The next few posts will be out of order as I try to catch up on the blog, sorry...
Here we go again! The next few months will be crazy busy for us as we will only be home for two weeks from this trip before we embark on the Majestic Princess for a 51-day voyage from Los Angeles to Ft Lauderdale, via South America. This will be the first time we will miss the holidays with our family and our 10-yr-old Granddaughter is not happy about it!
On Wednesday, October 9th, we will be flying from our home airport of LAX to Singapore. This will be our first time visiting Singapore and has been on our bucket list for quite some time. The same can be said for all of the ports on this itinerary, with the exception of Hong Kong and Hawaii.
This will be the Coral Princess' first voyage after a 20-day dry dock in Singapore. Hopefully, all of the updates will have been completed by the time we board. In the past, we have been on ships right after a dry dock and some items were completed during that first voyage. We have sailed on the Coral many times and were last onboard in 2018 (1st time was in 2004).
On this cruise we will be in a Reserve Collection Mini-Suite, mid-ship on Baja Deck, and will have the Plus Package. We made a decent upgrade bid for a Vista Suite, but have not heard anything as of yet. Suites have shown as sold out for quite some time now, so we are not expecting the bid to be successful. Btw, the entire cruise has shown sold out since mid-August.
The ports on this voyage consist of two in Thailand, two in Vietnam, Taipei, Hong Kong, two in Japan, and two in Hawaii.
We booked our Singapore Airlines 17+ hour, non-stop Business Class (BC) flight via our Platinum Amex International Airlines Program. The price was $800 less than using EZair and $600 less than directly with the airline. We were also able to apply Amex points towards the booking. This is the first time in years that we have found an international air fare lower than EZair for BC. We have also booked our "Blacklane" driver for the ride from the airport to the hotel.
In Singapore, we will be spending the week at the Four Seasons Hotel in the Orchard District. The Amex Fine Hotels and Resort Program offered a deal that was too good to pass up! We recently stayed at the Sydney Four Seasons and had an amazing experience. They excel in providing outstanding service and accommodations.
We will have several friends cruising with us on this voyage including Debbie's sister and her husband (from Palm Desert). We also have several friends among the onboard crew.
We have received many travel tips as to what to see and do in Singapore from friends that are extremely familiar with the city/country. I don't think we will be able to see all of the places on our list, but we will give it a shot!
We rarely ever book Princess excursions, but because most of these ports are new to us we have booked several transportation only excursions to the city centers, where we will DIY. In Hong Kong, we booked the HoHo bus. We enjoy DIY in ports and exploring whatever strikes us as interesting at the time.
There has been some confusion for this cruise as to the requirement of a visa for Vietnam. We have been assured by Princess that this visa will be provided onboard and the visa fee charged to our stateroom account. They have not provided the exact cost of the visa, but in the past it has been $50 USD.
I will usually post the "Princess Patter" and dinner menus daily.
The below map is still incorrectly showing us stopping in Lahaina, that has been changed to Kauai.
