Yet again I didn't do any posts during our recent holiday, but here's a bit of an overview.
First we went to Brisbane and saw the Edinburgh Military Tattoo on Saturday night. Brisbane in February is always a risk of evening rain and the night before our show it rained quite heavily. The night of our show there was a bit of rain but we were quite okay in the end. Overall the show was good, although to be honest I'd still have preferred to see it actually in Edinburgh. That's not going to happen though.
Then, off to Sydney on the Sunday. Discovered a really good Chinese restaurant - no idea how we've never noticed it before since we've walked right past it numerous times on previous stays. It's the Silk Cafe and Restaurant and as I said, really good food and great service. I suspect we'll be going there again!
Off to the OPT on Monday for the cruise. Paid an exorbitant amount for a late checkout from the hotel - when I booked the room it was going to be their usual $60 but then it went up to $100 without warning. However, when you've got a 1:30 check-in to the cruise, it's far more comfortable to hang out in the hotel until lunch time than to try to find somewhere comfortable to sit near the OPT. The only really comfortable places near the OPT are restaurants for lunch, and once you start looking at their prices the $100 late check-out fee is a winner :-)
Really don't have a lot to say about the cruise, apart from the fact that if we do cruise on the Carnival Splendor again (which is pretty unlikely) I wouldn't try to get an aft balcony cabin. As on most ships these cabins are among the more expensive balconies. We prefer our balcony to be covered, and on the Splendor the only covered aft balconies are the ones where we were - on deck 8 - and although it was a convenient location I had a lot of trouble with a vague smell of diesel fumes for the first few nights.
There was a very active Facebook group for this particular cruise and it was really interesting to see the different experiences people had. One person for example was saying that it was taking up to 20 minutes for the water in their shower to heat up each morning, but most people weren't having that problem (ours was very hot almost instantly). Someone else was finding it almost impossible to connect to the ship's internet - which to be fair would be infuriating given the amount you pay for it - but again, most of the rest of us weren't having any trouble.
As far as shore excursions go - well, we only went on two which were both shuttles - into Wellington and Christchurch. The Wellington one was more than a bit annoying. Up to a few years before Covid, you could walk off the cruise ship in Wellington and take the short walk into the city. However, the last few times we stopped at Wellington you weren't permitted to walk off the dock and instead they ran a free shuttle into the city. This time, they were offering this paid shore excursion which was clearly just the same shuttle. But what they didn't admit until it was too late to change it was that the port rules have changed, and you can once again walk off the dock and into the city. Clearly an attempt to drag money out of people based on inadequate information, and as I said, more than a bit annoying.
One of the high points on the Splendor - one of their coffee bars does fresh fruit juice - i.e. you can watch them put the oranges etc. into the blender - which is something you can't always get on a cruise ship. And although $9.50 is a bit excessive for an orange juice the size of a coffee cup, I drank many of them :-)
Another high point was that somehow we got two bags of laundry done for $25 each and I've no idea how. Carnival sometimes has a 'one bag for $25' special but there was no such offer advertised this time. I fully expected to pay the usual outrageous prices - they pretty much equate to the prices if you send something off to a hotel laundry - so to get two bags for $25 was unexpected. Although having said this, a quick Google indicates that this might now be their standard "Wash and Fold" offering for guest laundry and if so it's a pretty good deal (even though it doesn't include ironing but that's okay because my clothes have forgotten what it's like to be ironed!).
Overall, it was a pretty standard Carnival cruise. The service was pretty good, but as usual lots of little things that made it not quite as enjoyable as some other (and to be fair more expensive) cruise lines. My position on Carnival cruises is the same as our position for P&O - the only reason we'll choose Carnival is if it's the only option (e.g. as it was for a cruise for Paul's 70th birthday), or if I really want to go on a cruise and it's noticeably cheaper than any other options (i.e. as for this cruise!) or if they're going somewhere special - which is the case for our July 2027 cruise from Auckland to Norfolk Island. It's not that Carnival is terrible, it's just that mostly Princess or Royal Caribbean or Celebrity will have a better offer for a reasonably better price.
Needless to say, both Paul and I have arrived home sick - for a change, not COVID but Paul in particular is quite unwell. Hopefully we'll both be well enough to go on the next cruise, since it's only 10 days until we're due to leave. And hopefully that one is short enough that we won't get sick again!
