Live: Jan 2 2018 Solstice Great Barrier Reef

[Holly2]

Went with Quicksilver yesterday. Had a great time, loved the submersible and underwater observatory. Well run.

Edited February 5, 2018 by Holly2
Typo

[Mum81]

Thanks again for all your helpful information regarding this cruise. We are on the same (similar) cruise leaving on the 30th March. We have heard that the ship will depart from the dock in Sydney at 6.30pm and then sit in Sydney Harbour until 11.59pm when it will cruise out of the heads. Can you please tell me if this was your experience or whether it was a normal sailaway? TIA

[mahdnc]

The answer is that we left at around 630pm which was the stated itinerary time and we did not hang around the harbor until midnight. There was some discussion on the roll call in advance of our cruise about the actual sail away time. The Port Authority had us listed as departing at 10pm. And we were trying to figure out when our roll call sail away party would actually occur.

 

In the end we left at around 630pm. However we had main seating for dinner which was at 6pm so we missed the sailaway altogether. I am pretty sure that the Captain said he was going to give everyone a good look at Sydney as we left the harbor--again we were in the main dining room near the center atrium so we did not notice what was going on. But we were well underway by the time we got back to our cabin right after dinner and looked out from the balcony. So if we hung around the harbor after leaving the dock, it wasn't for more than an hour.

 

The ironic thing was that we had spent 6 hours on a nice boat in Sydney Harbor to ring in the New Year just 2 nights before the cruise. So our family was pretty "harbored" out and wasn't too interested in the sailaway.

 

Edited February 9, 2018 by mahdnc

[Nanna5]

Thank you for posting so much information on the GBR. We will be on this same cruise the end of March. We are looking at the Skyrail, Kuranda, and Cairns excursion vs the Jungle Train, Skyrail, and Kuranda excursion. There is almost $100 difference with adding the Jungle Train. In your opinion or comments from others, is the Jungle Train worth the additional. Is either cruise worth experiencing?

[mahdnc]

Thank you for posting so much information on the GBR. We will be on this same cruise the end of March. We are looking at the Skyrail, Kuranda, and Cairns excursion vs the Jungle Train, Skyrail, and Kuranda excursion. There is almost $100 difference with adding the Jungle Train. In your opinion or comments from others, is the Jungle Train worth the additional. Is either cruise worth experiencing?

 

Nanna5,

 

You are going to have a wonderful cruise!

 

We spent all of our time at the GBR ports in the water, not on the land! So I cannot answer that question for you. However, if you haven't seen it already, take a look at the review on our Jan 2 sailing. In it, Suzi66 posted reviews at the various ports including the excursion you mentioned. It doesn't give you a clear comparison, but it is good information and there are some nice photos, too.

[Suzi66]

Thank you for posting so much information on the GBR. We will be on this same cruise the end of March. We are looking at the Skyrail, Kuranda, and Cairns excursion vs the Jungle Train, Skyrail, and Kuranda excursion. There is almost $100 difference with adding the Jungle Train. In your opinion or comments from others, is the Jungle Train worth the additional. Is either cruise worth experiencing?

 

I have done both Skyrail, Karunda which I booked on my own and the Skyrail, Karunda, and Jungle Train which I booked through the ship. We did Gold Class with the Train. I thought the train trip was great. I've just asked my husband and he said that he thought that the Train was definitely the best of the two. What is the price difference between the one you are looking at and Gold class?

 

On the train in the normal carriages I believe they are wooden benches and it is a 90 minute journey. We had upholstered single club chairs. We also had as many drinks (alcoholic and non-alcoholic) that we wanted, and afternoon tea included. At the end we were given a little momento to remember our trip.

I purposely paid the extra for this because I had elderly parents with us and I wanted them to really enjoy their trip and they loved it.

 

The biggest problem for us was because the ship had problems with weather and tendering and so we were delayed getting off the ship by about an hour to 90 minutes which meant we didn't get time to see Karunda. Because we spent two days at Cairns we went into Cairns the next day to look around. If I had my way again I would have swapped the tours around, but you know what they say about hindsight.

[Nanna5]

Thanks, Suzi66

I havn't found the Gold Class train ticket. Is that on the Celebrity excursion, or did you book that at the train station?

[pnwabs6]

mahdnc

 

I have just come across this thread and found it extremely helpful as I will be on Solstice on March 30th.

 

I liked the look of the Quicksilver trip that you did but I'm a little confused which port that one. We intend to go across to Hamilton Island from Airlie Beach but which of the other two ports would you say were the best for snorkelling? Cairns or Port Douglas?

