WantedOnVoyage

Being able to does not equate with choosing to or having others endorse your choice.  The cost, the label, the designer are immaterial.... jeans are jeans and the idea they constitute "smart attire" on Cunard is wishful thinking by those who have many other chances to wear jeans ashore or indeed afloat, sadly on the vast majority on cruise ships.  

Cunard is different precisely because of its more traditional standards (which I appreciate is a naughty word nowadays) and patronised by those who appreciate, abide by and derive pleasure and satisfaction for those who do share those standards. 

Thanks, so much for this.... odd, I almost always find out what Cunard are doing here via your postings... they never bother to tell me and the only time I get a brochure is aboard.

QE's Caribbean programme is... dullsville writ large both in ports and duration.  At least they are sailing from Miami so one can avoid excreable Fort Lauderdale airport. Will be interesting to see the price points for these itineraries and indeed if there will be demand for a "formal" product competing against mass market rubbish in these waters.  At the right price, QE at least will be a good replacement for the "old" Holland Amerca Line.  

It appears that the Zeebruge Chamber of Commerce has been sending free pizza to Cunard for months now....  

But no... the trans-Atlantic crossings seem a bit lost in this.

Was there some British travel show in the last oh five years that suddenly resulted in this positive mania for sailing off to Norway in November and March with two days (!) in Tromso and three (!) in Narvik (I think that was more than the British Army stayed there in 1940)? It's uncanny how this "northern lights" thing has become a feature of Cunard and other UK based lines in the last few years. I visited Tromso once aboard QE2  and found it as dull and dreary a place as any I have visited in 50 years of ocean travel.  "The Paris of the North" they called it.  Sure, why not....

A "room" is in an hotel, a cabin is at sea and and "suite" or a "stateroom" just a lot of puffery to me. Heck, it even rhymes. 

Cabin has sufficed since 1840... although I think Dickens called his in BRITANNIA, an "upholstered coffin."

Or, they will just have QM2 join another famous Cunarder, Tyrrhenia, which en route to Montreal in July 1922 snagged the high tension electric cables across the St. Lawrence and brought down four of the six as her masts were too high.  Needless to say, she never return to the St. Lawrence, at least below Quebec. 

I did enjoy standing beside Stephen Payne outbound from Lisboa in Jan 2022 going under the Salazar Bridge and asked if it doesn't make it, does he just quietly return to his cabin.  But I think there must be feet if not yards clearance. Or something.  

Delighted to see QUEEN VICTORIA's doing the classic Southampton-West Indies long cruise in Jan 2026... done it on QM2 in Jan 2022, booked on QM2 for Jan 2024 and will certainly do so for 2026.

But sorry she's still exiled on "fly cruises" for another season.  I guess we'll get by without our summer ex-Southampton r/t cruise for yet more years.  Her annual longer autumn one was always a sell out but I guess that doesn't impress Cunard's schedule planners.

The good thing is that is always "something" and in the good sense of the word. 

I love to see some actual printed documentation of that. 

Actually the term "Cunarder" originated almost a century before the QUEEN MARY.  The first recorded use of it in the press was in... 1841. And referred to the ship, of course... never the passengers. 

Odd, this "cannot damn without seeing" idea... I have never had amebic dysentery or gone on a camping trip with Vladimir Putin to know from what I've seen and read to not want to experience either personally.  The whole idea of the cruise brochure, the deck plan, the renderings of public rooms is to elicit the desire to go. Or not.  There is plenty out there on QA to make me not want to risk or waste $24,000 of my money to experience something firsthand that is wholly unappealing at a distance.

To sum it up, PG "suites" on QA are smaller (about 70 sq. ft. smaller than on QM2 and 33 sq. ft vs. QE/QV), no bath tub, no walk in closet, a windowless Grills lounge, PG has about double the capacity as QE/QV, the Grills Deck is not self contained like on QE/QV, no proper Promenade Deck but a narrow viewless walkthrough.... what's not to like?  But according to "The Cunarder", "we" asked them "be bold"....!  You gotta love it and I guess someone has to. Not me. 

