Christmas Cruise – New Caledonia: December 2024

 

8 days on the Carnival Splendor: Sydney – Noumea – Lifou Isle – Noumea – Sydney.

 

This one isn’t going to have a day-by-day report because it wasn’t that sort of cruise.

 

We didn’t do this cruise because we wanted to see New Caledonia – we’ve been there before and it’s pretty underwhelming for people who aren’t really ‘beach and sun’ people.  This was basically an attempt by me (Sandy) to avoid being home at Christmas time, because I still can’t really face that without Adam being with us. 

 

The main reason I picked this ship over a P&O one is because I cruised on it last year (very much the same cruise in September 2023) and I thought Paul would prefer it over P&O.  As it turns out, not so much – he didn’t see it as much better than P&O anyway.

 

Start of rant

 

I am actually still really angry with Carnival over this cruise.  They – like all cruise lines – claim over and over that the safety of their passengers and crew is of paramount importance.  So, when I booked this cruise in July 2024, I did it knowing that cruises weren’t currently going to New Caledonia because of the ongoing civil unrest there.  At that time, cruise lines including Carnival were changing their New Caledonia cruises usually around a month before sailing time; sometimes they’d go to Port Vila or Santo in Vanuatu instead, or sometimes a complete change and going to Cairns for example. 

 

I knew that it would be difficult to change this cruise, because all the ports in Vanuatu already had cruise ships booked in, and they don’t usually take more than one ship at a time (and of course as it happened, there was a huge earthquake there just before our cruise left and so we wouldn’t have been going there anyway).  Just the same, I was quite sure that we would only go to New Caledonia if the civil unrest was over, and equally sure that they would take the formal government advice on this issue.  So, imagine my annoyance in mid-November 2024 when cruise lines started going to New Caledonia even though the official government advice on Smart Traveller was still a Level 3 warning – reconsider your need to travel / essential travel only.  And similar web sites for other countries such as New Zealand, Canada, USA, UK etc had the same sorts of notifications.  And BTW this is still the warning level as of the end of December 2024.

 

This was a pain financially as we have an annual travel insurance policy which would have covered this cruise, except that it clearly says that they will not cover travel to any country with a Level3 or Level4 warning in place.  And it’s not as simple as just saying that we wouldn’t get off the ship in New Caledonia because sometimes it’s not your choice – for example, the day before we were due to arrive in Noumea, a lady slipped and fell on the Lido deck.  She both broke and dislocated her knee (ouch!) and was taken off the ship for treatment in hospital in Noumea; you just don’t get the choice about this sort of thing.

 

So, I ended up buying a new separate policy for this trip with a different company – more than $700 for an eight-day cruise when the entire annual policy was only $2100.

 

I was even more annoyed by the fact that Carnival did not ever openly admit that they were doing this.  There was a really active Facebook group for this cruise and heaps of people kept discovering that their policy wasn’t going to cover them.  And to be honest, I’m still not sure that the new policy I bought would have completely covered us either, but fortunately we didn’t need to find out.  Still, I’m still really annoyed with Carnival, and I plan to explain my annoyance in detail when I give them an ‘I will never recommend you to friends’ rating on the cruise review.

 

End of rant

 

 

Anyway, overall, the cruise went pretty much as expected.

 

I deliberately picked a cabin quite close to the Lido deck buffet.  On most cruise ships you can’t do this without the risk of the cabin being really noisy but on this ship the buffet is on deck 9, rather than the more usual ‘top of the ship’ location.  This made it easier to just pick up food and take it back to the cabin if the buffet was too crowded – although in the end we only need to do this a couple of times.

 

A couple of times we were caught out by signage that could have been better.  For example, there are sort of ‘twin’ coffee shops on Deck 5, same name, only a few steps apart, but only one of them also does fresh squeezed fruit juice.  The app and all the signs say that they’re open all day, but in fact the one that does juice closes for a few hours in the afternoon.  Not a problem unless you want juice in the afternoon.  Similarly, the pizza shop outside the Lido which does really nice pizza and is open from before lunch until midnight every day advertises a couple of ‘pay for’ pizzas as well as the free ones.  No idea why their advertisement doesn’t advise that you can only get them at dinner time.  Only minor annoyances but things they could fix really easily.

 

The ship of course was full of families with kids.  There were heaps of special Christmas things for kids to do and from the Facebook group it looked like they were all having the time of their lives!

 

We didn’t get off the ship at the first stop in Noumea, or at Lifou.  For the return trip to Noumea, we had booked a little shore excursion – to the World War 2 museum and the Maritime Museum.  Really, we could have walked to both places except that you know, Level3 safety warning!  And, having a tour guide who did some explanations in both places before letting us loose to look around was a good thing, because of course this is effectively France and the French aren’t really keen on admitting that English is a language, so a lot of the information signs were only in French - even though they are so dependent on tourism and the vast majority of their tourists are English speaking.  Anyway, a nice little tour.

