Star Princess Review

4.0 / 5.0
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Star Princess - Australia/New Zealand

Review for Australia & New Zealand Cruise on Star Princess
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pungpui
First Time Cruiser • Age 20s

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Sail Date: Jan 2004
Traveled with children

Auckland The equivalent of Sydney in Australia or New York in the United States, Auckland is the business capital of New Zealand. Staying at the Mercure Hotel, Auckland gave us picturesque views of Auckland Harbour, at a relatively cheap price, but more importantly the convenience of being able to walk to the dockside! The morning the ship arrived; she looked stunning as she turned heads once again. After a breaky at a cafe, we walked up to the ship and saw some passengers checking in their luggage at 10am already! After seeing this, we also decided to do so. Although the public is allowed almost an arms length away from the ship, it is only up to the bow where it says 'Star Princess', and thus is limited to such a small section. Since it is one of the longest ships to come to Auckland, I would imagine that for smaller ships, the public wouldn't even be able to reach the ship at all! I am probably being biased since I come from Sydney where at the Overseas Passenger Terminal; the public has their own observation deck higher than the gangway level, so that the public is able to see much more!

Embarkation in Auckland -- Loading a ship with 2600 passengers (the purser's desk said that we are sailing at full and there are no upgrades available) requires lots of manpower, lots of consideration, and a tonne of patience by both passengers and attendants. The stupid thing is as soon as you enter the terminal building; you are given a departure card, but not told when to give it in. You walk straight up to the line, where there are no tables or pens provided at all, and when you get to the top of the line, you need to hand in these damn cards filled in! Where were the instructions? How are we supposed to fill them in?? It wasn't as hectic as I thought it was though...just require a lot of patience!

Cabin -- Figuring that we only use the cabin for sleep and that's pretty much it, we opted for a 4 berth inside cabin on the Dolphin deck. The room was way too small for 2 adults and 2 teenagers! They should have a slightly larger room but without the window premium! It was nicely decorated, and had an adequate closet space for 4...but the amount of space between lavatory door and the closet space can only be described as enough for a dwarf! Whenever you open the door from the toilet, anyone standing in the closet space would either get a wack from the side, or would have to swerve quickly and as a result, run into something else. The in-house safe was a real benefit, though, and we used it throughout the entire cruise. Unfortunately, being an American ship, the electrical power points were only 115 volts. Unaware of this, my father brought a long his 220 volts Australian shaver, and thus sounded like a portable vacuum with about 0.0001% of battery power left. We had to purchase manual shavers at next port of call!

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