPT, or to the ferry across to White Bay.

I suggest you look further afield...I just got back from Celebrity Reflection Med cruise..10 days $1300 Aussie balcony including free drinks and $300 Obc.

 

Med cruises aren't selling well...Hal at $300 per day is a joke.

Its HAL at around $200pd. I would happily take any advice that you could provide to find Celeb at that price for next May/June. I can't find the Celeb 10-12d cruises, or the Princess 21d cruises below $300pd for a balcony. And they have been holding at that level for the last couple of months.

If anybody is interested in Med cruises for next year, HAL seem to have a few reasonable prices at the moment. We have been watching pricing for a few months, and haven't been able to find anything under $300 per day for a balcony.

It is not posted on the HAL website, but some online TA's have a 24 day Med, departing Venice on 23 May 2017 for $4,971pp in a balcony cabin (same cruise is over $7k on the HAL site). You need to look around because not many of them offer this price, but there are a couple offering it.

I spoke to a Princess Rep. on the weekend (cruise Show) and they said that Princess Aust. would NEVER have that promotion here!

 

I have 2 cruises booked for 2018 both sailing from America and I can not get the promotion...Very sad!:(

 

Chez

That is a shame. I have been watching Med cruises for a month or so, wanting to book one for next year. I really do like Princess, and was hoping that I could use this sale to take the plunge and book.

Now, when I see that Celebrity are happy to offer their AIBP perks to us, but Princess won't, both are about the same price, I will probably need to go with Celeb instead. I really did want to stick with Princess, but it probably won't make financial sense.

Why drive to Sydney when Murray's Coaches direct service from Jolimont to Central is so cheap and easy? What you pay for petrol and parking would cost you a lot more.

Yes but with the bus, we need to get a taxi to/from Jolimont at the Canberra end, same thing to/from Central at the Sydney end. Depending on the cruise length, it us usually cheaper to drive, beyond about 14 days it would probably swing back in favor of the bus.

Also, with the car, I just get off the ship, walk around the other side of circular quay, and I am away heading back to Canberra. With the bus I need to estimate my disembark time, then stick to that.

From Canberra it used to work out cheaper and quicker to drive to Sydney and leave the car in the long stay at the airport. One time we got a deal with an airport hotel where we stayed one night and they stored the car in their undercover carport for free.

 

Now we are in FNQ the costs can be awful to fly from Cairns to Sydney unless we can get a special. :( It's cheaper sometimes to fly to Japan from Cairns.:)

Yeah we are in Canberra too and the last few cruises we have just driven to Sydney and parked under the opera house. Much easier and relatively cheap at only $20 per night.

Of course, we can't do that for our next cruise, that one departs Fremantle :)

Really enjoying this, thank you! I am only a couple of pages in, but bookmarked to continue reading later :-)

Yes, just came back on the Pearl this morning. Was a fantastic day yesterday out on the harbour.

Had a look at the prices for next year as soon as I got back but it is way too much. Hopefully I can pick it up last minute next year like I did this year, because I can't really justify the prices they have it at now, no matter how much I loved it yesterday.

Thank you. Looking forward to it :)

In a weeks time we'll be in Sydney on Aria, front and centre for the day's activities and the fireworks, except we won't be. Yesterday we found out we are actually docking at White Bay 4.

 

 

From the facebook fan page the fireworks seem to be the big thing for most and we move out from White Bay for them. For us a day sitting out on the most beautiful harbours in the world was the whole purpose of this splurge.

 

Lesson learnt.:(

Bugger! I think that I fell for a similar trap, but possibly not quite as bad. We are on Pearl and I think that we are at the Point Piper Buoy. However, my memory of the Australia Day fireworks (admittedly a long time ago) is that they are at Darling Harbour, so I am not sure that we will be able to see much of them from where we are either.