 

Thank you

 

esesohsam I will also be on the March 30th cruise. Just wondering what your plans are to get from Airlie to Hamilton Island - my husband and had looked into it but weren't sure the best way to do it. Thanks!

[Suzi66]

Thanks, Suzi66

I havn't found the Gold Class train ticket. Is that on the Celebrity excursion, or did you book that at the train station?

 

 

I booked it through a Celebrity excursion but you can get it at the station or at the Skyrail as I saw it there when we arrived.

Here is the website if that helps.

[Nanna5]

Thanks

 

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G928A using Forums mobile app

[Queenk2]

Wed Jan 3 Newcastle: ATV driving on ocean shore sand dunes (booked independently)

 

Sat Jan 6 Airlie Beach: GBR snorkeling (booked thru Celebrity)

 

Sun Jan 7 Cairns Day 1: GBR snorkeling (thru Celebrity)

 

Mon Jan 8 Cairns Day 2: GBR snorkeling (not thru Celebrity)

 

Tue Jan 9 Port Douglas: GBR snorkeling (not thru Celebrity)

 

Fri Jan 12 Brisbane: Australia Zoo (thru Celebrity)

 

 

Would love the compAny you used for the ATV excursion in airlie beach...sounds great! Wondering if it was great?

Karen...queenk2@aol.com

[Queenk2]

Thanks for that great photo. Yes, this will be to celebrate my 70th. I figure we will be gone 31 days (retirement is good...). Hoping to fly to Melbourne and do a day trip to the Great Ocean Road, then fly to Sydney for a couple of days prior to the start of the GBR cruise. Celebrity does a 5 day RT to Melbourne prior to our GBR, but doesn't allow for doing the GBR and anything in Melbourne, plus then I'd have to add more days to see Sydney. Of course, this is MY plan....

 

I have wanted to go to Oz for almost as long as I have been married (currently 32 happy years). In addition to learning to swim and snorkel, I will probably have to learn hypnosis to use on Pete to get him to fly that distance - LOL. Piling up the frequent flier miles right now. I know he's going to love it. Good thing there are a number of sea days to give him some R&R. And I love the Corning Hot Glass shows, it's all good.

 

Keep on posting. I am loving this.

 

Happy cruising.

Marilyn

 

Marilyn I found a compNy that will do. Full day in Melbourne and will do a city tour/ GBR. We are doing the Melbourne cruise so we can relax a bit and are planning a couple of days in Sydney first too....the planning will kill me...AND we are going to try to use frequent flier pts too...I hope

[the mice]

Hi Karen,

Well, you are ahead of me with the planning - LOL. Would love to hear what you found.

 

I think in my post I mixed up GBR (Great Barrier Reef) and GOR (Great Ocean Road) - hahaha - reminds me of my days in IBM (they used acronyms for Everything!). Anyway, wondering if we should do 1 or 2 days on the GOR. And how many days to allot to Melbourne and Sydney. Decisions, decisions.

I guess I will have to figure this out soon in the hopes of figuring out when to fly. With 2 other cruises, it can be difficult to figure out where to focus.....

 

Oh, and I mentioned the Corning Hot Glass Show - sadly no longer on the Solstice. It was my hangout on sea days on Eclipse, so I am going to miss this.

Marilyn

[mahdnc]

Would love the compAny you used for the ATV excursion in airlie beach...sounds great! Wondering if it was great?

 

Karen...queenk2@aol.com

 

 

 

Karen,

 

We used Quad Bike King Adventure. They did a great job. The excursion was at Newcastle, not Airlie Beach.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone X using Tapatalk

[mahdnc]

Would love the compAny you used for the ATV excursion in airlie beach...sounds great! Wondering if it was great?

 

Karen...queenk2@aol.com

 

 

I was having computer problems earlier this week and I could not give you a more comprehensive answer until now.

 

Booking the ATV tour independently is cheaper than going thru Celebrity ($110 AUD independent vs $185 USD Celebrity). The only problem that you have to solve is getting ground transportation from Newcastle to the ATV offices in Williamtown and back. Celebrity provides a free shuttle bus from the industrial pier to the Queens Wharf Tower in Newcastle (which evidently is slated to be torn down). We were able to easily get a Uber to take us from Queens Wharf Tower to Williamtown. However after our ATV tour was finished, we could not get an Uber to come out to Williamtown and it took us a while to summon a taxicab.

