Upcoming holidays:

Upcoming Holidays:
19 August 2024 - Cruising from Sydney to Fremantle via Northern Australia - 18 days on the Coral Princess.
2 April 2025 - Cruise to Moreton Island on the Carnival Splendor.
10 October 2025 - Paul's 70th birthday - 3 day "Cruise to Nowhere" on the Pacific Explorer.
1 December 2025 - Cruise from Singapore to Brisbane on the Voyager of the Seas.

Monday 25 May 2020

COVID-19 update number 3

Hmm...  the October replacement cruise for the August replacement cruise for the Norway cruise now also appears to be at risk.
Last weekend Princess cancelled a few more cruises; before that there was about a 6 week gap between the planned restart for the Sapphire Princess and now there's only 2 weeks.
I think if they cancel this one, we might just go to Perth anyway.  I've told work that I won't change my holidays again, and the hotel kindly changed our booking even though it wasn't changeable, so we might just spend a few days there and come home again.  I haven't spent any real amount of time in Perth before and there are plenty of things we can do and see there. Of course, this is all assuming that we're allowed into WA by then 😀


Sunday 10 May 2020

COVID-19 update number 2

Well, I was definitely over-confident about the August cruise - Princess has notified me that they have cancelled it.
So, I have decided to continue on my confident way and have instead booked a cruise also leaving from Fremantle, but not until October. This is a shorter one that takes the southern Australia route to Melbourne - we could have gone on to Sydney but all the balcony cabins were booked out, and Melbourne is close enough to home.  All we're going to miss is Hobart, and we'll be there on our Feb 2021 cruise anyway.
So, the hotel room in Fremantle was prepaid under conditions that allow no changes and no refunds, but I have emailed them and asked if they would consider changing it to just before the October cruise, and I haven't gotten a definite 'No' - they've said that their manager needs to approve such requests and that they'll get back to me by Wednesday 13th.  Fingers crossed.
Once I know about the hotel then I'll need to work out what to do about the flights to Perth.  Also non-refundable of course.  If Qantas was to cancel them then we'd get a refund voucher but I suspect that by October they're not going to be cancelling domestic bookings.  So, I'll probably have to take the hit from a cancellation fee.  Never mind, it's all good.
I have decided though that if Princess cancels this October cruise I won't be booking another replacement.  We've still got Julie's birthday cruise in December, a cruise from New Zealand in February - assuming the so-called Trans-Tasman bubble allows us to go there in the first place - and of course even more hopefully, the Norway cruise in October 2021.