 

I had a bit of a problem with sea-sickness on the way back to Sydney.  My plan for cruises is always to take sea-sickness tablets on the first night, and then sometimes the next morning if I feel the need, and then I’m usually okay for the rest of the cruise unless the waves get bad again – which happened this time; the waves weren’t outrageously high but we were sailing sort of diagonally across them, and I needed the help of my Quells again.  I wasn’t alone either – a number of people were asking on the Facebook group if anyone had any more tablets (because of course you can go to the medical centre but the prices there are outrageous).

 

As I said, not a bad cruise but I won’t be going out of my way to book with Carnival again – although in fact Paul’s 70^th birthday cruise next year which is currently still technically a P&O cruise will morph into a Carnival cruise in March next year when P&O Cruises merge into the Carnival Cruise Line.

 

 

 

Northern Australia Cruise: August – September 2024

 

 Sydney to Perth - 17 days on the Coral Princess.

 

18 August

Got the train to Sydney and checked into our hotel room with no real dramas.  The hotel is in a really convenient location – right near Town Hall station and light rail and near the not-quite-yet-open Gadigal Metro Station.  Only problem is the ‘studio’ room we booked has the bed pushed up against the window which means one unlucky person – i.e. Sandy – had to climb out over the end of the bed.  I had already booked this hotel again for a stay before our next cruise and when we decided to extend that stay by a day, I also upgraded us to a 1 bedroom apartment to avoid this issue.

 

 

19 August

We decided to walk down to the ship, and in a stroke of genius I managed to fall over on the way.  No permanent damage – just more scarring on knees that have already been scarred by previous falls over the years.

 

Check-in to the cruise was incredibly quick.  This was because quite a few people boarded the ship in Auckland and are continuing on the Northern Australia cruise, and also because a lot of people are staying onboard until Brisbane – these people mostly boarded the ship back in May 2024 and have been on the world cruise ever since!

 

20 August

Sea day – did as little as possible.  Nothing interesting to report 😊

 

21 August - Brisbane

Jo and Tony picked us up at the port and we joined a bunch of friends and family for a delicious lunch at the Brekky Creek. 

Back on the ship and had another delicious meal – this time at the Bayou Café.  Provided by Princess for free, no idea why.

We ended up leaving quite late – departure was due to be 5pm but we didn’t leave until 7pm.  Two different issues – some work they were still doing getting things on and off the ship, and then a passenger took ill and had to be taken off in an ambulance.  How disappointing for them!

The captain said the delays won’t have any impact on the timing for the rest of the cruise though.

 

22 August – sea day

As usual for a sea day, didn’t do much. 

We were sat with two other couples at dinner.  Both of them have a package which includes a return to Sydney on the Indian Pacific, and they weren’t the first people we’ve met who are doing this either.  It seems the Indian Pacific to Sydney is pretty much completely booked out with Princess passengers for a couple of departures after we get to Fremantle – some of these packages include things like spending a few days at Margaret River before returning to Sydney.  We actually discovered later that even though Darwin isn’t a formal start or end point on this cruise, some people were leaving the ship in Darwin and getting the Ghan to Adelaide, and others were joining in Darwin just for the cruise to Perth.  I’d guess this was probably organised by a travel agency as a special deal with Princess.

 

23 August

Another sea day.  High points were that we walked a mile around deck 7 – American ships so the signs are all in miles! – and then had a good time playing the pokies afterwards.  My notes for the rest of the cruise don’t mention the pokies again but they were a regular part of our entertainment.

 

24 August - Cairns

I made a mistake last night – ordered a decaf coffee from room service and then couldn’t sleep.  Not sure if it was accidentally a real coffee but obviously it was a mistake!

 

Two main events today.  First, we had pre-booked tickets to the Armour and Artillery Museum – it was AusArmourFest weekend so all sorts of interesting things on show.  We pre-booked a driver to take us there and then bring us back later, and it all worked like clockwork.  After this, we met Paul’s friend MJ and her partner at a hotel near the dock.  Had a really nice time with them.

 

25, 26 and 27 August

All sea days so as usual no real effort to do much.

 

Had a real disappointment on 25 August when we decided to try Alfredo’s for lunch.  We had already discovered that (unlike on some other Princess ships) Alfredo’s is ‘lunchtime only’, but then we discovered that it’s only Alfredo’s every second day – and of course it wasn’t Alfredo’s that day.

 

However, we finally got our Alfredo’s pizza the next day, so it was all okay in the end!

 

28 August - Darwin

We started the day with a shore excursion “Defence of Darwin”.  This included a few different sites, but the main one was the Defence of Darwin experience at the Darwin Military Museum.  This was really very interesting, and we could definitely have spent more time there – which is of course always the risk with shore excursions; the good thing is that they get you to places of interest, the bad thing is that you’re on the excursion timetable, not your own.

