ballroom-cruisers

A little update on the recent QV Christmas cruise - on that voyage there were two dance hosts who were invited to that role for the 15 night voyage, and worked tirelessly and really nicely throughout the voyage as dance hosts in the evenings, as well as running the beginner ballroom classes on sea days. In addition there were to young guys who were also dance hosts every evening, and in the ballroom classes, who were crew members from the entertainment team working that role as part of their longer contracts. There was no professional dance couple, to do show dances on Gala evenings as used to be the case previously. Whether this arrangement, with four dance hosts, or something different, will remain to be seen as we go through this year.

Some more information about how this will be implemented is at https://etias.com/articles/lisbon-cruise-tax-2024

Great to hear that Jeffrey was active a few years ago on Princess - it would be lovely to know if he has been teaching on cruises in the last year too?

Isn't all the fallout from this kind of event why it makes sense to have a good travel insurance policy for cruises?

I guess it is possible to see two people in the dining room - and both waiting the same 30 minutes for a starter - one gets on with social chat while waiting, and is smiling and making the most of it. The second spends the half hour complaining about the half hour wait. We too had some meals where there were long waits for and between courses, and possibly due to problems with the production lines in the kitchens and staffing or technical unseen problems out of sight such as a slip up with dropping some food and needing to clean up, or an issue with an oven and so on - but we found ways to keep smiling and accepted we would be later out of dinner to get to the Queens Room to start dancing. It's life and losing half an hour of dancing as a result is not the end of the world.

There will always be some who will look for every problem and fault - and others who will enjoy the good things, and soft focus the less than ideal meals, and experiences - the latter get the best out of life and cruises.

Shame you had Covid on one voyage. According to discussions with crew on the Greek Islands voyage only one person had known Covid, and was isolated, Nobody else was known to have got it - which is so good compared to last year - one out of about 2000 passengers in nearly three weeks.

I believe that it is possible to remove rust stains from clothes - suggestions I have seen include soaking in lemon juice sprinkled with salt, or baking soda, and there are rust removal liquids that can be bought from some of the companies that make laundry liquids too, that you use alongside the usual detergents - perhaps this is helpful, and worth trying rather than throwing out the clothes immediately. Rust being iron oxide won't be removed with bleach or enzyme stain removers.

Yes the Queen's Room was serving quite nice cocktails compared to the past, and where previously it was nearly essential to go to the Commodore Club if you wanted a quality cocktail, it was nice to have a decent drink in the ballroom instead since we were not inspired by the resident pianist in the Commodore Club on this voyage. On the occasions where either the Walton Duo or the Amethyst Duo were playing and singing the music was rather nice though.

There was something special on this voyage in that there was a wonderful professional dance couple, Yevgeny and Daria, who ran the excellent and superbly taught dance classes at midday on sea days, and also did beautiful show dances on Gala nights at 9.45pm, as well as dancing with some of the ladies who wanted to dance with a very experienced partner. It is a shame that they will be leaving QV and will then be on QM2 through to the year's end. As far as I understand there will be no professional dance couple on QV once they leave, which means that unless Cunard can recruit another professional dance couple who can perform high level show dances and teach at top level, the dance classes, and dance hosting will be done by a dance host couple, but likely no show dances on Gala nights. It would be nice if that would change, but it looks like at the moment there are no professional ballroom couples in place once Yevgeny and Daria transfer to QM2.

The ballroom dancers do not try to dance the normal ballroom or Latin dances when there is a named sequence dance session. However certainly in the first few days when there was not a dedicated sequence set, the sequence dancers would line up around the floor making a ring, with little space in the middle of the floor, which was not compatible with normal freestyle ballroom or Latin dancing. Some people I know made representation to the entertainment team to ask if it could be announced that a set or even a single dance was one or the other since normal freestyle ballroom is incompatible with sequence dances. I don't know if any action was taken as a result. However several days into the voyage, the ballroom sessions were largely just normal ballroom or Latin dancing with only occasional small numbers of couples trying to do sequence dances as a group of 3 or 4 couples - and the freestyle ballroom dances were partially possible with some working around the blocked edges of the floor at that time. As the days passed the sequence dancers generally kept to the dedicated sequence dance specified set times. So I am expressing it slightly differently to you but explaining that it happened that way. At times when some music was on a group of line dancers got on the floor too - and the ballroom dancers just chatted on the sides and had a drink while that happened. But it was only occasional. It did seem that more of the daily calendar scheduled sequence dance sessions early in the evening were utilised and that seemed to work a lot better for both groups (i.e. freestyle ballroom and sequence dancers)

For us the positives far outweighed the negatives... it was a lovely voyage and gave many happy memories to last into the future.

