D&N

And from another angle....

Talk of Christmas cakes and the prior mention of gingerbread reindeer reminded me that the girls next door brought us some biscuits as a thank you for presents we had given them for helping their dad look after our cats on a recent weekend when we visited London. The girls pet and play with the cats while their dad attends to their food and other needs. Not quite gingerbread reindeer but very tasty with a coffee.

I've not come across that, but then I've never looked at travelling on either. GWR seem to use "cabin" for the Night Riviera Sleeper. I think Scotrail's Caledonian Sleeper used "cabin" when I used them now and again for business travel, although in standard class you could reserve a berth in a shared cabin. The current modern Caledonian Sleeper calls them "rooms". I can understand the use of "compartment" as I've travelled in many compartments in the past, but on seated trains. Our family would reserve 7 of 8 seats in a compartment when travelling Glasgow-London. My mother would hope nobody occupied the 8th seat so that she didn't need to worry about us embarrassing her.

I would call a room for sleeping in or anything else one might do in your private space on a ship, a cabin. I would apply that to rooms on sleeper trains as well. I can understand that a multi roomed cabin could be described as a suite (of rooms). From a practical point of view [cabin & suite] have the same number of letters if one is writing the word, but a larger proportion of folk are likely to spell the former correctly. To me cruise lines use the term stateroom in promotional material simply to try and impress.

I suspect you may need to spend half your life trawling through travel agents and port authority websites around the globe looking for information that is briefly posted on web pages by mistake! I personally think it would be quite rude to ask them to divulge their sources after all the time they've taken to gather the information (I know you didn't actually ask them to) and it would be against forum rules for them to mention travel agents by name.

If we wanted to take in all the dancing we could do a late lunch, afternoon tea and skip dinner. Wouldn't be a problem for us. At home we have a late lunch and only liquids in the evenings on weekdays. It was one of the biggest elements of reducing our weights and remaining well within a healthy BMI. But I'm not sure we would be prepared to miss a Gala Dinner on QM2!

Scheduling isn't great for dancers either. In a YouTube video showing a QM2 daily program from July 2023, it lists Pre-dinner dancing to The Queens Room Trio from 7pm to 7:45pm, then Roaring 20's Gala Night from 8:45pm. Even with the very short distance from Queens Room to Britannia Club Restaurant we wouldn't consider trying to squeeze dinner into an hour.

British sparkling wines have been beating Champagnes in blind tastings and wining awards at wine fairs for many years. It has been suggested that the climate in Southern England has become very similar to that of the Champagne Region 50 years ago. I've never tasted British sparkling but would be more than happy to try if I found it on a wine menu. Personally I prefer Crémant or Blanquette de Limoux to most Champagnes.

Why not check the price booking direct with Cunard, including whether any onboard credit would be offered? That tells you if the agent is adding anything on or discounting the Cunard fare.

Everyone's definition of expensive could be different. I know some folk may not be prepared to buy items from China (including Hong Kong). In recent years one of our sources has been SHEIN. My wife has 20s style dresses, ballgowns and cocktail dresses from them and they've cost between €20 and €45 after discounts. There are always discount codes, we rarely get less than 15% off. Zapaka specialise in 20s style and probably made two of those bought from SHEIN. We've not bought a dress from them. JJ's House are more expensive, but sale and other discounts are available. They're do mainly wedding and prom wear. No 20s style. Other than sale samples or returns, everything is made to order. Regarding delivery; SHEIN average 8 days from China to France. Zapaka took several weeks with little delivery info, I suspect items are made to order. JJ's House range from 9 to 27 days, the latter included a custom order. If you want any guidance on using SHEIN or JJ's House, probably best to ask on one of the other dress code threads to keep this clearer for Bluemarble to gather gala night details.

Was it just Latin? That would seem stupid. Most afternoons/evenings of general dancing held in Central Scotland would be about 75% ballroom and 25% latin, sequence and party dances. There are certainly folk who specialise in latin dancing but they're unlikely to fill the floor. I find it hard to believe that the Irish duo wouldn't play some numbers suitable for ballroom or latin. We dance 90% ballroom & latin to the bands and disco music in G32. I disapprove of them putting chairs on the dance floor though. That reduces the number of people that can dance at any time and risks having sticky drinks spilt on the wood. Nice to read your posts. Hope it's not too cold when you return. The forecasters are even threatening us with 1°C some mornings this week!

From YouTube videos. Most recently from a cruise during the 2023 English October half term there are two recumbent cycles shown to port side of the run of treadmills facing the bow. A few months earlier there were two cross trainers in that space and three recumbents behind the run of treadmills. Recumbent cycles are a fairly standard piece of Technogym kit, I'd be surprised if they ever removed them completely.

I wonder if it might have been to give better access for maintenance work on some of the lifeboat derricks? It looked as if most of the lifeboats/tenders were removed whilst in Rotterdam.

That could almost be taken as a challenge for someone to sit in The Chart Room or Commodore Club with a phone to their ear and fabricate a similar conversation just to shock those around them. 🙂

I've found what @Catchum was referencing. Princess offer two levels of cruise upgrade. Each of them offers the corresponding drinks package and surprisingly and confusingly are significantly cheaper than the drinks package alone. For someone that is happy to order a glass of Merlot or Chardonnay without knowing or caring where it was produced or how it tastes, it looks to be an excellent deal. Their more expensive package does give the wine details and we wouldn't drink most of them. Whispering Angel Rosé is on list, it's the only one we would drink. Not our first choice as it's a wine that's not widely stocked in France. It tends to go to export markets (a sign of something the French don't rate highly). We'd need to buy bottles to get whites or reds. It's difficult to compare bottle prices as the labels offered are usually different, however the Whispering Angel is $65 per bottle on Princess against $60 on Cunard. Their is a huge difference in Cunard's favour on Pétrus, which could be explained by the vintage but Princess don't bother to state the vintage on their list, and I doubt there are many passengers spend that amount on a bottle of wine, particularly those that are complaining about the price of a package. We know we'll pay more on QM2 than we do here in France but we're happy to factor that into the cost.