 

We had planned to go back to the ship for lunch and a shower before meeting Laura, but it wasn’t as hot as we feared.  So, instead we left the excursion in the city instead of going back to the ship (as did a lot of other people) had a quick bite to eat and then met Laura there.

 

Laura took us to the Darwin Museum and the RFDS museum (which also includes more Defence of Darwin displays) and to her place and also for a drive to see the sites.  Then we all watched a glorious sunset while eating dinner at the Darwin Trailer Boat Club before going back to the ship. 

 

So good to catch up with Laura and we had a really great day.

 

29 August

Sea day – nothing to report!

 

30 August – Kuri Bay

Kuri Bay is basically private property owned by the Paspaley Pearling company.  You can only leave the ship with a shore excursion, and there were only two excursions on offer – one was a tour of the pearl farm, and the other one was a scenic flight over the area in a Grumman Mallard plane. 

Paul didn’t want to do either one, but I decided to do the scenic flight – it was pretty good although it took a lot of time before and after the flight compared to the actual length of the flight.  Basically, go to the meeting point on board and wait to be called, then go to the tender and get taken to the dock, then wait on the dock for a little boat to take you to the plane – and then of course do it all in reverse to get back to the ship.

 

I saw one couple who had a very unhappy experience – this was about 8:45 and they had been sitting at the meeting place since about 7:30 (which btw was much earlier than their actual meeting time).  Somehow, they missed their ticket number being called, which meant they missed their tender and therefore missed their flight.  Normally people missing their ticket is really all on them, but I can see how this might have happened – my group was ‘Pink 5’ and they called the ‘Brown 5’ group quite a few times but then sort of just mentioned ‘Pink 5’ at the end of one of those calls.  This was a very expensive tour to miss – it cost just over $500 per person and of course there are no refunds for ‘no shows’.  However, they were making a huge fuss, and when I left it looked at though they might have been found a place on a later flight – maybe someone else had to pull out because that’s the only way they could have; the flights were all fully booked and there are no spare seats anywhere!

 

 

31 August – Kimberley Scenic Cruising

 

As expected, this was a bit of an overstatement – there’s no way a ship this big can get close enough for the truly spectacular views that are possible in the Kimberley.  Just the same, we did get to see the sights, including two whales!

 

Also, this was the start of what became fairly regular announcements from the Captain for the remainder of the cruise, saying that they’re getting quite a few cases of “respiratory illness” and emphasising the usual stuff about wearing masks if at risk, and washing hands, and being civilised about coughs and sneezes.  We were already aware of at least one case of COVID – you can tell on a Princess ship because the cabin will have a little table outside the door indicating that the people inside are being quarantined.

 

1 September – Broome

No planned shore excursion here – we just got a shuttle into town.

Before we left, we had a letter saying that we’re not going to Geraldton (which was our scheduled stop on Wednesday 4 September) because the seas will be too high, and the port authorities were recommending against it.  This is bit disappointing because I’d spent a lot of time deciding on a shore excursion in Geraldton!  Instead, we will be going to Exmouth on Tuesday 3 September.  Our main concern actually is Perth – the BOM wave height forecast is for large waves all down the SW corner of WA for both Thursday (when we’re due to arrive in Perth) and Friday (when we’re due to fly out).  Because of this, I booked a cancellable hotel room for Friday night, just in case we end up being delayed to the point where we miss our Friday morning flights.

 

Broome was a nice place.  In fact, I’d like to go back there but there is just no way you can get to Broome on the way to anywhere else – not for the sort of trip we’d be likely to do anyway – and just going to Broome would be outrageously expensive.

 

We had an absolutely delicious lunch at the Chi Mayi Kitchen, and then I talked myself out of buying a really nice set of earrings -$2300 – and although that’s expensive, just have a look at the Paspaley Pearl prices!

 

The shuttles into Broome were really well organised but the shuttle back was just chaos, however, we eventually got onto one and back to the ship, so all good.

 

 

2, 3 and 4 September

Effectively all sea days.  We could have gotten off the ship at Exmouth, but it was a huge drama – first you had to queue for a water shuttle to go ashore, and then queue for a bus to take you into Exmouth, and then the same in reverse to get back onto the ship. So, we decided to leave it to people with more energy than us 😊

 

 

5 September – Fremantle and end of cruise.

Well, we didn’t need the pre-emptively booked hotel room for Friday night and so we cancelled it.  However, we were greatly delayed in leaving the ship.  The problem wasn’t waves as I feared, but wind.  They allowed us to stay in our cabins far longer than would usually be the case, and in the end, we left the ship about four hours later than planned.  I hope not too many people missed their flights.  We were okay because the only direct flight from Perth to Canberra was 11am and there’s no way I’d risk trying to get to that flight on the day the cruise ends, so we had always planned to stay in Perth overnight and fly home on the 6^th, which is what we did.

 

Overall, we had a good time – saw some new places and had enjoyable repeat visits to others.