My husband and I booked this cruise as seeing Australia and especially Bali and the Great Barrier Reef was on our bucket list. Ha, saw many days of ocean and very little Australia. The ship canceled the Bali port due to possible "terrorist threats" during the Bali New Year (we were scheduled to stop on March 7), the new year was on March 9th, I call it an overreaching. So they added another day in Darwin.

Our main goal was to see the Great Barrier Reef so we booked a private tour on our own. However, tendering was a joke and so unorganized that the ship was not able to get to the dock on time and thus, our private Great Barrier Reef tour had to be canceled. So no problem we thought. We had booked a second Great Barrier Reef tour (Whitsunday Island) with the ship at an outrageous $300 a person. Now here is the kicker. Another chaotic, unorganized tender with the Excursion Director, Karen. If she spent less time making jokes and paying attention to what she was doing, we would not have ended up with the wrong colored sticker for the wrong tour! We were sent on the rainforest tour instead of the Great Barrier Reef tour! I was heartbroken. Let me tell you about the rainforest tour. Another rip-off on a crammed bus with a driver who knew nothing. I was told by others on this tour that it was going to be ok even though I was on the wrong tour, as they were stopping for a "gourmet lunch" and to view the ocean by a park. Well the "gourmet lunch consisted of tupperware with cold cuts and bread that you could make yourself and a charge of $2.00 for a bottle of water. The tide was out a good three miles and all we saw was mud.

The ship refunded our money for the tour, but that still doesn't make the mistake any easier to swallow. Read more