2Oldpeopleinlove

I don’t know how long you’ll be onboard, but for the week-long TA we did last December, my husband just used tap water. He’s still alive and kicking.

34 minutes ago, NE John said:

Yes, it looks like Global Entry is slowly expanding to cruise home ports.

I Hope you’re right! It’s very helpful at airports. I’d love to see the same at cruise ports,

1 hour ago, wetterthanwater said:

 

He's nice because he wants your money.....

A-He was very pleasant and friendly, even trying to bargain down the taxi price for us.

B-Even if your assumption is correct, it doesn’t change how helpful he was,the good he did for us. 
So why denigrate him for good behavior?

When we disembarked at Brooklyn last December, we paid a porter $20 as a tip and he put us straight through to a very short line. We’ll worth the $20…and a super nice guy, too.

7 minutes ago, buchanan101 said:

But only with a properly tied bow tie obviously… not a clip on

 

i would find a cumberband too hot, and not in the way you suggest… 

Re the tie, well, yeah!

But my husband wears vests to go with my dresses, not cummerbunds. That would probably be way to warm for you, but he looks great!

As I’ve noted before on these men’s-dress-code threads, if men only knew how hot they look in tuxes (AKA dinner jackets), they’d wear them at every opportunity!

We had excellent connectivity in December on our return TA. Then again, we don’t spend a lot of time online on board. 

28 minutes ago, cruisetonowhere10 said:

And do you do this in cash? USD or Euros?

USD , but I’m quite certain they’d be just as happy with euros.

We generally ask for just coffee and juice from room service, and we tip a couple of dollars each time. If we made more complex orders, we’d likely give more.

This is one reason we book onboard….reduced and fully refundable deposits up to date of final payment.

We’ve used two “pop ups” and both were superior to the QM2’s Verandah, though not to QE’s. We paid for both and think paying for a “pop up” dinner makes more sense than a free QM2 Verandah meal.

We agree with so much here, particularly the distinction between a very pleasant Verandah on QE and a dull but pretentious Verandah on the QM2. Our Verandah dinner on the QM2 in December was included as part of the reservation package we’d booked on a previous sailing, and the maître d’ was surprisingly condescending about it.
 

That was irritating, particularly as the meal was not nearly so good as what we’ve had in steakhouses on land. Actually, it wasn’t as good as what we can do at home. As restaurant reviewers for our city’s paper for almost 8 years, we do have a pretty good standard for comparison, and Verandah on QE was very good, while the one on QM2 was, at best, pedestrian. The physical placement and lighting, etc on QM2 was also far below what we expected: dull and dim.

We probably won’t ever use the Verandah on QM2 again, which is a shame because, despite the pretentious knife presentations, QE shows how good it could be.

My husband wears waistcoats to match the colors of my dresses. He looks fabulous, and we’re both happy. That said, we have no opinion about what others choose. Privately, though, I think men would wear dinner jackets/tuxes every chance they get if they only knew how superb they look in them.

There is indeed a socket sort of behind the head of the bed in Britannia, but I cannot speak to any other sort of cabin.

You cannot bring SURGE-PROTECTED extension cords. My husband uses a CPAP also, and QM2 is our favorite ship. If we recall correctly, they used to provide distilled water at no charge. On our last TA, last December, we were able to get it on board, but we may have had to pay a few dollars for it. The plain extension cord we pack is no problem, but we’ve never needed one THAT long!

Agree with the above, but everyone’s different. We choose transatlantic both to avoid flying both ways and for the ultimate relaxation and fun of sea days. My sister, on the other hand, would never do a TA because she requires ports most days. Just depends on your personal preferences, but yes, there ARE tons of fun things to do on Cunard sea days.

We’ve most often found that we are served large pours on the package. Whether we are charged for two small or one, I don’t know, but it’s never been a problem. In fact, one night, we asked to have the Cunard Reserve red rather then the regular only to be told by the sommelier that we had been drinking the reserve all along. 
 

In short, they will do their best to treat you well. No one’s losing money on this anyway.

Mr. Cummings can wear any kind of coat he likes, but to spend that much time on ageist commentary in such a short article….Wow, certainly does undermine any bit of credibility he might have squeezed  out of his celebrity.

3 hours ago, NE John said:

I would feel better doing everything via Cunard but can’t use stores credit card points to shave off some of the cost. Unless I’m wrong about that?

I’m in the U.S. also, and I have been treating credit card points travel as a lucrative hobby for years. We fly eastbound transatlantic in business class on points whenever possible, spend a week or so either in the UK or in France with our son and his family, and then take the QM2 back to the U.S.  (Iberia cards have great signup bonuses and their off-season TA flights are very cheap for business.)

If you don’t have that much interest in playing the game, then you might consider booking via Cunard (if that’s your preference) on a Capital One Venture card, which would allow you to acquire 2 points per dollar and then erase that amount in travel expenses on the card. 

Yes, you’re right: the package includes service charges; one at a time, it’s added.

It was not less formal for us. In ports and during the day, we dressed less formally, but that’s true on every Cunard trip. Evenings, though? If we didn’t want to dress we’d have gone on a different line. It’s such a pleasant thing to do when we have so much of the year that won’t allow it. (Growing much of what we eat makes most of the year pretty grubby for us!)

The only cutback we really noticed in December was in the number and quality of musicians. A real disappointment.

20 minutes ago, frankp01 said:

That may be a function of it being a British hotel. We encountered the same, in December, at the Novotel in Southampton. Only the executive rooms had heat.

We were in an “executive” room. Also, a staff member made a great show of trying to make it work, but it eventually became clear that the problem was no surprise to him. Aside from that, we have visited the UK more times than I can readily tell you, and we’ve never encountered a lack of heating before.

The only thing we found the app useful for was keeping an eye on shipboard charges. Most other features were not kept up to date or had little content.

Just don’t stay at the Leonardo Grand Harbour, which we confused with the Harbour Hotel I assume everyone is recommending. We made that error two weeks ago before boarding to sail home. While the room was large and clean, there was no working heat. In December.