I believe that some of the disembarkation chaos was due to two accidents, in or near the baggage hall, to passengers, and that would have been largely out of Cunard's control since the people who were unlucky enough to have that happen would need to be looked after, and helped to get help and treatment organised, which would have taken some time.

Sequence dances are a style of dance done mostly by British dance couples - sequence dances are mostly a fixed set of steps/figures over 16 bars of music (a few are over 24 or 32 bars), and all the couples doing a sequence dance, start at exactly the same moment, and every couple is doing exactly the same steps at any one moment. The couples form a ring around the dance floor, and most move clockwise around the dance floor, and it is basically a synchronised dance, with the steps over the 16 bars, then repeated until the piece of music stops. Many are based on the International Standard ballroom, or Latin, dances, with a few based on other dances such as salsa, bachata, with some based on 'Strolls', or vintage style dances. The primary aim is to learn as many of the sequence dances as possible, and there are around half a dozen or so new sequence dances that are choreographed every month - some become popular and are danced regularly into the future, but many lose favour and stop being danced. So it is a big contrast to the near infinite set of freestyle figures that can be danced starting at any point in a piece of music by conventional ballroom and Latin dancers. Perhaps that summarises what sequence dancing is for most people. Also sequence dances being fixed sets of steps do not require lead and follow as in conventional ballroom and Latin dances, and it also means it is easier for people to dance with any new partner as as result. So solo sequence dancers can fit in and dance with a new partner with ease.

Thank you for your review of this voyage. We were not in the Grills so I can't comment on that for this voyage. However my perspectives, including as a ballroom dancer from the UK (!), are summarised as follows: Itinerary: The experiences we had at all the ports apart from Lisbon where we stayed on board due to torrential rain, was really lovely, and we walked around at all of them, including Santorini, where we were lucky to choose the time to walk up 'the cliff' with enough time to have an explore at the top, and see great views looking down, before getting to the cable car ticket office with no queue at all, and went straight into the cable car to arrive at the bottom quayside a few minutes later. The weather, as you say, was near perfect, until we arrived in Lisbon, but even once we left we had the bonus of finding the deck at a pleasant temperature, to enjoy some sunshine on the way back to Southampton. Meals: The menus were generally quite lacklustre, with a few notable exceptions such as the final Gala evening where escargots, surf and turf with top notch fillet, and a proper lemon souffle with limoncello sauce were delightful, though the limoncello could have been a little more lemon flavoured! More than half of the various meat dishes had tough and relatively poor quality meat, and presentation was mostly not as attractive as in the past. Theatre: More often than not we spend evenings in the Queens Room, but the sequence dance sessions gave us a window to go to a theatre show on a few evenings, and Philip Brown's singing was fabulous, as were the performances by Lisa Harman, both of whom are powerful, and top level vocalists, with Lisa an exceptional pianist also (she was the Empress Orchestra's lead vocalist in the past). Queen's Room ballroom dancing: Most evenings there was the opportunity to get some quality ballroom and Latin dancing, and the orchestra did play a lot of very good ballroom and Latin music, with the vocalists, Jeremy and Victoria, doing a fantastic job singing for dancing most of the time. There were certainly times when the sequence dancers occupied the floor at a level where ballroom dances such as the waltz, foxtrot and quickstep, were near impossible to do, but several days into the voyage, the sequence dancers had their hour near the start of the evening, but then let the ballroom dancers use the space. There was one Ceroc couple who took up quite a bit of space and were not progressing in the conventional manner around the room, and that meant that couples dancing foxtrots, and quicksteps had a tough time trying to dance - though the Ceroc couple only danced to 4-beat music, so during waltz music the conventional waltz couples could dance nicely and use the space available, even though some waltzes were on pretty packed floors. Yes a few evenings were party nights, including the Four Ds on the last night - but overall that worked well - with sequence dancers having their hour at the start of the evening after dinner, with around an hour after that for normal ballroom and Latin dancing, before the pop band did music for bopping - though even during the disco sessions some jive and cha cha was possible during the second half of the evening. So dancers of all chosen styles had their chance to dance. Queen Anne: Having spoken to staff about how the new ship is being designed it was heartening to hear that the Queens Room should have a dance floor a bit bigger than on QV, and that the Cunard tradition of quality ballroom dancing will remain on the new ship. The Bright Lights Society will be the venue which largely replaces the Yacht Club on QV/QE and G32 on QM2. So all the omens were being presented as retaining Cunard's tradition of an elegant modern classically styled ship with the design taking the best of the previous ship designs into a single 21st century ship of distinction. Obviously how the feel of the new ship will lead to continued desire to sail on her will depend on our first experience of being on board once she launches next year. But from what we heard, we were not put off looking at booking cruises on Queen Anne. All in all this voyage we enjoyed immensely, and certainly the ballroom was the highlight of this cruise, with a lovely exciting atmosphere, and delightful environs, with a lot of happy smiling dancers.