My partner and I booked this cruise in June 2011. We paid the final balance in October 2011. About a month before the start of the cruise two of the visits to ports in Australia namely Hamilton Island and Cooktown were withdrawn.
Voyages of Discovery informed us the reason for cancelling two of the port visits was "Operating difficulties" This turned out to be there were no facilities on Hamilton Island and Cooktown to take away the waste water and sewage from the ship, information freely given me by one of the Australian Environmental agencies.There were contractors who would take the waste but Voyages of Discovery were not prepared to pay for these services. It would be interesting to find out how much Voyages of Discovery saved by not paying berthing charges at these two ports!!
We had booked our flights to Australia independently enabling us to visit relatives. Had we known from the beginning these two ports would not be included in the cruise we would not have booked.
Very small cabins but kept clean regularly, it should be a none smoking ship, too many smoking areas