Travel & Holidays Let's discuss cruising

I know from my personal experience (no scientific studies necessary here) that when you travel with an individual company, they give you credits off your next cruise. Maybe, maybe not, subject to time limits. Many of the cruise lines are owned by the one company, so this helps too.

I really like Holland America line which now operates out of Australia. The ships are much smaller than P&O and they frown on (do not encourage) the blatent orgy-like behaviour seen on some other ships. The cruise I went on in Alaska was almost entirely adults. A couple of young children accompanied their parents but were certainly not catered for. As a teacher I could not stand being corralled for a week or two during the school holidays with thousands of screaming and crying kids running amok. I can go to Dreamworld any day of the week where I live, and I choose not to.

Our tickets were provided as part of a package, I had never heard of them at the time. I had a look on their website and noticed that the cruise we went on, had I booked it privately, would have cost us a mere US$700 each . A similar cruise in Oz would have been AUD$1600 per person - two sharing a room.

On the other hand, many ships cater to families with awesome services provided. Any other recommendations.....

 

Royal Caribbean Cruises are preferred choice...and they operate out of Australia.

Check out Voyager of the Seas & Ovation of the Seas

Absolutely superb.

 

We are booked on Ovation for New Years next year. It will be jam packed full of kids I expect.

 

What we choose to have for breakfast
Able to video up the front of the ship. Ps. Brought magnet hooks, so useful


Edinburgh I think




View in Owner's suite

Some goodies being delivered to our room by the butler
More room pics. Sorry they are so dark


I'm on a cruise! It will go up the coast of Norway, then as we are doing a back to back cruise, it will then go up to Longyearbyen then over to Iceland.

Picked the Owner's suite for the first half of the trip then a penthouse Suite. Lots of perks, including priority boarding for tenders (people are saying they spent an hour just waiting in line), a special seating area for the theatre, the Owner's suite even has a second bedroom and second bathroom. We are using the second bedroom as a WIR. We aren't really using the lounge area.

Main bedroom with huge king sized bed has a massive bank of windows overlooking the front of the ship. Someone in a regular room was saying they don't have enough space to walk around the side of the bed.... We don't have this problem.

Also nice we don't have to have breakfast or lunch in the busy and hectic buffet areas, we have our own restaurant and get peaceful table service. Can recommend!
We also got 3 bottles of alcohol at the start of the cruise (choose from a list) and a welcome bottle of champagne.

One problem, I gut my new A54 phone stolen while in a Berlin shopping centre. Have to be really careful with your stuff. I did report it to police

I did bring a backup phone with everything (yay)! but ended up buying another phone (backup phone is rather slow imo and battery isn't so good) and hopefully I can claim the loss of my new phone via travel insurance.

 

Sorry! We chose the Owner's suite, the price seemed totally ok when we compared it to other cabins so decided to book it