Melbourne, Australia Port Reviews

Very short stay.

Make sure you have enough time to get back to your cruise!

Great place to visit

Wish I had more time there. Very lively city. Free bus from the ship to many tourists areas.

Visited Healesville Animal Sanctuary. Basically paid $150 for a bus trip out and back. Way overpriced! Didn't include entry fee to sanctuary which was another $30. Don't recommend.

The port is quite far from the city (not walkable) so I decided to take a Princess tour to the Dandenong mountains. The tour was ok and took us partly thru the city, but I probably should have tried to get into downtown Melbourne and see some more of the city instead.

A smaller port, but embarkation and debarkation were very organized, which helped ease any congestion.

This is a blanket comment/concern regarding all the included excursions on this trip. The bus/coach drivers have to double as tour guides. We feel this is asking too much of the driver responsible for such a large vehicle in traffic to, at the same time, provide a meaningful narrative/tour. Also, this is simply not safe - they can't concentrate adequately on both driving and narrating. Most were not great narrations as the drivers rightly concentrated more on their driving. One driver had problems with her headset mike, and tried to use a hand-held mike while driving us for about an hour. I appreciate her tenacity, but it was very dangerous! These included excursions were largely "weak" - mostly driving around the city while a bus-driver made a comment here and there as they had time/inclination. On multiple busses, the audio system on the bus was poor and guests had difficulty and/or couldn't hear the narration. None of the bus drivers used the Vox-boxe system that had been provided to each guest. That would have improved our hearing.

The reason we booked this cruise during the Australian Open. We were to sick to leave the cabin much less get off the ship.

We left from our home town.