Unlock the Past Cruises announced its intention some time ago to do a regional cruise out of Eastern Australia. We are reviewing three candidate cruises over two quite different itinerary options – see below. We expect to decide on this and open for bookings late November or early December. We want to make a final choice from three candidate cruises below.
Click here now to tell us your preferences
Cruise candidate 1 – a 7 night Barrier Reef cruise from Brisbane early Oct 2014
Cost guide: from approx AU$1700, including all shipboard accommodation and food, plus all conference sessions and extra benefits. Sea days: this cruise is destination focused, with two sea days and most evenings for conference sessions. Speakers: 2-3 lead presenters with some other supporting speakers. A general conference program of about 30 topics, probably featuring:
- Eastern states research topics by leading experts
- general genealogy and history topics
- Research Help Zone times (one on one or small groups with experts)
Cruise candidate 2 – an 11 night Barrier Reef cruise out of Sydney late Oct 2014
Cost guide: from approx AU$1500, including all shipboard accommodation and food, plus all conference sessions and extra benefits. Sea days: this cruise has four days sea days and some evenings for conference sessions. Speakers: 2-3 lead presenters with some other supporting speakers. A general conference program of about 40 topics, probably featuring:
- Eastern states research topics by leading experts
- a special stream of Family Tree Maker workshops by a leading FTM expert
- general genealogy and history topics
- Research Help Zone times (one on one or small groups with experts)
Cruise candidate 3 – a 3 night cruise out of Sydney
with add on Norfolk Island option late Oct 2014
Cost guide: from approx AU$1000, including all shipboard accommodation and food, plus all conference sessions and extra benefits. Sea days: this cruise has three nights and two full days at sea. Speakers: 2-3 lead presenters with some other supporting speakers. A general conference program of about 30 topics, probably featuring:
- Eastern states research topics by leading experts
- a special convict stream
- a special stream of Family Tree Maker workshops by a leading FTM expert
- general genealogy and history topics
- Research Help Zone times (one on one or small groups with experts)
- an optional hosted tour to Norfolk Island at the end of the cruise
Tour candidate – possible tour to Norfolk Island
after 3 night cruise out of Sydney late Oct 2014
Details of this option have not been researched but for this purpose assume a package tour of Norfolk Island for 3 to 5 days and a cost in the region of $800-$1500 per person including airfares, accommodation and transport on the island as well as some history and genealogy presentations.
Cruise candidate 3 with optional tour to Norfolk Island would be my choice of the three options. Sounds good.
I would to see Cruise candidate 3 with optional tour to Norfolk Island happen
Cruise 3 with Norfolk Option.
Cruise 3 with Norfolk Island would interest me.
Your feedback and interest here is great. But to back up your comments and influence our cruise decision you should also vote for your preferences in the 6th cruise survey itself. It is this that will influence our decision most – go to this link http://bit.ly/1ctZkXZ
As a regular cruiser, I believe you need 11 days to fully appreciate the relaxation of cruising, enjoy the ports and the sea days, plus have time to experience all the lectures and most importantly find time to socialize and meet others who may share your particular interests. We all learn from each other and to have specialists on board is a treat.
I would love those 11 days to include Norfolk Island and depart from Sydney but that is not an option offered.
Life is full of compromises!
The 11 day cruise out of Sydney would be one I might consider.
Linley, if we could do a Norfolk Island cruise we would. But sea access is so poor only three a cruises year call there – and sometimes they have to abort a planned call. Only one cruise is under $3000 (just), two (on small ships) are well over $10,000. The only realistic way for us to offer a Norfolk Island component to a cruise is fly there after the cruise. This is the option proposed at the end of the shorter cruise. There is no reason it could not be offered at the end of the 11 days Barrier Reef cruise if people wanted that. But with longer cruises offered in February and July 2014 and two or three longer cruises planned for 2015 we had not anticipated so much interest in the longer of the three cruises suggested for the Eastern States.
Norfolk Island sounds good!
The first 2014 cruise caters very well for Sydney, as it is both the starting and finishing port of the cruise to Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart.
Early next year Perth gets a from-and-to cruise, and fair enough.
However it was surprising, to say the least, to see that the second cruise, and thus all 2014 cruises, will be Sydney to Sydney, the one city in the country which should not even have been considered for the second cruise, given its already privileged history.
To quote from information still on the Unlock the Past website:
“6th Unlock the Past cruise
This cruise has yet to be finalised. We are negotiating for a seven day cruise to the Barrier Reef, probably out of Brisbane.”
The word “probably” in that paragraph gave some (false) hope that the Sydney stranglehold which started with the second cruise was about to be broken.
However not only was that idea abandoned, but the third option having been adopted, the add-on is also predicated on heavily advantaging Sydney yet again, as its dates make clear: Monday to Friday, the days of the week you can fly to and from Norfolk Island from nowhere else but guess where?
If you want to fly to Norfolk Island direct from Brisbane – which is by a considerable distance the closest Australian capital city to it – to do this tour, your options are to arrive two days early or one day late, and leave a day after the tour has finished.
By the end of 2014, no fewer than three out of the first four, and four of the first five Australian cruises will have ended in Sydney, and all but one of them will have started there too.
Nice – and cheap – for the privileged fifth of the Australian population which lives there. Not so for the majority.
There also appears to be no hope that this situation will change.
Ken, several factors are considered in selecting a cruise.
1. The availability of suitable cruises on ships with suitable conferencing facilities in the period under consideration – limited pretty much to Royal Caribbean, Celebrity and some P&O ships/cruises.
2. Price/value – the barrier Reef out of Brisbane (with P&0) would have been $200 more for 7 nights for seven nights than the 11 night barrier Reef option out of Sydney – and would have had two days less conference time. Given return airfare from Brisbane to Sydney would have been about $200 it is clearly better value even further people from Brisbane to fly to Sydney and joined the cruise from their. In Sydney is much cheaper to fly to from any other city than Brisbane.
3. Unlike Holland America and Royal Caribbean, P&O has no provision to reduce cruise prices with significant price reductions may be offered as the cruise sailing date nears. As P&O prices often seems to drop by many hundreds of dollars nearer the time we were reluctant to sign up to a contract where our group pays much higher rate fares than many who book later for the cruise.
2. The feedback from our 6th cruise survey
– 36% of respondents favoured the short cruise out of Sydney with a Norfolk Island option
– 29% favoured the barrier Reef cruise out of Sydney
– 27% favoured a barrier Reef cruise out of Brisbane
As yo can see almost comments to this blog post favoured the Norfolk Island linked cruise. And those that did favour the Barrier Reef preferred out of Sydney. In addition a number of people were interested in doing a Norfolk Island on its own.
On feedback and value the shorter Sydney cruise (which has the same conference time is a seven night Brisbane-barrier Reef cruise) – with the popular Norfolk Island option – was a clear choice in the end.
A Barrier Reef cruise is very much a possibility should we get a better value cruise on a suitable ship at some later stage.
Ken, Brisbane will likely be a departure option for those in Queensland who wish to do the Norfolk Island only tour. But there are no flights on the Monday or Friday, so the trade-off would be arriving one day later and returning one day later than the Sydney group. As far as being closer the flight is may be five or 10 minutes shorter from Brisbane than Sydney.