Busy work week; only now have I had a chance to sit down and read the thread.
I will post some photos shortly.
Quick recap of a few things;
Thanks to
Sinophile888 starting the thread to get the AFF inaugural cruise thread started, a 4 night cruise was a good taste tester to see what this cruising was all about that I had read so much about from Straitman and Co, and finding out that Golden Princess was to be the vessel was an added bonus.
On flights it is best to check pricing with the cruise company so see what options were available, as there were some good price flexi fares available at the standard cheaper price. Flexi fare from Melbourne to Brisbane on VA for $186 was a bargain.
I had previously booked Qantas as a flexi but found that Qantas was available via Princess for $286 which was almost half the price I had paid, although I did book during a DSC period.
From Adelaide Airport to Outer Harbour was around $50 although i did stop in Port Adelaide for a few minutes.
Almost everyone was already onboard when we checked in around 5:00pm, and then it was a bit of a walk to find the stateroom; probably good to study the map of the ship before boarding so you aren't walking around the ship looking for your room.
The room was a good size, the wardrobe area was enormous with a very small bathroom. Beds were either 2 singles or a good size double bed, probably a size that was made for Princess, almost like the length of a Queen but it felt a bit wider than a standard Queen.
Also who didn't remind us about the plug being US plugs,
yes I did get an adapter from the attendant but should have brought our own.
It takes you awhile to get your bearings, as there are so many nooks to get lost but also to escape other passengers.
There was a muster around 7:00pm to remind you of a few things the shows and events and other important things including the safety aspects of the ship.
The first dinner for us was at the Buffet area but I did get a burger from outside the buffet area and brought it inside.
You purchase your drinks with a room card which you receive when you check in before boarding. You can buy coupons before boarding for alcohol, internet or coffee, we purchased a coffee voucher, it was like a coffee card where you punch a hole for each drink, 15 hot drinks for $46 was ok value, the free coffee range to ok to good but not great
The buffet(self serve) and some restaurant areas on the ship were free, if you wanted something a little better then you could go to a steak place called Crown Grill which included a 3 course meal, or 4 courses if you wanted to, the service was a notch above the other restaurants in the ship but it did cost an extra $29.00
At the front of the ship was a 1,000 seat theatre which had live shows, ended up seeing one comedian, decent, TV quality and also a music show which was Freddie Mercury impersonator, not too bad.
First stop on Friday Australia Day was Port Lincoln where you could get off the ship, dismemberment was at a Grain terminal and do a tour or get off and go for a walk around town or you could just stay onboard.
The ship organizes some tours and others hired cars for the day, we got off the ship and just walked around town and took some photos.
The 2nd stop on the Saturday morning was at Kangaroo Island. Unfortunately to get off the ship at Kangaroo Island was via tender, each vessel carried around 80 guests not easy when the Golden Princess carries 2,600 passengers.
Again you could organize a tour through princess, you could hire a car or organize a tour through the local tourism office which is usually cheaper and that is the option we took.
One of the main reasons to do this tour was to visit Kangaroo Island, so doing a tour was a good idea, it was interesting visited a few sites including a sheep milk farm and had a look around but I am no rush to go back, but happy I have seen the place. Remember Kangaroo Island is 150kms long and 57kms wide at its widest part, and where the ships come in is at Penneshore which is 60kms from Kangaroo Islands biggest town Kingscote.
Our tour lasted 6 hours and for us it was only a 5minute wait to get back on the vessel.
Link to the launch via boat back to the ship.
It should be open to anyone who has a Facebook account, funny enough a Facebook friend, (no of course I haven't met them in real life) sailed on the boat in 2002.
Sunday was a full sea day which was good to do not much, including not reading AFF as most of Sunday was too far away from the phone signal, so if you have a book you have on your ipad or kindle make sure you have downloaded it properly or better still pack the real thing.
Sunday morning after getting breakfast delivered, there was a princess app where you could have breakfast delivered to your room, handy if you had an earlier start for a day tour off the ship, tea/coffee, cereal, yoghurt, fruit and a few other items were available. I think just getting the coffee delivered was good that way you could have a coffee to wake yourself up before facing the world.
After the caffeine shot went for a sit down breakfast in one of the restaurants, tables were 6 to 8 and if you happy to share with anyone we were found a table after about 5 minutes of waiting. Seemed that most of the cruises were from Victoria, as the cruise ended in Melbourne, for some it was a 6 night cruise starting from Melbourne and for others like ourselves was just Adelaide to Melbourne.
Shared the table with 2 other couples from Victoria; one couple was from East Gippsland, no one from Queensland would know where East Gippsland is;
well I did because I had friends who live there and of course they knew straitman as the husband had worked in oil and gas.
Breakfast was available from a menu, better than a buffet. there were enough options to feed you without over doing it.
Lunch was at a pizza spot on the ship which was pretty good, if you wanted more than tea / coffee you had to pay with your room card.
Sunday afternoon they had a wine tasting event, really just a way to plug the wines that were available on the ship.
Sunday evening was our AFF cruise dinner where we were able to get 2 tables close by.
Photos to come in the next post.
You were allowed one bottle of wine to bring onboard which could be consumed in your room or a friends room, and if you took it to dinner that would be $15.00
Dinner was probably just as good as the one we paid a surcharge for but the service wasn't as good, although that can depend on the server as we had a good server for breakfast.
Sunday night was spent testing out a few more bars before heading to bed around 11:00pm.
You knew you were back in Melbourne when the anchors were heard around 5:30am Monday morning. You had to be out of your room by 8:00am and then had to wait for your allocated de-boarding time. Our time was 9:00am so we could go and have one last breakfast in the buffet area and then leave the ship.
Your room tag was used to record your drink purchases but the funny thing was some things you had to sign for like when you ate at one of the 2 better class restaurants, I think there were 4 or 5 but straitman can confirm how many there were.
The other weird thing with a big group without outside phone then the princess phone app was practically useless to be able to contact anyone, each room had its own phone so you could make internal calls for free or phone outside at expensive rates but there was no easy way to contact others in your group.
Overall it was a good trip and I thoroughly enjoyed it and visiting Kangaroo Island was good as even though its only 100 miles from Adelaide its difficult and expensive to visit.
I traveled with another friend of mine who had never cruised before, partly because he really didn't want to do a long cruise and the single supplement can almost double the cost of a cruise.
Have I booked my next cruise, no, I might have booked my next 5 flights though so I don't have any short term cruising plans but I do have places to visit.
