NEWS UPDATE: Pacific Explorer is coming home! Radiance gone, but Enchantment is on her way + more!

Watch my Coral Princess season video here: https://youtu.be/7vv987zDAN8 Join my private Facebook group for cruise deals, tips and advice - the more members we have, the better we’ll get! www.facebook.com/groups/CTGdeals Follow me on Facebook and Instagram: www.facebook.comn/thecruiseandtravelguy www.instragram.com/thecruiseandtravelguy Head to my website for great cruise and travel deals: www.thecruiseandtravelguy.com.au Thanks for watching, and see you soon! In a press conference held this week at Sydney’s White Bay, the state government announced that it would finally provide shore power at the cruise terminal. The port sits within the Sydney neighbourhood of Rozelle and Balmain and local residents have complained about toxic fumes for years. Ship’s berthed in White Bay have had no choice but to run their engines in order to generate power while in port. Finally, shore-to-ship power will mean an end to those days. The project will be complete in 2024 and once operational is set to remove 14k tonnes of carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere every 12 months. Princess Cruises launched a new season onboard the Coral Princess for sale this week. Brisbane’s new international terminal will finally see a ship calling it home. The state of the art terminal was opened in 2020, at the same time that COVID started to wreak havoc on the world. Coral Princess will call Brisbane’s new terminal home from June 16th when she sets course for a 3 night cruise to nowhere. Watch my video to learn more about the new Coral Princess season by clicking the link below or the card above. With all the excitement of the past week taking centre stage, people began to suspect that Royal Caribbean was going to redeploy Radiance of the Seas from the Australian market. She was due to sail on a transpacific voyage down to Sydney where she was going to remain for the summer season. The removal of her cruises from the website piqued the interest of many cruise fans and rumours began to swirl. Royal Caribbean subsequently announced on Monday morning that in fact, Radiance of the Seas would not be returning to Australia as planned and would instead sail from New Orleans and Texas. This news was a bitter pill to swallow, both for cruisers and travel agents alike. After 2 years of rolling cancellations, many passengers booked onto these now cancelled voyages had already lifted and shifted their cruises from other suspended cruises. For agents, it was another round of crisis management, having to manage the cancellation process all over again. Royal Caribbean did not give an excuse for the redeployment, but many on social media have suspected that with cruising being potentially limited to domestic ports for the short term, the cruise line didn’t want to oversaturate the market with capacity. The Ovation of the Seas and Quantum of the Seas will still sail from Sydney and Brisbane respectively. Royal Caribbean also announced their 2023/2024 Australia summer cruise season and with it came the news that Vision Class ship, Enchantment of the Seas would be heading down under. Enchantment was built in 1995 and is one of the older ships in the fleet, however in 2005 she received a comprehensive update which included most notably, a stretch. She was sliced in half and a 22m section was added to her middle. The stretch means that Enchantment clocks in at 302m in length, compared to Radiance of the Seas’ 293m. She has a gross tonnage of almost 83k tonnes compared to Radiance’s 90k. If you prefer a smaller ship, by today’s standards, then I think you might like Enchantment. For anyone who sailed onboard Rhapsody of the Seas when she called Australia home, you’ll feel right at place onboard Enchantment. One of the highlight cruises onboard Enchantment is a 34 night Australia and New Zealand circumnavigation. The cruise departs on February 14th, but if 34 nights is too long, you can choose to sail 16 nights from Sydney to Perth as a Northern Explorer voyage, or 18 nights from Perth which departs on March 1st and sails through New Zealand on its way back to Sydney. And finally this week, Pacific Explorer has departed Cyprus and is officially en route to her rightful home down under. She transited through the Suez Canal earlier this week and will soon dock in Singapore before continuing her journey down under to Sydney! Let me know in the comments below if you’ll be joining Explorer for one of her first voyages. Thanks for watching!