Yes. I don't and won't have a "smart phone" and yes, Cunard have public computers in the libraries. And you can buy access for 24 hours. Or... if in the Grills, the concierge will do you check in for you. 

 Cunard run a coach from LHR direct to the ship day of sailing. Just call Cunard and book it. Chances are you'll even get a private car transfer, too... I did. BUT... do try and negotiate the pick up time from LHR.  I wound up with a four-hour wait at the pier.  

I think the cost is $95 person so way cheaper than any taxi.  But you'd have to get yourself back to LHR if you have time before in London

In October and May always got a receipt and had to sign for it in the bars and on deck. Never once in the restaurant (Princess Grill).  If you are sailing in Spanish and Italian territorial waters or originating from these countries and not going outside the EU, you probably want to see a bill since you are paying their taxes, package notwithstanding, on the whole tab.

I do remember the "contactless" whatever they tried on QM2 in Jan 2022... it worked until Lisbon, three days into a 28 day voyage and then it was, wonderfully, pencils and handwritten receipts when the whole system just packed in.  It was like being back aboard ST HELENA c. 1990. Pencils and paper never "go down". 

They were "hip" on any properly laid British table.... still are at The Victoria in Sidmouth.  I remember the days when P&O would lay out all 16 (or was it 18) pieces of cutlery at each place setting.  Fruit forks, spoons and knives, too.  To the bewildered, the rule was to work from the outsides in and the top sides were for afters. That was properly laid distinctively British table. I guess that why it's all but vanished now. 

Do you think Cunard's meat quality is "better"??? The fish remains excellent in my opinion but the one or two "off" Grill dinners revolved around frankly tough cuts of beef that made me wish I had gone with the Thai tofu whatevers with the balsamic infusion of something or rather. 

True.  It just adds to my perception that "they" just think we "Cunarders" (their term, not mine btw) just need to be dragged, kicking and screaming into this Islington Hip world of tofu, plant protein based whatever and it all has to be "Thai" this or that.  Even in the Grills, you are left with one fish and maybe two meat dishes and the rest is lots of trendy words describing something that just doesn't appeal or was growing behind a garden shed three weeks previously. As you note, I don't think they appeal to many others, either.    I'd relish more Indian dishes including vegetarian but they are few and far between.

The other thing this traditional diner noted in October on QV... all the fish knives have vanished too.  I had to ask repeatedly... and got one.  I guess fish knives are no longer hip, either. 

Thank you.... this "oh those Yanks get all the deals" (and have better uniforms, get paid better, get all the girls and have chocolate bars and nylons) nonsense keeps coming up here. Over and over. And it's refuted by folks like you who just do a simple comparison.

In the end, it all comes out in the wash. And BTW, the once wonderful "Grills Drink Offer" has been kept at $12 a drink despite all the drink prices going up and it's no deal at all. I'd rather book the UK price and buy the real drinks package.  

You can drive on the left or the right but when you write Cunard a cheque or a check, they wind up pocketing the same amount of money in the end. 

Don't care a toss about shower curtains but hope some of the more decrepit externals like her lifeboat davits and boats are properly repainted and cleaned up.  Granted, we were on her in Jan 2022 just after she returned to service and she was... well.... a bit of a neglected mess.  Frankly more than her very hardworking deck crew could manage to correct even in 28 days down to the West Indies and back.  This ship has a lot of exposed "bits" that seem to invite smuts, rust and sea spray to adhere to.  Worse, you can see it all from your balcony.  

This is, after, all, just a drydocking... not some epic makeover and concerns one assumes more what you cannot see and perhaps glad you could not before this well needed shave and a haircut.  I just hope by the time we are back aboard in Jan 2025 she doesn't have five o'clock shadow again. 

