COVID-19 update number 16

Well, there's no longer any need to worry about whether they'll let us onto the March 2022 cruise even though we're not from NSW, as P&O has had to "further extend their pause in cruise operations" and so that cruise is also gone.  

P&O and Carnival are still offering cruises from April 2022 onwards, but I'm not sure if I can bring myself to book another cruise just to watch it get cancelled.  I keep my documents about holidays in separate folders on my computer, and there are now 17 folders that are flagged as cancelled due to COVID19, and almost all of them were cruises.  Of course we wouldn't have gone on that many cruises - I was just re-booking a new one as each cruise was cancelled - but it is still getting a bit sad!

Our next booked cruise starts on 4 October 2022  - but there's no guarantee that it will happen either, since it's to New Zealand and there's talk that NZ may not completely open up to tourists until 2023.

Like most people who work where I do, I'm not allowed to work from 24 December to 3 January, so I was hoping to just get away for a day or two during that break.  But even if it was permitted, I can't risk visiting Dad until I have my booster shot, and that can't happen until the middle of January - when I'll be competing with all the 5-11 year olds who become eligible from 10 January.  And, even though we're not officially banned from traveling to Sydney (which we were for a while) even going there for a couple of days is a bit of a risk given the number of cases they're getting.  I know everyone from Canberra goes to the coast over Christmas but it doesn't appeal to me, and in the other directions it's all very very hot this time of year.  So, it seems I'm stuck in Canberra for just a bit longer........

COVID19 update number 15

 Well, no surprises, P&O have extended their "pause" in cruise operations to 3 March 2022, which means our 80's seabreak cruise is not happening.

Another issue has also raised its ugly head in the meantime - the state government is talking about only allowing NSW residents onto cruises leaving from Sydney, which would also exclude us from our March 2022 cruise.  Hopefully they decide that this is one of the situations where the ACT is just part of NSW.  

Anyway, time will tell.

COVID19 update number 14

 I forgot that when they cancelled our P&O cruise, they wouldn't refund the money to us - Paul, Adam and I each got a $49 Future Cruise Credit instead.  Impossible to use really, because they're still insisting that to use it, the cruise has to be booked by 31 December this year - i.e. only about 6 weeks away - and taken by 31 December 2022.  At this point, I still expect to be working full-time for all of 2022, and I've already got three cruises booked in 2022 so taking another one would be a bit of an issue.

The obvious thing to do is to lose the $49.  In my case, this same $49 has been the deposit on I think three different cruises already, and I had written it off as a loss long ago.

Instead, I've booked us a long weekend cruise from Sydney - leaving on Friday night 25 February 2022 and returns on Sunday morning after spending the weekend sailing around, probably just outside Sydney Heads.  Apparently celebrating the 80's although not a lot of detail - and the fact that the advertisement shows a 70's disco ball is a interesting!  Anyway, if it all happens, this one will now be my first cruise in more than two years.  And, I'd only need to take one day off work, which is also a bonus when we're still trying to work our way through house renovations.

Have to say though, the chances of it happening seem to be low.  Although the powers that be are finally at least talking about allowing cruise ships back into the country and admitting that it needs to happen:

• The Australian Government is inexplicably claiming that they need the State governments to act first, even though the  State governments have absolutely no control over the Australian government's long-standing ban on cruise ships and it would make zero sense for the States to start making cruise-related announcements while that ban is in place.
• The State Governments claim to be keen, but interstate travel is still highly problematic.  I mean, at the moment, the only States I can go to freely are NSW and Victoria.  Queensland I can go to if I want to spend 14 days in quarantine and maybe NT is the same.  The rest, absolutely not.  And the NSW Health department was absolutely and quite unfairly savaged about the Ruby Princess, so they're going to be less than co-operative, I'd think.
• It's generally conceded that it will take a cruise line 60 to 90 days to get a cruise ship that's in a warm shut-down to the point where it's ready to take passengers.  As of today it's only 97 days until this cruise.  
• And, the ship in question couldn't be much further away from us - it's currently somewhere near Trieste in Italy where it has spent some time being changed from the Golden Princess to the Pacific Adventure.

Still, you have to be hopeful, so, here's to our upcoming 80's weekend!

And again: COVID-19 update number 13

So, being quite determined to get back onto a cruise ship, my next step was to book a cruise with P&O - just four days, Sydney to Hobart to Sydney, due to leave on 13 February 2022.

