My sister and I decided to travel with our parents on this cruise as a bit of a catch up, this was my 5th cruise, 2nd on the Diamond princess & 3rd with Princess cruises. We stayed at the Aspire hotel in Sydney which was ok, a bit run down but was not expensive so was ok for the price and served its purpose as we were travelling from SA and needed to stay the night.

We arrived at the dock at our allocated embarkation time, and waited for close to 2 hours before we actually got on board the ship. The whole embarkation procedure was very disorganised and was the worst I had experienced yet. The ship was due to set sail at 4pm, and people were still in a very long line when we finally managed to get on at 3pm so it must have been a close call.

The ship's appearance was neat and tidy and lounges comfortable. Hard to get a seat for a coffee, or for shows that appeared in the Explorer's lounge so if intending on watching any of the entertainment in this room you needed to arrive an hour early to get a seat where you could see the stage. Read more