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13 minutes ago, mattymay said:

Interesting they are doing some South Pacific from June.

Yeah, I saw that, I wonder if they will do Fiji and maybe the Cook Islands as they are both open. Also now there is a restart date the unvaxxed in the Islands might be incentivised to get the jab so they can start welcoming tourists. It would appear that cruise passengers will be 95% vaxxed.

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6 minutes ago, CruisingOz said:

Royal Caribbean's Ovation is not due until October 29th

We are booked on this cruise. Originally it was a nine night but with lift and shift it became eleven for the same price. 

‘NZ will be opening to Australians from April 12th and the rest of the world soon after so things are looking positive.

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32 minutes ago, CruisingOz said:

Royal Caribbean's Ovation is not due until October 29th into Sydney, which is an 11 night New Zealand. It is scheduled to start the transpacific Oct 9th. So looking forward to both and now more confident to book accomodation in Hawaii  

Yeah I understand that.. some of us were just hoping they'd send a spare ship early! 🙂 Wishful thinking..

I've got Quantum in Nov but my last cruise was Ovation in Nov 2019. 3 years between drinks with Royal. Not waiting that long so looking at a quickie on P&O to fill the gap.

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6 minutes ago, mattymay said:

Understand that.. some of us were just hoping they'd send a spare ship early!

That would be a dream. I think the Australian market could support three brands 12 months of the year. I would love the option to sail Royal and not have to wait or bite the bullet and cruise P&O or Carnival during April to October. With the world as it is today, thinking about China and Hong Kong, Serenade or Radiance offering a home port in Sydney would be awesome. We know there is demand but Australia would need to prove itself to be offered larger ships. Having recently cruised an Oasis class, I would love the opportunity to take the family to experience the most amazing ships. Taking the family to the US is not an option but a Sydney cruise, vert doable.   

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35 minutes ago, CruisingOz said:

That would be a dream. I think the Australian market could support three brands 12 months of the year. I would love the option to sail Royal and not have to wait or bite the bullet and cruise P&O or Carnival during April to October. With the world as it is today, thinking about China and Hong Kong, Serenade or Radiance offering a home port in Sydney would be awesome. We know there is demand but Australia would need to prove itself to be offered larger ships. Having recently cruised an Oasis class, I would love the opportunity to take the family to experience the most amazing ships. Taking the family to the US is not an option but a Sydney cruise, vert doable.   

Took the kids on Harmony of the Seas from Fort Lauderdale in 2017. They still talk about it..

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1 hour ago, CruisingOz said:

Royal Caribbean's Ovation is not due until October 29th into Sydney, which is an 11 night New Zealand. It is scheduled to start the transpacific Oct 9th. So looking forward to both and now more confident to book accomodation in Hawaii  

If you are going to book anything for trans pacific,make sure it’s refundable.

I have feeling the Ovation and Quantum passengers trans pacific will be canceled .

They can’t stop at French Poly and they have been canceled in Hawaii.

Radiance is there ,it’s a goer.

 

https://hawaii.portcall.com/#!?tab=2

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4 hours ago, mattymay said:

No joy from Royal.. 

 

image.png.5356bd0418922e5c93ef088fed4ebe5e.png

Unfortunately for 2022 Royal has already committed the ships to Alaska for their cruise season so it's not possible to get any ship to Australia any sooner without first canceling cruises from Alaska which they are not going to do. 

The question I now have is heading into 2023 (April - October) what ship or ships will Royal leave in Australia to permanently sail year around out of Sydney or Brisbane?  Will Royal make changes to the 2023 Alaska cruise season, instead of deploying 5 ships to Alaska in 2023 maybe reduce it to 4 or 3 ships just to have a couple ships sailing year round from Australia?

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2 hours ago, twangster said:

Do I understand that the states still need to determine protocols and procedures? I.e. the Feds gave a green light but the states haven’t yet.   
 

Is this accurate? 

That's correct. It's up to the states (largely eastern seaboard) to agree protocols and procedures with the cruise lines before they open the ports to their ships.

But CLIA has been in there for months, negotiating on this issue, and the evidence from everywhere else in the world is pretty clear - cruise ships have great protocols that are keeping passengers healthy.

I don't think P&O or Royal Caribbean would be so confident of cruising resuming if they weren't very close on agreeing protocols with the state governments.

Still keeping my fingers crossed though!

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17 hours ago, Chili said:

That would work pretty good but It’s  3 seasons away ,24-25 season .

I think we might get oasis or Allure before then as a trial.

 

All OA class are spoken for.  To move a ship before OA6 launches means cancelling US Thanksgiving and Christmas cruises.  That won't go over well.  Australia is a great market but the Caribbean is the bread and butter of Royal Caribbean International.  It's their middle name 🤣.  

2024-2025 seems like a reasonable time frame to build PD Lelepa and have it fully ready to support a new mega ship.  

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11 minutes ago, twangster said:

 

All OA class are spoken for.  To move a ship before OA6 launches means cancelling US Thanksgiving and Christmas cruises.  That won't go over well.  Australia is a great market but the Caribbean is the bread and butter of Royal Caribbean International.  It's their middle name 🤣.  

2024-2025 seems like a reasonable time frame to build PD Lelepa and have it fully ready to support a new mega ship.  