Sounds a fair bit cheaper if all tips and wifi are included. Although I can't find that deal searching on Google. What I've found suggests it's increased to $64.99 + 18%. But that's not from Princess itself so I wouldn't trust it to be correct. From what I've seen of their wine lists I wouldn't consider drinking many of their wines. Our travel agent has been on their ships a few times this year and posted hundreds of photos on Facebook, including menus. Generally apart from sparkling I don't normally drink anything other than French. We sailed with Princess once 25 years ago when our tastes were different and enjoyed it. We only want to sail on QM2 anyway so have no choice but to pay up!

I believe the package is currently $70 per person per day for cruises of 5 days and over if booked in advance. That gives you up to 15 drinks per day and includes the 15% service charge. Plus it covers real coffees soft drinks and bottled water. Would you drink the wines by the glass that are included in the package? And how much cheaper would a similar package be on Princess?

We had gas central heating. The living area was rarely at less than 24C, particularly when I was sitting at my PC working for hours at a time. I do have/had a few navy/black fleeces that I can add if I need them. We only have electricity here and installing central heating isn't practical. Reversible air heat pumps are the cheapest way of heating in winter and cooling during heatwaves. And very effective since we rarely have a difference greater than 10C between the outdoor and indoor units.

At 67 I'm not sure if I'm an older person. I sometimes wear one heavily checked thick soft cotton lumberjack style collared shirt here in winter to help me keep warm. I only bought it because it was in a sale. I don't own a jumper/sweater as I don't like wearing them. The check shirt I wore to travel to Southampton last time looks to have quite a strong pattern in the photos, but it looks more subdued in reality. Otherwise I wouldn't wear a highly patterned shirt anytime or anywhere. I prefer plain coloured or fine stripe or check. I won't have that issue in future trips on QM2 as I'll be wearing a dinner suit every night so the shirts will all be white. I do have some collared polo shirts that I should really throw away. I haven't worn them in about 15 years.

@2Oldpeopleinlove You say hotels are booked. I assume due to your aims for evenings you would travel in mornings. If you can state what days of week you need to move from where to where, and what the earliest time you would want to be on move in morning, I can look up your public transport options. I take it Gatwick is the start point and travel would be required a suitable time after arrival of a flight? I suppose ideal travel time might be to fit between latest time of hotel check-out in a city to earliest check-in at the next hotel. Only other complication would be if your trip included any public holidays, which might affect the schedules and of course you'd need to watch for strikes etc nearer the time. You could probably do it yourself using: https://www.traveline.info/ I'd be inclined to double check info on other sites; such as: https://www.southernrailway.com/ Buses should be fairly accurate as the major operators pass their data directly to Traveline. But most bus operators have their own sites as well, often including downloadable pdf timetables. If info isn't available yet for your dates, check the same day of week in data that is already published. That might change before you travel but it should give a good indication of whether you can achieve your aims using public transport.

Most of the local pre booked taxi services in the Southampton area charge about the same as Uber. We used Aero Taxis Southampton last time and paid £120 each way between Heathrow T5 and Southampton. West Quay Cars seem to be one of the bigger companies. We used a local firm as we booked 3 trips; LHR to hotel in Southampton, hotel to Mayflower Terminal and Mayflower to Heathrow. Many of the limo companies wouldn't do the local trip. Aero Taxis seemed to have better reviews on Google than most others. Assuming the reviews are genuine of course! We were happy with the service and would use them again.

Follow up to the last few helpful posts. We had this at release date. I checked availability of a specific cabin on the two short segments. I advised my agent who asked for the issue to be escalated to the "berthing team". A few hours later we had our preferred cabin. So ask your agent or call Cunard and tell them the cabin you want is free for both segments and you want to book the round trip version. It might suit them to get more for the two trips but I think it's much simpler than that. Their IT simply can't cope with a cabin being available to multiple cruise numbers.

With these comments about handheld devices and signing for drinks; I wonder if waiters will be able to be so creative in providing larger measures than officially included in the package? We're perfectly happy with advertised measures, but many have commented on receiving larger measures in past.

It depends on different definitions of drinking a lot. We saved a significant sum on six to eight alcoholic drinks each per day, plus real coffee, hot chocolate and bottled water. The alcohol being wine at lunch, dinner and through our evening dancing, one pre dinner drink and one nightcap. My main criticism is that we would not classify most wine available on the package as being fine wines that we would want to drink with a decent meat, poultry or fish main course. Next time we'll take the package but get 20% discount on seven decent wines split over the fourteen nights of our round trip. I've made the calculations and we'll still save money.

We would normally use a UK credit card, which does not charge any fees. Until a few years ago it did add a 1% fee for spend outside their Europe area. In preparation for QM2 and a visit to New York I signed up for a "Wise" multi currency card and loaded that account with USD when the exchange rate was favourable. On QM2 I was alerted in real time to every update to the pending hold and it was never any higher than the actual spend. A few weeks later I used the Wise card at a New York hotel. The bill had already been paid but they required a card registered for potential spend during the stay. They put on a hold of $600. We planned to spend that money during the stay and we had no intention of spending in the hotel. I transferred the hold to a credit card and the $600 was released within seconds.