rakkor

I had a Zoom work meeting while on my September cruise and the WiFi reception in our Britannia room was awful so ended up in a quiet corner in the Commodore Club which didn't stay quiet for long. Jane was policing me and apologising to the people who came and sat by me - I would have used the Admirals Lounge, but the cruise director films their piece for the morning in there in the afternoon.

@transatlantic fan We had both the WC and the senior officers parties on our October QV cruise

And free washing powder as well. Also have a look at the 15 items for $52 offer on the laundry list, which is a bit of a bargain (even more do if you have a platinum or diamond discount) to get big items laundered and pressed and save your trip to the laundry for pants and socks.

I needed Zoom access several times on our last cruise, so decided to bite the bullet and pay for the premium package for the full cruise. We're also Diamond and I felt it was a necessary expense and after the loyalty discount was a couple of hundred bucks. I'd hold off as long as you can into the cruise if the expense is a concern as it gets cheaper by each day passed.

Yep - With the Premium package I was able to conduct several Zoom meetings on our recent cruise. The only time it failed was in port where I assume the interference was causing my meeting connection to break up,

I agree - we had a Commodore's package on the last cruise and the selection was very disappointing. No champagne, no rose and no dessert or port. I'm not sure I'd take a wine package again if I couldn't see what I was buying before hand. The brochure I was sent bore no relation to what was offered on board.

The Bay of Biscay is an unknown, it can be really lumpy but also flat calm as we had at the beginning of October I see you're from Manchester, so temperature wise it'll likely to be shorts and t-shirt in Lisbon, maybe a little cooler in Vigo - Caveats do apply though, Lisbon in October was chucking it down, so you never know. Vigo is a nice introduction, easy walk from the the ship, you dock right in town, and some lovely cafe's and a nice little town centre for a bimble around and to buy those things that you forgot to pack.

Your experiences obviously trump mine - I have a Nespresso at home, so thought "how difficult can this be?" It turned out very difficult, with a lot of faffing and two clean-ups later to get a particulary horrible cup of coffee - It says something when I actually prefer the brown sludge served at breakfast to the Illy coffee served up in the room.

They did on our recent QV voyage, but it was mainly tat, feather boas and flapper headbands etc, Better quality tat is available on-line.

I posted the QV PG menus Dinner and Lunch on my blog from last month's Greek Islands cruise (I think lunch is the same menu in the Grills and Britannia) Lunch HERE... & Dinner HERE...

15 items for $52, everything comes back pressed!

But only Right Handed ironing boards, much to Jane's annoyance being a leftie

And even then it's no longer automatic, we never received our Diamond pins on our last cruise - apparently you need to request them from voyage sales.

The Commodore Club and the Chart Room will be open, you are correct, you're a bit late for getting lunch in the Golden Lion but food is available in the Lido

We had a wine package which we pre-purchased direct from Cunard, Commodore's collection

I think Dover Sole was on the PG A La Carte on the first week of our Greek Islands then it changed - I may be wrong about this but I'm sure that the next table had it on the second night, not that I was spying on them

Our table in PG had Bananas Foster one night and the table next to us had something Flambeed on the last night, I know we just requested it at lunch, Jane was going to request Cherries Jubilee, but it turned out they were on the menu that night, so never bothered.

I'll attribute it to a mixup in communication, I am a Northener after all.

Possibly, but that doesn't explain the traffic chaos in the QE II Terminal, our booked Taxi just gave up trying to get to us and we ended up waiting for a ranked cab Blowers was OK, I preferred his initial chats about Arlott and Johnners, rather than his second outing, but I though Gower was better on our TA back in 2019, although he only gave a single talk plus a Q&A on that crossing. As has been said on the other reviews of this cruise, I do think Cunard are letting themselves down with the staffing levels, we noticed it on the Amsterdam Cruise in the bars, but really noticed it this cruise in the PG dining room where our waiters were severely overstretched, luckily we're rarely in a rush, but some times getting served seemed to take forever.

My final post is now online, obviously no daily programme but I have scanned the PG lunch and dinner menus, unfortunately They all got mixed up in packing, so I scanned them as a lunch page and a dinner page. https://blog.rakkor.uk Disembarkation was by far the worst I've experienced or possibly the second worst, the common denominator being the QE II terminal which is an awful place to disembark to. I don't blame Cunard for the chaos, but I do blame them for us being some of the last off the ship - being Grills and Diamond at one time meant priority disembarkation, this seems to be no longer the case.

I noticed that when accessing the Free Internet browsing connected to the ships Wi-fi there were links there for those sites. I never clicked them, but my assumption they are there so you have free access when aboard

We're well on the way home now, after a quick visit to Jane's Dad's house to pick up the car and raid M&S for some provisions, we're driving along a sunny M25

Just after I posted the first message, we ended queuing for well over an hour for a taxi, I had originally ordered an Uber but that gave up trying to get to us and after that I couldn't get one after that.

The QEII terminal was chaos with huge queues for planned pickups, taxis couldn't get through the mess to the taxi rank and no one seemed to know what was going on. This compares with the Amsterdam cruise which also used QEII and seemed way more efficient and everything went smoothly

We're still stuck on board and feeling a little miffed - As both Grills and Diamond, we'd have expected to have disembarked early, but our time is scheduled for 09:30 - Lots of announcements saying delays and don't hog the gangway