So we will call Oasis 6 Down under of the seas ?

 

image.jpeg.2dfe53cbfbe3ae0d6dd3e98e2dabf9a2.jpeg

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1 hour ago, twangster said:

Is LNG in ample supply down under?  

An LNG ship might be (more) welcome in the sounds of NZ.  

No Ship LNG on the east coast.

The only Ship LNG in our neighbourhood I believe is Port headland (west coast) ,Singapore and Shanghai.
It’s possible in the future Gladstone (central Queensland) but I  doubt they would build facilities for one ship so no icon class in Asia Pacific.

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8 hours ago, JasonOasis said:

Unfortunately for 2022 Royal has already committed the ships to Alaska for their cruise season so it's not possible to get any ship to Australia any sooner without first canceling cruises from Alaska which they are not going to do. 

The question I now have is heading into 2023 (April - October) what ship or ships will Royal leave in Australia to permanently sail year around out of Sydney or Brisbane?  Will Royal make changes to the 2023 Alaska cruise season, instead of deploying 5 ships to Alaska in 2023 maybe reduce it to 4 or 3 ships just to have a couple ships sailing year round from Australia?

My guess here is they won't be year round in 2023 in the South Pacific. They'll need to build up with this now comeback season 2022-23 and once they are happy with that then get Lelepa ready. So i'd say 2024 looks more likely for a year round deployment.    

On a side note I see that the Australian deployment (23-24) has been moved up to next week, not sure if this is any coincidence of yesterdays announcement but we'll know what 23-24 holds next week at least. Going by the Alaska 23 deployment i'd say its likely to be Ovation, Quantum (Radiance?) and Enchantment. 

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8 hours ago, JasonOasis said:

Unfortunately for 2022 Royal has already committed the ships to Alaska for their cruise season so it's not possible to get any ship to Australia any sooner without first canceling cruises from Alaska which they are not going to do. 

Understand.. was more referring to stealing Spectrum from China.

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2 hours ago, mattymay said:

Understand.. was more referring to stealing Spectrum from China.

It is strange because Royal stated they were moving Spectrum to Singapore for the 2022 season and yet from July through September of this year their website is still showing Spectrum sailing out of China which we know isn't going to happen as China has stated they will not reopen until 2023 at the earliest. Looking at the website Spectrum is scheduled to sail out of Singapore from April through June then October through April of 2023.  So I guess it is possible they could move Spectrum to Australia for 3 months or so, I'm just surprised they canceled some of their Chinese cruises but left the July through September cruises as is.

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8 hours ago, twangster said:

Is LNG in ample supply down under?  

An LNG ship might be (more) welcome in the sounds of NZ.  

I don’t know about Tauranga New Zealand thought??

Tauranga is major shipping port and may have ship LNG in the near future.

So Icon is a possibility??

Sydney October to March,Singapore and Shanghai the rest of the year.

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On 3/15/2022 at 7:47 PM, mattymay said:

Yeah I understand that.. some of us were just hoping they'd send a spare ship early! 🙂 Wishful thinking..

 

Voyager???

Voyager I believe was supposed to pick up crew in Cyprus and start soon in the Balkans.

 It’s now anchored off cypress with crew and most other lines have canned the Balkans.

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30 minutes ago, Chili said:

Voyager???

Voyager I believe was supposed to pick up crew in Cyprus and start soon in the Balkans.

 It’s now anchored off cypress with crew and most other lines have canned the Balkans.

The fact they have put out media saying Australia October 2022, I don't think it will happen.

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13 hours ago, Chili said:

Voyager???

Voyager I believe was supposed to pick up crew in Cyprus and start soon in the Balkans.

 It’s now anchored off cypress with crew and most other lines have canned the Balkans.

Voyager is due to do a repo from Barcelona through the Med and on up to Copenhagen, starting on the 15th of April. People booked on it are still waiting for the protocols.

She has a bit of a mixed bag of itineraries with some for the Balkans and others going the other way, out to Norway, so it will be interesting to see what happens. I have family booked on one that does Denmark, Sweden and Norway, so not really expecting that one to change.

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14 hours ago, Chili said:

Voyager???

Voyager I believe was supposed to pick up crew in Cyprus and start soon in the Balkans.

 It’s now anchored off cypress with crew and most other lines have canned the Balkans.

I think if Royal were to cancel Voyager's Balkans cruises they would simply redeploy Voyager elsewhere in Europe perhaps the Norwegian Fjords like some other lines are doing.

To go with your suggestion would force Royal to cancel Voyagers entire Fall Foliage cruises out of Boston and it would also impact (delay) Voyagers arrival in San Juan PR perhaps even cancel quite a few voyages where Voyager is scheduled to do Southern Caribbean roundtrip cruises for the fall/winter 2022-2023 season.  Those Southern Caribbean cruises out of San Juan are extremely popular and many times they sell out completely.  I highly doubt Royal would want to cause that kind of disruption to tens of thousands of passengers just to get a ship to Australia before October.  

I wish the Australian government had made this decision earlier.  However, now with the 2022 schedule being set and actively being sold there is nothing Royal can do to get a ship to Australia any earlier without causing major disruptions/ cancellations to thousands of other guest with cruises already booked.

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