We are Platinum members on Princess Cruises and this was our first trip to Australia and New Zealand. We choose Princess for a number of reasons, in no particular order, the 250 minutes of free internet for both of us being Platinum members. The laundry rooms on the ship, as after the cruise we were staying another 9 nights. In the past our experience on Princess was very good.
We chose this ship, due to the Ports of Calls and the return to Sydney, as our flight was in and out of Sydney.
We took a taxi from our hotel and arrived early, around 10 am to the Overseas Terminal in Sydney. A tip for anyone if the cruise ship departs from the Overseas Terminal, if your hotel is close the the Subway, take it rather than a taxi, and save yourself a few dollars by taking the train if you don't mind lugging your suitcase. The port terminal is about a 5 minute walk from the Circular Quay train stop. Taxi was $35, as opposed to the Train, ( it would have cost around $3 per person) just 3 stops from Circular Quay on the T2 line (green Line).
Our cabin steward was EK, a fella from Indonesia, who used EK for short. He was great and had provided everything that we asked for. One point I want to make about this cabin, is the safe. Its a digital safe and I suppose its outdated. There was a lag when the buttons were pushed. That is, there is a 4 digit code that the passengers select. When I pushed the first number, the beep occurs about one second after I pushed the number. So at first, I thought I didn't push the number hard enough and pushed the same number again. This messed up the code that I wanted to use.