Back in Sydney

We have arrived back in Sydney after the first 9 nights of the cruise which is the end of the first cruise we have booked.
We went to Noumea as planned but missed our port of call in Fiji due to an electrical fault in the engine room that prevented us from sailing on time instead we spent a second day in Noumea while they fixed the problem.
Many passengers were disappointed but when cruising you have to accept these things.
Royal Caribbean offered all passengers a voucher to the value of 40% of this cruise fare off the price of their next cruise. We felt that this was generous. Some wanted refunds as they may not book again but in our case, we were going to book again for Alaska next year so this will work out very well for us.

All the passengers got off today and went home except for around 20 of us who booked two cruises in a row.
We were notified to be in a conference room at 5.45 am sharp this morning so that we could be processed by customs.


We were not taken off the ship and reboarded as we expected so we got up at the crack of dawn which I have to say was hard after sleeping in for the last 9 days!!
It took a while but eventually the customs officer turned up and we were out of there.
We then had breakfast after which I went back to bed!!
Here I am now with a quiet ship all to ourselves...,we have decided not to go ashore today. 3100 guests will be embarking in less than an hour so we are preparing ourselves for the hoards.....
On the 9 night cruise there were over 500 children who I have to say were on my nerves sometimes running around, stomping in corridors at night, playing in the elevators and being generally badly behaved. Remember that I have a 9 year old and he has his moments but I would be horrified if he behaved in that way and would not allow it. On this cruise apparently there are only 56 kids so I expect a different crowd this time.
I have likened living in a cruise ship for a month to living in a shopping mall. The minute you step outside your stateroom there are hoards of people pushing and shoving just like in shopping malls. People tend to lose all their manners in these situations.
Add to that the fact that the ship had these large events on board that can attract up to 2000 people at once, imagine the mess!!!
Anyway we have been to some if those so the next 18 days will allow us to avoid some of those situations.