I hadn't even finalised paying the deposits for that one when P&O announced that they were cancelling all their cruises that were due to leave up to and including 14 February.  

So, we are now all booked on a three day "Sapphire Coast Food Festival" cruise with P&O, leaving on 25 March 2022 - Sydney to Eden to Sydney.   

I'd say the chances are that this one could be cancelled too, but for now I'm living in hope.

More cancellations and bookings - COVID19 update number 12

Back in July, I was contemplating what to do about the fact that Princess had changed our early 2022 New Zealand cruise into two somewhat less desirable cruises.  Turns out my plan to do nothing was the best option - they've cancelled both the cruises.

So, in our usual fashion, we've booked two more:

• A four night cruise for all three of us Sydney - Eden - Sydney in February 2022 on the Ovation of the Seas.  Not at all sure that this one will go ahead because - just as I wrote back in July - the Commonwealth Govt still has cruise ships completely banned from Australia and still isn't yet doing any formal discussions with the cruise industry about a restart.

• Another New Zealand cruise, leaving Sydney on 4 October 2022 and returning on the 17th.  Not long after we booked this cruise the NZ government announced that cruise ships won't be allowed into NZ before October 2022, so we might be on one of the first cruises into NZ in a couple of years.  Or, it might be cancelled too  :-)

 

Edit 14 October: really, not even worth a separate update.  Royal Caribbean has obviously given up on any chance of the Australian government making a decision about cruises in time for this summer, so our Feb 2022 cruise has just been cancelled.

Surprise cruise cancellation - COVID19 Update Number 11

 Paul and Adam were booked to go on a cruise Brisbane - New Zealand - Brisbane in March 2022.  

A couple of days ago I decided to check when the next payment was due, and was surprised when the P&O website denied all knowledge of the booking.  Eventually we worked out that the booking must have been cancelled, because the Future Cruise Credit they had put onto the cruise was back in their P&O accounts.

We always use a travel agent for P&O cruises, and they were as surprised as we were - in fact, they've gone off to check if the bookings for any of their other customers have been unexpectedly cancelled.

In the end, the boys decided that they'd ask P&O to refund the Future Cruise Credits, and we'll wait for a better time to take Adam to see New Zealand.  I mean, he could of course go by himself but there are still lots of places that I want to see there too....

COVID19 update number 10

Well, it seems that Princess Cruise Lines is definitely hoping that they'll be able to cruise out of Australia after the current ban ends in December.

Back in update number 6, I talked about the fact that we had a Sydney to Auckland cruise booked in January 2022, and that I had decided to also book us on the following cruise on that ship - from Auckland back to Sydney - in order to avoid risks around not being able to get flights home from New Zealand.

As it happens a lot of those concerns have reduced in the meantime - there has been a travel bubble of sorts between Australia and NZ for a while now (although this week New Zealand has quite understandably shut it down temporarily due to outbreaks in Australia).  But, I figured I'd just leave it until later to decide what to do; final payments on the cruises aren't due until November when things will certainly be clearer.

But, as I said, Princess is being hopeful and they've just notified me that as part of their restart plans they have 'redeployed' those two particular cruises.  So, instead of one cruise from Sydney to Auckland and another cruise back, we're now booked on two identical cruises - both Sydney to New Zealand and return.  Same dates - they still leave on 18 and 30 January - but instead of visiting a few different places on each cruise they're now completely identical ports of call.  

I spent a bit of time trying to decide which one to cancel, because even for a cruise addict like me, two identical back-to-back New Zealand cruises is a bit over the top.  Specially when neither of them now goes to Wellington or Hobart, and both of those places are highlights for me on any cruise.  

But then I realised I shouldn't do any such thing, not yet anyway - better option is to wait and see if they're even going to happen first.  After all, cruise ships are still absolutely banned from entering the country, and the government has not started any meaningful dialogue about a cruise restart. It took many months for the USA and Canada to get from 'maybe cruises can restart' through 'this is what the cruise lines will have to do' to their actual restart, and I can't see it happening any more quickly here.  

So, basically, I think there is zero chance of these two cruises actually going ahead.  I think that just as they've been doing for more than a year now, sometime in around September the government will announce another three-month extension to the ban which will not only cancel those two cruises but also Paul and Adam's cruise to New Zealand in March.  

And bluntly, it's better to let the cruise line be forced to cancel them - over the last year or so Princess has become disappointingly proficient at cancelling cruises. 