 

I looked at two ATV companies: Sand Dune Adventures and Quad Bike King. Both companies will not give you a cash refund once you book, so I delayed booking until the sail date drew closer. The refund policy is one area that Celebrity has an advantage.

 

My first choice was Sand Dune Adventures because they were rated higher in TripAdvisor and they were cheaper because of a discount they offered if you booked on line. But by the time I decided to pull the trigger to book with them, the time slots that I wanted were gone. In order to give yourself enough time to get off the ship and get there on time and to allow for getting back on the ship during rush hour traffic, I was looking for very specific start times that I could not get.

 

So I ended up booking with Quad Bike King. In specific, I booked their Safari Tour for $110 AUD per person. The tour is guided and our group had about 24 people in it total. The actual riding time on the bikes was about an hour long. All the safety equipment (helmet, etc) is provided.

 

For more details, here is a link to my review of the ATV tour: Newcastle ATV tour

Edited September 6, 2018 by mahdnc

[hcat]

Silk Harvest was ok. It was worth trying but I'm not sure we'd go back. Of course, we were eating from a special menu (pictured below) and so I don't know if we would have felt differently with the normal menu.

 

Aboard Solstice, Silk Harvest occupies the space that is devoted to Q-sine on Eclipse. We liked Q-sine better.

 

I think the regular menu is much better... many more choices. What was the music...

[mahdnc]

I don't remember a whole lot about the music. It was slow and soft--female vocalist with a male playing an acoustic guitar.

[hcat]

I discovered this review today...glad I did. Very informative, great photos! Thank you!

[mahdnc]

Thank you, hcat. In addition to this live thread, I did end up posting a photo review a couple months after the cruise which might interest you: Jan 2 2018 Solstice Photo Review. We loved the ship and the cruise. I have booked the family on another Solstice cruise leaving out of Sydney to NZ in Dec 2019.

 

David

[capsplace]

Any comments on the CC excursion at Airlie Beach for their GBR snorkle trip?

[mahdnc]

On 3/6/2019 at 6:10 AM, capsplace said:

Any comments on the CC excursion at Airlie Beach for their GBR snorkle trip?

 

Photo was taken from the Cruise Whitsundays website.

 

Sorry, I did not see this post until this morning.  Yes, I have a lot of comment about that excursion as we took it during our day at Airlie Beach. 

 

First off, I did post a review of it in my GBR Photo Review beginning on Post #68.  But I will be glad to re-summarize here (I still encourage you to read the Photo Review since there will be more accurate details that I may leave out here now that it is a year later.

 

During our 12 night GBR cruise, we did scuba/snorkel at Airle Beach, Cairns (on both days), and Port Douglas for a total of 4 excursions.  The Airlie Beach and Day 1 Cairns dives were done thru the ship while the 2nd Cairns day and Port Douglas were booked independently.

 

I was not medically cleared for diving during the cruise so I went snorkeling.  My wife and 2 kids are certified scuba divers and they went diving.

 

Of the 4 dive trips, the Airlie Beach one was the least enjoyable and least impressive.  The best part of the trip is that you get picked up by the excursion boat right at the ship as it is anchored at Airlie Beach.  However it is a 2 hour ride out to the floating platform (aka pontoon) that is anchored at Hardy Reef.  And it is a long 2 hour ride back to Solstice.  That sucked.  

 

Secondly both snorkelers (me) and divers (rest of the family) agreed that there was not as much interesting stuff to see compared to the other sites we went to.  To be clear, there was cool stuff to see (giant clams and sea turtles for me), just not as much of it compared to the other places we went to later.

 

The diving was horrendous because of a very very strong current that made things miserable.  Look at my GBR Photo Review and you can see the maelstrom for yourself.  The experience was so bad that my family decided to skip the second dive that we had already paid for!  If you knew my die-hard for diving wife, you would understand the significance of that decision.  

 

The current is present because the pontoon is located in a (beautiful) narrow water channel between two shallow reefs that resembled a flowing river.  You can see this in the picture at the top of this post.  

 

At the surface, the current was not as strong so the snorkeling was not physically exhausting.  But, I saw less stuff than I did at the other 3 snorkeling trips that followed.  

 

We had another Cruise Critic member on board this cruise who went snorkeling over at Green Island on a Celebrity excursion out of Airlie Beach.  He said he was disappointed with the snorkeling over there.  

 

The ship's tour was contracted out by Celebrity to Cruise Whitsundays.  Their floating platform is named the Heart Pontoon and it is moored at Hardy Reef.  I thought the company and their personnel were excellent.  I just didn't like the dive/snorkel site as much as the others.