In QV in May and October... no off the menu orders in PG.  You might get away with having a luncheon dish for dinner and the occasional treat for dessert. But post Covid, QG and PG are very distinct experiences as perhaps they should be. Princess Grill remains superb but anyone who thinks it's Queens Grill just without a butler and a smaller cabin... is going to be disappointed.  And if you don't want all the theatrics of yore, you will be delighted with the "new" PG experience, too.

Who at Cruise Critic decided that Cunard passengers are called "Cunarders"??? Cunarders are Cunard Line ships not passengers. Or do we also have Holland Americaners, Freds and Princesses now, too?   You can "tweak" the product to distraction, leave the English language alone. 

That's the second RMS ST HELENA (1990), yes.  Not "The RMS", the first (and one and only!), of 1977-90. 

Given how timid Cunard seems to have gotten about any tender ports of late (well ones using their own boats), I cannot imagine them offering Jamestown as a landing port now.  The weather conditions would have to be absolutely perfect.  We had a few days when you'd get soaked at "The Steps" as would luggage and the mails. 

FRANCE, I think, had "only" 800 passengers on her Imperial Cruise but managed to get all who wished ashore.  On the occasion of the 200th birthday of Napoleon, they could not be denied!  

Whilst there is simply no feasible way to land the number of passengers of a QE/QV or QM2 on St. Helena (how FRANCE managed in 1969, I am amazed), it would be a worthwhile and enjoyable close-cruise by or better still, circumnavigation. It is a wonderful sight.  We did the first ever circumnavigation of the island in RMS ST HELENA (I) in 1990 and the first ever of Tristan da Cunha, including Inaccessible Island... including seeing what a distance looking like a black and white stripe along the shoreline which turned out to be thousands of penguins. It was sleeting... that's how far south it is. Ascension is another remarkable destination but again, not feasible for mass cruising.  St. Helena Shipping Co. owned the one "tour bus" on the island, that accommodated about 16 people and the Purser was the driver.  

I'd love if QM2 would be rotated on an annual winter Southampton-Cape Town voyage via the S. Atlantic Islands and her long Southampton-West Indies (with no New York) itinerary. 

Having a "zoom" business "meeting" in a public room?  I might suggest the problem with Starlink is that it even faciliates such a thing in the first place. 

QM2's Quartermaster (or whatever they call them now) in January 2022 was Old School Cunard and served for years in CUNARD COUNTESS and loved her. Everyone did it seems and she was mostly British both in terms of crew and passengers.  

Love the photo of her at St. Thomas... hard to believe how small she was. Let alone believe that when she was introduced in 1977 it was said by the "experts" that she was probably the "last" new cruise ship to be built (!).  Proving not every "expert" is employed as a weather forecaster.  

I don't think anyone suggested that.

Ships are, happily for their owners, one of the more portable of products that can be shifted at will and by whim.  Customers are loyal... not companies.  

Given the still fondly remembered CUNARD COUNTESS and CUNARD PRINCESS among British travellers who enjoyed them on fly cruises based on, I think, Barbados or San Juan, one suspects Cunard will market QE's new programme in the UK as much as in the US.

I've had the pleasure of sailing from Australia... on the incomparable original ORIANA (1960) from Sydney to Singapore via Melbourne, Adelaide, Fremantle, Indonesia etc back in 1984. Superb ship, delightful passengers (I think I was among six Americans aboard) but sorry, even in the more expensive forward restaurant, the manner of dress was... decidely if not resolutely informal. If you wore a dinner jacket, you were actually ridiculed. And that was.... 40 years ago!

I get it. Australia and New Zealand (and yes they are called the Antipodes to my certain knowledge without intent of insult) are very casual in mode of dress. That's fine. Your region, your culture.  But my point re. Cunard basing a ship out of there was it was putting a very dressy, formal product in a market that was not. And yes... it is not my imagination that Cunard's dress code was indeed diminished at precisely the same time. Because it was. 

Not that anyone is deluding themselved that  Florida cruising is overall one bit more dressy and traditional than out of Australia.  It's more a sign of the times than geography.