Vanessa77

Agreed. I think it will certainly make the return to cruising faster and easier however let’s not forget that even before covid the media and those who didn’t know better vilified cruising as a dirty ‘petri dish’. Cruiselines have always done as much as they can to protect passengers from sickness and avoid that stereotype and they will continue to do so for covid.

When is your cruise? I haven’t gotten that one yet.

Will you also risk the inability to return home for months with associated costs, and the cost of paying for 2 weeks in quarantine? ?? As keen as I am to go on a cruise, leaving the country (for the foreseeable future) to go on one is nowhere near as easy as you make it sound.

I’ve personally been seated at a family group of 11 - could easily have seated 14. Any more than that I wouldn’t see why it’s feasible or even necessary. If you have a table of 20, 2 thing will happen: - one end can’t talk to the other end anyway - because of above, everyone will change seats each night anyway Because of that I can’t feasibly see why one table would be preferable over 2 tables next to each other. Easier for the waiters, probably easier to actually position in the dining room, and if more than ~28 sign up then get a third table and continue with the above.

I second this, with one caveat; it depends on how long your cruise is. if your cruise is 7nights or less, for your first time I don’t recommend getting an unlimited package. If you are on a quantum or oasis ship you’ve already got a few dinner options including (at minimum) the main dining room, buffet, and solarium bistro*. Try each of them twice and you’ve got heaps of variety and perhaps choose one of the specialty that appeals to you for the the spare night. *this is not to mention the large variety of other casual eateries such as the dog house, cafe 270, park cafe, el loco fresh etc. I say this as a person that did buy a dining package on my first cruise. However, it was a 9 night cruise on voyager of the seas which literally had a grand total of 3 included places to eat for all meals: main dining room, buffet, and cafe promenade. my next cruise is on a quantum class ship for 12 nights and I’ve bought a 5 night package. With 7 nights and all breakfast/lunches still to spend at the included venues I’m worried I’ll miss out on all the tasty included food! Go with a package if you really want to, but don’t get the unlimited one. There is good food on the ship at the included venues which is well worth trying.

I currently have 2 booked: one in Jan 2022 and one in December 2022 both on Ovation to NZ. I only expect to actually go on one of them however as I’m expecting the 21-22 season in Australia to be cancelled. Fingers crossed it isn’t through because I’m hanging out big time for this holiday.

No pay wall on this one: https://cruisepassenger.com.au/tourism-minister-says-he-will-hold-talks-mid-june-on-a-possible-cruise-return/ most interesting section was: Mr Tehan said: “My hope is if we can continue managing the pandemic like we are, we will be able to see more cruise ships in our waters hopefully in the waters between Australia and New Zealand as well.” So NZ might be in the game as well! Fingers crossed!!!!

Haha I swing from ‘logic dictates that we should be able to cruise soon’ in optimism, and ‘The government is never going to let us travel and everything is going to be cancelled forever!’ Pessimism. I do hope the cruise lines miracle comes through though. I’m fine in Melbourne. I’m a teacher so it’s just remote learning mayhem again. You’re certainly right, but hopefully it spurs higher vaccine uptake which can only be good for future travel resumption.

You aren’t expecting this to go ahead are you? With just the fact that it’s so ridiculously hard to even leave the country (with no indication that will change any time soon) and no plans to let travelers Australian or otherwise into Australia w/o quarantine (also no plans to change any time soon) it’s pretty much a guarantee it won’t be going ahead. I think the only reason some lines haven’t cancelled yet is that they are hoping for a miracle!

Has there been any updates in regards to when the new menu will be released through the fleet?

@mattymay I have to agree with you. Also NCL has cancelled everything until the end of Jan 2022. The season ends ~ early April so I wouldn’t be surprised if the cancelled everything in the end. What’s the point in making the trek all the way here for 2 months?

Yeah unfortunately I don't think 2021 is gonna happen. I have a small hope of early 2022 with the recent information that we'll be receiving 2mil Pfizer per week from October, however I still think it's slim. Though I was successful in convincing my partner to let me put a deposit on a back up cruise! So now I have Ovation booked for Jan 2022, and Ovation for Christmas 2022 as the back up! Booked it as refundable as I'd much prefer the Jan 22 holiday, but if they cancel it I can roll the CC to December. Fingers crossed!

I live here, but am actually considering whether I need to change my plans. I’ve got a Jan 2022 booked and I’m becoming more and more skeptical that it will go ahead! I want to reserve a place in a Dec 2022 sailing just in case and to lock in a decent price, but also not sure if I can spare the deposit money right now, or if I could convince the fiancé to let me book a back up cruise ?? Don’t know what’s to do!

Yep. ? Very close indeed! I wonder if they'll expect incoming cruise lines to do local test cruises as well? Also, one argument against cruise ships returning to Aus that I keep seeing is 'where are we going to quarantine 1400 crew members!?!?!? We can't give them HQ space over stranded Australians!!!' ? Like, maybe on the floating hotel they've brought with them....?

My thinking is that the 98% & 95% is to cater for the small percentage of people that are unable to get vaccinated for legit reasons?

