mcloaked

I don't know if the group can be named here - but I did a search and it was not too difficult to find their own site with a list of upcoming dance crossings - the two you mention in the previous post are certainly listed and are referred to as Dandy Wellington Crossing and Glenn Miller Orchestra Crossing and searching for those names would likely get you to their website. Cunard may not provide any information about those for obvious reasons.

For any passengers whose primary interest on Cunard voyages was ballroom dancing, and discovering that a group had been able to lock out the only relevant facilities for most evenings this would ruin the holiday completely and recourse to a substantial refund would be justifiable.

Mask wearing is much more about limiting the risk any one person adds to others, rather than the risk to yourself - so it is a question of being considerate to others rather then being self centred, at a personal level. From Cunard's view it is minimising the spread to limit the number of cases on any one voyage.

In March on QE on the Norway voyage, a significant proportion of passengers took the limit of 4 in lifts to heart, and most people used the stairs most of the time, leaving the lifts to those most in need, and allowed maximum opportunity for those who were physically unable to use the stairs. There were only a few occasions when people did fill a lift with four and keeping fairly near the corners was the best anyone could do. Certainly for fit and healthy people most were being as considerate as possible on that voyage.

Surely the mask request/requirements are there to minimise the risks within practical limitations. The masks are to try to prevent someone who is infectious from spraying people near them with virus laden droplets. So if an infected person is walking around they could in principle pass the virus to a lot of people as they walk around. Sitting down they could generate a cloud of virus particles that people within 5 to 10 feet or more could breathe in be become infected - in a bar or restaurant you can't eat or drink with a mask on obviously which is why it is not practical to ask people to wear one in those venues. However in a theatre it is not too cumbersome to wear a mask and at least reduce the chance you might infect people nearby. Clearly it is better to have fewer people becoming ill during a cruise if at all possible. We have all seen the threads about a non-zero chance that someone, despite the vaccines and being tested before boarding could become infectious a day or two after embarkation - so Cunard are taking a sensible and practical approach to minimising the numbers of Covid cases, whilst at the same time trying to let passengers have as nice an on-board experience as possible - a difficult ask at the best of times. The least we can do is co-operate and help as best we can to contribute to that optimal position.

Our experience has always been that once the Cunard agent has completed the transfer the confirmation arrives very quickly, and most times before I have even completed the phone call. Hearing of long delays is, for us, an unheard of situation and often I can open the confirmation pdf file and check the details whilst I am still talking to the Cunard agent. There may have been a technical problem very recently, but hopefully if so it will be sorted out quickly. Even when booking whilst on board at Future cruises, the confirmation mail arrives before we have left the office.

Just to add to the thread:

It looks like the same internet plans are on all Cunard ships. If you go to the web page https://www.cunard.com/en-gb/the-cunard-experience/staying-connected#plans and click on "What internet plans are available on my cruise, and how can I purchase them?" you will see the plans available.

Or even get a red self-tie one, and a gold self-tie one, and cut the ends off one and sew them in place on the other! Your own customised self-tie Cunard bow tie! Provided you are adept with a needle and thread as a man, or ask very very nicely if your SO might consider helping if she has those skills!

It is so nice to see people enjoying dressing up for any evening, whether formal or not. Hearing that some men actually sew their own bow ties - fabulous. Now that would mean you could make your own red and gold self tie bow tie for the Cunard Gala evenings - something I tried to find in the various stores but never succeeded!

Yes interesting thoughts about how the figures arose - also some of the staterooms were being used for senior crew members (not isolating) and indeed along the corridor outside our room a number of doors had a set of hangars with neatly laundered white shirts and some officer jackets - and occasionally going down the corridor a smart crew member would offer a 'good morning' as he or she emerged from their room - rooms which would have been passenger staterooms prior to the pandemic. So that might account for some of the numbers in your speculation.

During a QE voyage in late March, upon asking about the passengers on board, it was around 3/4 full in relation to the stateroom overall capacity, but we were also told at the time, that Cunard had made the decision to keep around 550 beds unavailable for sale on that voyage, specifically to have accommodation available on the ship for possible isolation rooms (for both passengers and crew), but that of those rooms that were made available for sale, every room was sold on that voyage. So of those staterooms that were available they were all 'sold out'. Given the numbers quoted in this thread, it is entirely possible that they are now keeping a third of rooms available for possible isolation, given the numbers of passengers who have been in need to isolate on some recent voyages. Hence also the ship may currently be only 2/3 full, and it is also possible that all available rooms were indeed sold out ahead of departure in the same way as for the March voyage I referred to above.

