Tuesday 08 December

Port Douglas cruises through the weekend

Four luxury Cruise Liners made Port Douglas their home over the weekend from Friday (Dec 04) to Monday (Dec 07).  

Day one:
 
First to hit the Marina at 8.30 on Friday were over 900 passengers from the first of the P&O ships, 'Dawn Princess'.  They were chaperoned straight onto their selected Reef, Rainforest and Cairns tours and a steady stream of other passengers then drifted through the Marina and out into the main town.  The meet and greet team at the Marina comprised of staff from the Port Douglas Chamber of Commerce, TPPD and tourismportdouglas.com.au had a busy time answering questions and giving directions for both tours and shops.  Local business was unfortunately very disappointed with so many of the passengers tied up with pre organised tours.

 

Day two:
 
Saturday, saw the Dawn Princess' sister ship, the 'Diamond Princess' arrive at 8.30am and again the early birds were directed to their tours and the passengers interested in the town started to come off the boat from around 10am and browsed around the Marina and up into the main street. These two cruise liners had nearly 5,000 passengers on board and over half of them booked tours, with the other passenger’s content to have a more relaxed day in the shops and cafes around town before departing on the last tenders from about 4.00pm.

 

Day three:

Sunday morning brought the return of the Royal Caribbean’s 'Rhapsody of the Seas', having been here just over a week ago on Nov 26.  A very enthusiastic crowd again departed the ship for a full day of fun in Port Douglas. As the day got hotter more and more questions requested where the local water holes were and they weren’t talking about swimming. That
evening as Rhapsody pulled anchor to depart, First Class Luxury Cruise ship 'The World' sailed in to anchorage.

 

Day four:
 
The World' stayed overnight and was still here on Monday for another full day of sightseeing and tours. 'The World' travels continually around the globe with her capacity 500 passengers enjoying the sheer luxury of their unique liner.  A very quiet morning on the Marina as most of the passenger decided against coming ashore and leaving their luxurious ship.

 

The total passenger count was over 8,000 for this weekend making it the biggest capacity ever seen in Port since the Cruise ships have been including Port Douglas in their itineraries. All the passengers seemed delighted with the new attention given to them by onshore operations by Meridien Marina.  Random survey’s were conducted by  tourismportdouglas.com.au and nothing but nice comments about the town and the facilities were reported throughout the day.  Some even promised to come back and see us again!

 
Meridien Marina general manager, Jason Roles said "I have been delighted with the way the weekend has gone. We look forward to seeing these ships again'.

'Rhapsody of the Seas' comes back again just before Christmas on Dec 16 but our last cruise ship visit for this season will be the 'Pacific Jewel' on January 27th.  There is then a short break before 'Rhapsody of the Seas' yo yo's her way back on March 3rd to mark the start of a schedule of, at least, two cruise ships per month through until November 2010.