Was in a forum discussion on another site where a topic came up about P&O cancelling 'Select' cruises through December this year. I did some snooping and it appears that they have cancelled any cruises that go to international destinations (i.e. South Pacific and New Zealand). All Australian based cruises and NZ cruises that only visit Australian and NZ ports respectively are still available on the site to book. What do you reckon the odds are that this is a sign that there might be a resumption of local cruises second half of the year, with a goal of resuming 'International' cruises from December/Jan? (Next available SP P&O cruise I could see is mid-November, and next available NZ cruise is for NYE). And if this is the case, do you think RC will still come for the season if they have to wait until December/Jan to launch most of their itineraries?

I went on a holiday sailing from Sydney in 2019. It was nice but we had a port day on Christmas Day so it was strange to be out doing things rather than sitting around and eating way too much (not that we didn’t over eat). There was less festivities going on on the day, however again I think this was probably due to being in port. They had themed drinks, presents from Santa, lovely decorations, and some singing, and a Christmas show from what I remember. My mum loved it because she usually does the bulk of the work on Christmas Day and everything was taken care of for her which was great. We also had a large party of 11, and the dining room was great even with so many of us. In terms of ships, I’m booked on Ovation for NZ in January so can’t give you advice until then ?. However I can tell you why I picked Ovation? It’s a long sailing, and I wanted variety of dining. I very much enjoy the MDR, but ovation has 5 additional places for dinner, and heaps of snack/small meal options my last cruise on voyager had very few free dining options and it got quite repetitive and slow for a very full longer cruise. Shows; unfortunately I was a bit disappointed with the theater shows on voyager, only liked one of the ice shows and 1 of the comedians. I’ve heard good things about the shows on Ovation and am particularly looking forward to the 270 shows. The solarium on ovation looks amazing also with the sweeping forward views. hope this helps!

You have inspired me to create a spreadsheet. I've input everything I want, the original price, the best price I've seen it at, and the price I've purchased something at. I can't afford to buy everything I want, but with like 8 or so months until I sail, this keep track of stuff I'm probably not going to remember and will hopefully allow me to buy everything I want at 'Best Price'.

Stupidly I hadn't thought of doing that until you suggested it haha. I have now called them, and they advised that the higher price is the correct price ?. Said that sometimes this happens, so they must be having issues with whatever system calculates Aus prices for that product. It still works out heaps cheaper than buying individually so I still bought it, but will be keeping my eye out for price changes!

I’ve been tracking the price of a dining package for my cruise and almost pulled the trigger the other day. When I add it to cart it also adds gratuity. Which is especially weird because this is an Australian site/cruise/pricing and gratuities are always included in the price for us.

I’ve only experienced MTD so far, however I would say that my experience was actually closer to traditional dining in the end. We had a family group of 11 sailing together, and we did not choose traditional as neither of the times were amenable to us. So MTD is was. I booked us in advance as I knew that with such a large group we couldn’t just rock up. I had to personally contact RC to do so as through the planner you can only do 10ppl. I initially requested a variety of times depending on the day, however when boarding it appeared that they had amended our booking to just be at 7pm every night. We had the same table and same wait staff each night so I think they just amended our times to suit the schedule for such a large party (hence why I say it was actually more like traditional). We enjoyed the group atmosphere and having the same staff so much that we’ve selected traditional on our next cruise on which we’ll be taking without anyone else. It’s a gamble as we don’t know who we’ll be seated with, but I’m hoping it will pay off and we’ll have great wait staff each night too.

Fingers crossed. What confuses me is the terms ‘international travel ban extended to June 17’ which apparently automatically includes cruising, yet travel to NZ, which is technically international, by plane is ok. Like it seems weird that we have a bubble but the means of travel to the country matters. Either way, happy to see they’ve started the discussion. Here’s hoping that P&O gets the go ahead from June 17, leading the way for the full season to begin as usual in October.

In theory I have no problem with that. However given the announcement from last night, and that we only have enough Pfizer to cover 40% of the population the numbers don’t actually support cruise companies even coming to Australia for the season. If vaccines are mandated for cruising I’m afraid that cruise lines will look at the likely percentage of Australians that will be covered at the start of the season, compare that with the cross over of percentage of Australians that cruise and just decide to skip the season if there isn’t enough overlap.

I also have this fear. I reckon our opening will be based on the success of others resuming cruising in the next few months, and that data will mostly be coming from fully vaccinated cruises ?.

I don’t know, I’m in two minds about this. Firstly we don’t need to be vaccinated to go to travel interstate as it is, nor for NZ when it opens up this month. Additionally there is just so little covid in Australia, NZ, or the South Pacific that it seems kinda ridiculous to implement a no vaccine no sail rule here. It makes sense where covid is still fairly common in the community such as the UK and the US, but not here. The real threat to Australia’s current covid free status are overseas/returning Travellers, not unvaccinated locals. However I don’t see Australia removing it’s hotel quarantine system any time soon either and when it does I am sure those people will be required to be vaccinated.