 

If I had to do it over again, I would have considered taking an (expensive) air tour of the GBR instead.  Seeing the reef from the air is amazing and provides a sensational perspective that you don't get from being on or under the water.  And this area of the GBR seems to be especially photogenic from the air.  

 

My advice for people in general is to consider one of the other ports to do your diving and snorkeling.  If for some reason, this is the only port you can go snorkeling, well then I would go.

 

 

Photo of Heart Pontoon and on the left is the catamaran that transported us from the cruise ship to the pontoon (2 hour ride)

Edited March 9, 2019 by mahdnc

[capsplace]

9 minutes ago, mahdnc said:

 

Photo was taken from the Cruise Whitsundays website.

 

Sorry, I did not see this post until this morning.  Yes, I have a lot of comment about that excursion as we took it during our day at Airlie Beach. 

 

First off, I did post a review of it in my GBR Photo Review beginning on Post #68.  But I will be glad to re-summarize here (I still encourage you to read the Photo Review since there will be more accurate details that I may leave out here now that it is a year later.

 

During our 12 night GBR cruise, we did scuba/snorkel at Airle Beach, Cairns (on both days), and Port Douglas for a total of 4 excursions.  The Airlie Beach and Day 1 Cairns dives were done thru the ship while the 2nd Cairns day and Port Douglas were booked independently.

 

I was not medically cleared for diving during the cruise so I went snorkeling.  My wife and 2 kids are certified scuba divers and they went diving.

 

Of the 4 dive trips, the Airlie Beach one was the least enjoyable and least impressive.  The best part of the trip is that you get picked up by the excursion boat right at the ship as it is anchored at Airlie Beach.  However it is a 2 hour ride out to the floating platform (aka pontoon) that is anchored at Hardy Reef.  And it is a long 2 hour ride back to Solstice.  That sucked.  

 

Secondly both snorkelers (me) and divers (rest of the family) agreed that there was not as much interesting stuff to see compared to the other sites we went to.  

 

The diving was horrendous because of a very very strong current that made things miserable.  Look at my GBR Photo Review and you can see the maelstrom for yourself.  The experience was so bad that my family decided to skip the second dive that we had already paid for!  If you knew my die-hard for diving wife, you would understand the significance of that decision.  

 

The current is present because the pontoon is located in a (beautiful) narrow water channel that resembled a flowing river.  You can see this in the picture at the top of this post.  

 

At the surface, the current was not as strong so the snorkeling was not physically exhausting.  But, I saw less stuff than I did at the other 3 snorkeling trips that followed.  

 

We had another Cruise Critic member on board this cruise who went snorkeling over at Green Island on a Celebrity excursion out of Airlie Beach.  He said he was disappointed with the snorkeling over there.  

 

The ship's tour was contracted out by Celebrity to Cruise Whitsundays.  Their floating platform is named the Heart Pontoon and it is moored at Hardy Reef.  I thought the company and their personnel were excellent.  I just didn't like the dive/snorkel site.

 

If I had to do it over again, I would have considered taking an (expensive) air tour of the GBR instead.  Seeing the reef from the air is amazing and provides a sensational perspective that you don't get from being on or under the water.  And this area of the GBR seems to be especially photogenic from the air.  

 

My advice for people in general is to consider one of the other ports to do your diving and snorkeling.  If for some reason, this is the only port you can go snorkeling, well then I would go.

 

 

Thank you so much.  We booked this snorkeling excursion because I had read that the bleaching of the reef wasn’t as pronounced toward the southern part of the reef.  We’llreconsider now.  

[mahdnc]

On 3/9/2019 at 3:05 PM, capsplace said:

Thank you so much.  We booked this snorkeling excursion because I had read that the bleaching of the reef wasn’t as pronounced toward the southern part of the reef.  We’llreconsider now.  

 

You are welcome.  The reef conditions were good at Cairns and Port Douglas.  The latter port did not have any snorkeling excursions offered by Celebrity.  However there are several dive/snorkel companies that operate out of Port Douglas that you can book independently although you have to pay attention to the tender times to determine if you can make it.

 

Jan 9 2018: Sea life at Agincourt Reef near Port Douglas

Edited March 10, 2019 by mahdnc

[Holly2]

We snorkeled off a pontoon in port douglas with Quicksilver. Large but excellent experience.  Well run andplenty of fish. 🐠🐠🐠.

[mahdnc]