7th April 2017- Brisbane

Friday the 7th finally rolled around. Even though we have had this cruise booked for about 15 months we still weren't packed. The last week has been filled with our usual holiday appointments of dentist, physio, and flu vaccinations as well as a couple of others. There was also some last minute shopping on Thursday for G as he realized he didn't have anything to wear except work uniforms and some worn out old weekend stuff that had really was on it's last legs.

We had booked our car into Portside Parking and they were providing a shuttle for the 3 of us. We were given a choice of 3 time slots and choose the earliest of course. We have always used Portside parking and they always look after our car and the whole experience is painless.

The multi-use terminal, or grain terminal, at Fisherman island is the Brisbane alternative cruise terminal for ships longer than 270 meters who can't turn around in the river at Portside, or who are too tall to fit under the Gateway bridge. This was our first experience with it and it was great. Well organised, plenty of seating. As we arrived they gave out a number and we took a seat. When they call your groups number you line up. This saves standing in a line for ages. At Portside the longest we stood in a queue was 2 hours back in 2014 for our PNG cruise. That was not a great experience and fortunately has been much faster since.

View from the Sea Princess docked at Fisherman island. The large white building is the Port of Brisbane visitor centre, open to the public Monday to Friday. It has a cafe and a roof top viewing area.

We managed to get aboard about 12:30pm, dropped our hand luggage at our cabin, met our cabin steward John, and then dashed to Horizon court for some lunch. As this cruise wasn't a full turnaround, most embarked in Sydney 2 days prior, there wasn't a huge crowd for lunch. We spent the afternoon checking out the ship and unpacking.

Around 3pm the Pacific Aria sailed past, on it's way north to Townsville.

Pacific Aria sailing past

We didn't depart until 6pm.
Our dinner time was 7:45pm traditional sitting. Anytime dining was not available for this cruise. We were joined by a family of three who were pleasant company. As we weren't sitting by ourselves I didn't take many photos of the food but I do have menu shots and will include them in each post. Most of the menu photos are poor quality and I provide them more as a reminder for ourselves of what we had.

Tonight's entertainment was Monty Cotton with a Johnny Cash tribute show in the Princess theater.