December 2010 - Family Christmas Cruise to New Zealand

Family Photo with Sydney Bridge in background

Sun Princess departing Sydney Harbor

Family Christmas Photo onboard Sun Princess

Kimberly with her new friends onboard

Formal portrait of Kimberly

Family Christmas Cruise to New Zealand

For our family 2010 Christmas holiday we took a 13 night cruise from Sydney Australia to New Zealand aboard the Sun Princess. This was our 4th cruise with Princess Cruise Lines, the first being our 2005 Alaskan Cruise, the second being our 2009 Baltic Cruise and our latest prior to this cruise being 2010 Caribbean Cruise. The Sun Princess was a much smaller ship compared to the Emerald Princess and Sapphire Princess which we had been on previously. In addition, the demographic profile of the passengers on this trip was generally much older than we had experienced on prior cruises. Given that this trip was over the Christmas holiday we expected more families and a younger crowd, however, this wasn't quite the case for this cruise. We estimated that 50% of the passengers were in the 65+ year age bracket. This didn't necessarily cause us any problems other than on some of the shore excursions you would get caught behind someone with a walker and it could take a while to get off the bus. In many regards having an older group onboard was positive as it meant that the pool/spa area, casino and late night shows weren't generally too crowded. In addition, the cruise wasn't as mixed internationally as prior cruises we have been on with about 85% of the passengers being from Australia.

Overall we all had a good time on this cruise and hope to return to New Zealand again. On our next visit we hope to rent a camper and drive across the country to allow us more time to visit the interior locations. View photos and read about each of our stops using the links in the below itinerary.

Our Itinerary

Our New Zealand Cruise itinerary was as follows:

Day	Date	Port	Distance	Arrival	Departure
1	Dec 17th	Sydney, Australia			4:00pm
2	Dec 18th	At Sea
3	Dec 19th	At Sea
4	Dec 20th	Bay of Islands, New Zealand	1,166 nautical miles	8:00am	5:00pm
5	Dec 21st	Auckland, New Zealand	145 nautical miles	7:00am	6:00pm
6	Dec 22nd	Tauranga, New Zealand	152 nautical miles	7:00am	6:00pm
7	Dec 23rd	Napier, New Zealand	269 nautical miles	12:00pm	6:00pm
8	Dec 24th	Wellington, New Zealand	199 nautical miles	8:00am	6:00pm
9	Dec 25th	Christchurch (Lyttelton), New Zealand	160 nautical miles	8:00am	6:00pm
10	Dec 26th	Dunedin (Port Chalmers), New Zealand	187 nautical miles	8:00am	6:00pm
11	Dec 27th	Fiordland National Park, New Zealand (scenic cruising)	241 nautical miles	8:00am	5:00pm
12	Dec 28th	At Sea
13	Dec 29th	At Sea
14	Dec 30th	Sydney, Australia	983 nautical miles	7:00am