The 7 Dwarfs

My husband and son went on this ship last week for their birthdays. He said it was 'the worst one' he has been on, as a previous poster said the worst cruise is still not a bad one, they overall had a great time. Mind you, we'd only just got off Explorer of the Seas a few weeks prior, which is a bigger ship with a lot more facilities, so I wonder if it was just the comparisons that made it seem worse IYKWIM.

Their main complaints were the fact they'd bought a soft drink package and had assumed that they would have the same soda machines as Explorer. They didn't and the only options were cola, lemonade and ginger ale. It could sometimes take 30 minutes to get 1 drink.

They also had a photo taken at dinner time, went to purchase it only to be told it wouldn't be ready until 11pm. Hubby is a baker, so no chance of him being awake at that time of night, then the next morning they refused to sell it to him and gave him the excuse of now being in Australian waters and there being custom concerns if they sold it to him. He was really disappointed.

He said his cabin was always spotless, the MDR was excellent, son loved kids club and the staff in charge of the rock climbing wall were awesome.

Thank you Bob for taking the time to reply to my question. Not sure if I read past the word 'current', or whether you added it in when you edited, but thanks again :)

Do you pay the current price or the price it was at the time of booking the cabin?

For example, if we paid $2700 for 3 people and the current price for a quad is $4000, will the 4th person be an additional $1300?

Or does the 4th person pay whatever the 3rd person was charged when the booking was made, so say passanger 1 & 2 were $1000, passanger 3 was $700, so the 4th will be charged $700?

Cruise is not for another 16 months, so we do have a bit of time to decide.

If you have a 4 berth cabin booked, but only 3 people currently on the booking, is it very hard to add an extra 4th person to the cabin? How do they work out the extra cost?

Next year me and 3 of my children will be doing a short 2 night cruise on the Golden Princess from Sydney, arrive in Melbourne at 0700. We then possibly plan on meeting the rest of our family in Melbourne (provided the flight schedule doesn't change between this October and next) and flying to Singapore for our next cruise.

Being a short cruise and good at packing light, we will only have back packs which we will carry off with us, so no having to track down luggage. We will also not have anything to check in at the airport as our baggage would be checked in in Adelaide and transferred straight to the flight in Melbourne with the rest of the family.

The potential flight departs at 1200, even if we were one of the last groups off at 0900 and leaving an hour to get from Station Pier to Tullamarine, it should still give us 2 hours prior to the flight.

Doable or not?

My 9 year old had signing in / out privileges on our last cruise, however she was also with her 10 and 11 year old sisters and the deal was they always had to stay together and there were only certain places they could go. For example, open decks were a massive no-no. My 10 year old son did not have the same privilege because I could not trust him to be responsible enough even in a group with his sisters. Different children will have different abilities to be safe on their own.

My girls are long distance runners / race walkers. My daughter has been running a 12km city to bay race with 40,000 other people since she was 8. Each weekend they race walk up to 5km around our capital city, they do cross country races and fun runs through bushland. Really, on paper that is far more risky than them leaving kids club on their own to watch a movie on deck or grab an ice cream.

Mind you, the 9 year old and I will be going on a cruise on own, she'll be 10 by then and I'm not sure I will let her just on her own.

Great :). Not too concerned about only 1 bathroom, we are so restricted with who we can and can't go with as our children are too young to be in a cabin on their own. We just want a holiday were we don't have to take a 3rd adult along.

I was just wondering what the maximum amount of people the family cabins on the Century and Solstice can have.

The only ones available from Australia that time of year is Rhapsody and Voyager so it would be one of them

We are thinking of maybe doing a Christmas cruise this year. I was just wondering what Christmas is like on board a Royal Caribbean cruise, particularly for children.

A bit of a shame since we have already been to 2 out of the 4 new ports, but I very much doubt Fiji would be much fun under the circumstances!

I wish the media would be responsible and add in some general information about Norovirus. I work in Aged Care and know all too well what that disease is capable of. There is very little Royal Caribbean could have done to stop it, you get one person or a family with it on board, not even the alcohol rubs they get you to use are 100% effective against it. It can be transmitted via droplet and so you can breath it in, at work we have to wear masks and gown up just to enter a room with anyone with Norovirus.

All I hear is a bunch of people blaming bad food and sanitation on board the ship, while that is possible, it's highly likely that isn't the case at all.

Just a tip though, if you know Norovirus is going around, gets some inner health plus and take it morning and night. It only takes something tiny like 10-20 infectious particles to get the symptoms, but if you have some good bacteria killing them off for you you can sometimes spare yourself the full blown gastro. I've managed to get myself through some pretty decent norovirus outbreaks at work by taking that.

We hired a car from the airport and dropped it off in Auckland. It was a short, less than 5 minute walk to the wharf. We did stay overnight though but if you think you might have a little time to drive around the city and look around it could be another option.

I think just about everything has been mentioned here, but just in case there are any other Aussies about, in terms we'd understand :)

Maxolon

Stemitil

Travelcalm

Gastrostop

Mylanta / Gaviscon

Panadol

Advil

Clonea

Voltarin

Deep Heat (hubby's second home on the ship is the gym)

As for Antibiotics, I haven't read the whole thread but here in Australia they are all prescription, we wouldn't even be able to get them unless we somehow lied and had a dodgy doctor.

I understand the cost of seeing the GP on board and the benefit of having certain medications such as maxolon to avoid that cost, but I really think if you develop an infection and need antibiotics you should just deal with the cost and see a doctor. I'm a healthcare professional and in most cases could match the right antibiotic, dose regime and infection, but I still wouldn't do it. Plus, you would have to have one pretty impressive antibiotic collection to match every possible infection out there. I have an imprest at work and there are still many we need to order in.

As for decanting into smaller containers, the pharmacy I use will do that for specific purposes and I don't see how it's any different to Webster or sachet packing or those dosettes. So long as the containers are clean.

For us the biggest factor is price as this is the difference between being able to go on a family holiday yearly or not.

My next is something different. My kids will only be little for such a short time, I want them to enjoy as many different things as I can provide them with the resources I have. For example, this reason I have no plans to sail on the Pearl again anytime soon, no matter how good the deal is.

Really, as long as I can find something to suit both of those 2 and work will give us both the time off I'm intrested.

If you book an interconnecting room, for example a quad and twin, can you only have 1 adult between the 2 cabins or do you still need 2 adults?

Trying to find options to being able to cruise without having to take someone else along, was thinking a quad + twin interconnecting with one of us and a triple with the other.

I have cancelled a cruise before the 'loose your deposit' cut off date and rebooked a cheaper price, reduced deposit with better OBC, however you need to be able to repay the deposit and be prepared to wait 6-8 weeks for your original refund.

I then ended up cancelling that and loosing my deposit because I found the 14 night princess cruise I'm going on for the same price as the 10 night P&O I'd booked, almost a third of the original price with $185 OBC. I lost a couple of hundred AU, but figured the absolute bargain I got for the cruise was well worth it.

My daughter is having her birthday on board the Sun Princess early next year. Can you somehow arrange a birthday cake on board, or are you able to take one on board?

I'm no longer doing this cruise "10 Feb ... The 7 Dwarfs ... Pacific Jewel ... New Caledonia and Vanuatu"

Instead I'm doing 21 Feb, Sun Princess, South Pacific and Fiji

The Carnival Spirit also had a 10 night cruise on the 28/5/13 for 575 per person Quad share. It's an inside cabin.

24th of June 13 - Pacific Pearl - Auckland to Sydney

also

10 of February 14 - Pacific Jewel - Sydney to New Caledonia & Vanuatu