Can any on-board spend, from booking on board previously, and similar, be used to pay for additional days of internet now in the new system?

Yes, it is exactly what I did - downloaded the pdf file, and then printed it separately from the browser. That worked for me, and I felt it was important to not leave it till the last minute!

Perhaps one of the Cunard IT engineers has made changes that are now allowing at least some browsers to access the pdfs correctly. Some of the security features in at least one browser causes problems with payment systems, as well as the "I'm not a robot" Captcha authenticators. As browsers become increasingly more secure they can at times 'break' security features that are in place in web sites!

I had a problem printing luggage labels using my main browser but changing to a different browser it worked fine. It might be worth just trying a different browser.

I don't know who did the bottle smashing but there is a close up of the bottle hitting the aft end from an Italian paper which I am copying here:

Also a picture looking towards the bow as she launched at

There is also a video taken looking at the stern as it slid down the ramp in this Italian news article: https://www.ilmattino.it/napoli/cronaca/fincantieri_varato_castellammare_troncone_queen_anne_napoli-6658231.html

I am sure that there will be a following for QA - but not necessarily all who have loved the elegance of the three current queens. For me the real deal breaker is the ballroom floor - which to me seems like there is either a real ignorance about what constitutes real ballroom dancing and the floor that is needed to do it, or there is an intention to dilute the ballroom dancing on QA compared to the other three ships. It is also possible that the plan is to use the QA Queen's Room for a bit of poor ballroom dancing as well as disco evenings - which would destroy the ballroom dancing even more. Of course a significant number of passengers never get on the floor to dance real ballroom - but, for those who do, being unable to dance properly is a killer factor, and they may well decide to book on QE/QV/QM2 so that they can dance where they will be unable to on QA. It is analogous to the situation where people who love being spectators to the top tennis matches, such as at Wimbledon, find suddenly that the Wimbledon modernisers decided that tennis courts take up too much space, and it would be financially better if the tennis courts were half the size to accommodate more spectators - and then wonder why the top players decide to play matches in the other cities, and not Wimbledon, where they do retain the traditional tennis court sizes - and then managers who don't play tennis can't understand what the fuss is about merely because the size of the courts is a 'little smaller' than used to be the case!

I had hoped there would be lots of chairs/sunbeds on the promenade deck like there are on QM2 - nicely shaded by the lifeboats and underside of the deck above. For us if the ballroom is such that the floor is less than two thirds of the length of the other three Cunard ships, then that spells the end of ballroom dancing on QA - and if we can't dance properly every evening, then we won't be booking on QA. The classic elegance of the other three ships also seems to have been replaced by modern clean but clinical styling with no character. So the immediate warmth and embracing ambience of the other three ships looks to have been erased, at least in our view, in the pictures that have been released so far. I suppose everyone has their own view!

The deck plans are on some of the cruise travel agent sites too - I guess they can't be named.

I had another look at the plan and used the approximate scale of the width of the ship to estimate the Queen's Room dance floor size - from the QA deck plan it looks like the floor will be around 9m x 9m but a weird oval shape which makes like difficult for the ballroom dances, though not quite as bad for Latin dances, but is is only 60% of the length of the QE/QV floor, but a little bit wider by about 5 or 6 feet. QE is approximately 93 metres squared (length 12.88m x width 7.23m) The floor area looks to be about 75 to 80 m2 compared to QM2 117sq m or QE/QV of 93sq m. So a significant reduction in ballroom floor space. This will not please those who can really dance.

That is most interesting - and the big difference to the other three ships that we immediately notice is that the dance floor in the Queen's Room seems quite a lot smaller than that of QV and QE! I know that the beam of QA is 35metres which is about 3 metres wider than QE/QV, but even so the length of the oval dance floor seems to be about the width of three and a bit staterooms whereas the QE/QV Queen's Room dance floor looks like being about 6 stateroom widths - so unless the rooms are significantly different in size on QA compared to QE/QV then the dance floor may be a disappointment for ballroom dance fans! Maybe someone knows the length and width of the QA Queen's Room dance floor and can tell me I am wrong?

I thought that the onboard surveys were discontinued a few years ago. If you phone Cunard they will be able to change your 'communications' settings so that you do get sent the post-voyage questionnaire links. It is also possible to do that when logged in to My Cunard.