On the brighter side, I have decided to get up the courage to make a third attempt at going on a "Search for the Northern Lights" cruise, following cancellation of our attempts to do this in 2020 and 2021.  Same as before - 14 days round trip from Southampton with the highlight being an overnight stop in Alta, Norway.  This one is in October 2023 and of course we would again spend some time in the UK / Europe before or after the cruise.

Covid-19 update number 9

 Well, as expected, Princess has just been forced to cancel all their Australian cruises up to 19 December 2021, which includes both Paul and Sandy's little cruise from Brisbane to Sydney in November, and the Melbourne-Adelaide-Melbourne cruise that all three of us were doing in December.

No cancellation of our two New Zealand cruises (February and March 2022) yet, but I think it's only a matter of time.

Another cruise booked

 As I'm writing this, there are seven "upcoming cruises" showing on the page.  

This time last year I'd have been astounded at the thought that I'd be standing here typing away about how few of these cruises I think will go ahead.  But, at this point, I think that five of them are already lost causes - the only two I really hold out any hope for are the ones in 2023.

Adam's eclipse cruise has an interesting story.  If you know Adam, you'll know that in the past he has travelled to Cairns, China and the USA to see eclipses.  The next even vaguely accessible one crosses a tiny piece of Australia near Exmouth in April 2023. At first Adam was hoping to simply go there, but he realised quite quickly - and the people of Exmouth have started talking about this too - that there simply isn't the infrastructure there to support a stack of people visiting to view the eclipse.  Add to that the fact that Adam can't drive, so staying a long distance away and driving there on the day really isn't an option either.  So, since most of the totality occurs over the ocean, Adam asked me to check to see if anyone was running a cruise to see it and I really shouldn't have been surprised to see that P&O has one all planned - the cruise lines like to do this because they can charge more and they know lots of people will be interested.  Adam suggested that Paul and or myself might like to come too, but we soon realised that we're already on a cruise at that time - different ship though.  However, then we realised that our itinerary has us in that part of the ocean at the time of the eclipse.  So we're hoping that although it's not specifically being advertised as an eclipse cruise, they may well be planning for our ship to be somewhere under the totality zone too!

Covid-19 update number 8

Well, the cruise plans are changing again.

We've decided that committing to the Dubai - London cruise in June next year is a risk too far.  When I booked it, it seemed so far in the future that "of course Covid-19 will be dealt with by then".  But now it's only just over a year until that cruise sails, and we still don't even know if Australians will be allowed to leave the country by then (or return if we do!), let alone if cruising will have restarted.  And that particular cruise goes to seven different countries, each of which will be in their own (impossible to predict) situation when it comes to Covid-19.

So, we're in the process of cancelling that cruise, and also a Perth to Brisbane cruise that we had booked for February 2023, and replacing them both with a round Australia cruise from Brisbane in March-April 2023.  I've always wanted to do that cruise - Princess runs one a few times a year - but it's comparatively expensive and I had been thinking about it as part of our "tour Australia when we're too old to want to go overseas" travel plans.  Maybe what I'm saying is that we'll reach that point in 2023!!

Covid-19 update number 7

 Due to cancellation of two different cruises Paul and Adam had quite a generous amount of 'Future Cruise Credit' with P&O, and they have decided to use it on a cruise to New Zealand in 2022.  

Although he has been to the USA and a number of Asian countries, Adam has never been to New Zealand, and it's such a lovely place that hopefully Paul will enjoy himself even though we have been there many times.

And, cruising out of Brisbane means a chance for them to see the family before or after as well!

Covid-19 update number 6

 Well, the idea of cruising to New Zealand and staying for a while afterwards in January 2022 is now looking a bit risky.  A day or so ago, murmurings started from the Government that overseas flights might not even start again until next year.  This would mean that getting a flight back from NZ after the cruise could be a serious challenge - we would always have been competing with the 'end of school holiday' crowd and now unless the NZ bubble was properly in place before-hand we'd be competing with huge numbers of people who just wanted to see family and friends again after this very long period of being unable to do so.  

Problem solved - I booked another cruise.  As well as the 18 January cruise from Sydney to Auckland we're now also booked on the next cruise which is from Auckland back to Sydney.  The cruise back is a slightly different itinerary which includes Picton and Wellington instead of Christchurch and Melbourne.

Of course we still have no idea if cruising will have even restarted by January.  This just means that if cruising is okay but flights are a problem, we'll be able to get home.  And since the cruise lines are currently being far more generous than usual about their cancellation fees, we have until December before we definitely need to make a decision.