Fantastic - glad to hear! I suppose the requirement is because time is running out and they need to make sure someone is definitely going so they can go down to the next person on the waiting list if not. Hopefully if you can demonstrate that you are genuinely making arrangements you will get some extra time.
Congratulations Rick!!
military History tours were heavily involved with DVA over these issues and in fact were just about thrown out of one meeting because they pretty much told them they were all idiots - I have many newsletters from them on the talks - make really amusing reading. They seemed to believe that lottery winners would all go and given what appears to be a reasonably high % of refusals from the first winners they probably are starting to worry that there won't be enough time for multiple rounds.....
We were among those who booked many years before the ballot was even thought of! Our ship has docking rights and we remain happy even though we won't be at the "official" service, our guys are holding a dawn service just outside the exclusion zone. They are also organising a surf boat race and various other things, including a Ball in Istanbul on the night of the 26th which sounds fun, so quite happy with it all. We were given the option to cancel with a full refund, but didn't see the need to. Can't remember how much we paid - around $9,000 pp and that was for a suite with balcony so quite reasonable. I think the very expensive ones were from Australia, whereas this is ex Venice or Istanbul.
Not according to the web site? Possibly on the day but this is a few days prior.
