Sunday, November 5, 2023 - Well, things have gone from bad to weird yet again with Princess concerning our upcoming trip.  It's enough to make me want to tear my hair out!

Me - very frustrated!

On Friday (Nov. 3) I got a voice mail message from Roberta P. with Princess advising me that the land portion of our trip - the Australia portion has been changed.  The tour we signed up for (3H) has been cancelled due to lack of interest (not enough participants).  So Princess has put us on the 4H Ultimate Australia tour instead.  But - the tour is one day longer than our original tour (and misses one of the stops on the original tour but subs in two stops at a new location - Darwin).  That means that the day we arrive, after having traveled for 26 hours, we have to immediately join the group for the day tour of Sydney!  I about blew a gasket on that.  We are in the process of seeing if we can change flights to come in 2 days earlier on December 14 (means leaving here on Dec. 12) and arranging for an extra day at the hotel in Sydney, at an additional cost of approximately $1100 + the cost of the extra night at the hotel.  Won't know until tomorrow (Nov. 6) if we can make it work.  It has me all churned up inside.  I'm hoping for the best.  I'll keep you all posted.  On the bright side, if this works out we have better (longer) connection times between flights AND on the return flight, we'll get back into Harrisburg, PA at about 8:45 p.m. which means we won't need to stay at an airport hotel overnight before being picked up.  We'll see how it goes.  I'll provide more details after my chat with Roberta tomorrow!

Ok - it is now November 19 and finally I think our travel plans are settled.  Roberta couldn't arrange through Princess to get an extra night at the hotel, so we re-worked the flights yet again, to leave on December 13 so that we arrive in Sydney on Dec 15 to start the revised 4H Ultimate Australia tour on the proper day.  Now, all our flights are on Delta Airlines and we're traveling Harrisburg to Atlanta, Atlanta to Los Angeles, and Los Angeles to Sydney and just reversing that on the way back on January 5 - and we're back to arriving in Harrisburg at 11:45 p.m. meaning we will keep our overnight hotel reservation at Harrisburg and get picked up the morning of January 6.  Extra cost was about $1150.  On the bright side, all of the connecting times between flights are now acceptable at between 2-3 hours for every segment of our journey going and returning!

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