Bedruthen

For those of you who may be contemplating a round trip with a stopover in USA, the White Star luggage storage service in New York has been discontinued. I have spoken to CUNARD, who advise that the only option now is to check with the purser once onboard and see if there is any availability to arrange storage at the port, but this is not guaranteed. The cost, if available,  is $195 per bag for up to 30 days and $30 per bag for each additional 39 days. 

I find this arrangement to be too vague. We are going to be travelling around USA for 30+ days and have no desire to lug a large suitcase full of evening clothes around with us. Not only that, but I doubt the hire care has sufficient space. I have spoken to a company called LuggageForward which was mentioned on here as working with CUNARD, but they know nothing about luggage storage. If anyone has any other ideas, please feel free to share, otherwise we shall be that  scruffy couple onboard who only wear one  outfit for 7 days .....

I think you are probably going to have to accept that you will have to fly your dogs out. I had to fly two dogs from UK to Dubai and was worried sick as one was elderly and the other terribly noise phobic. They both managed just fine. If they are under a certain size they can travel in the same crate, this is what we did and it certainly helped. It is a long journey, in total 15 hours, with flight time of just over 7, the rest is preparation and paperwork at the airport. The kennels on board QM2 can be noisy, every time someone visits their own dog, it can start the others off barking, my dog would find that far more stressful for 7 days than a 7 hour flight, so maybe flight option is not so bad.

When we were onboard in August, the cost for two week pass was £500pp.

Please don’t be put off by the dress code. Yes some people will dress to impress, but it is by no means everyone. I have felt perfectly comfortable and blended in without a problem in nice black trousers and a dressy top. Ball gowns are definitely not compulsory 😀

13 hours ago, sfred said:

 

Unfortunately QM2 cannot fit in the Panama canal.  Only QE and QV. 

Yes, that’s right, that’s why we were hoping it might be on Victoria again.

We are waiting for a South America cruise, but it won’t be this one. As a previous poster has pointed out, a significant number of sea days and not enough SA port calls to justify calling this a South American cruise. Sorry but it’s a no from me.

Anyone else think this is a strange itinerary? We were hoping for a trip around South America, to include the Panama Canal, for us not enough ports of call in South America for us to consider this particular one.

I absolutely agree. The palaver you have to go through to select your cabin grade and number is ridiculous. It feels like you select your type of cabin at the start, then have to reselect another 10 times before you finally get to the deck plan.  I now find it easier to use an cruise agent, so no longer book direct.

55 minutes ago, Barnum42 said:

Can't say I'm in a hurry to go to Cunard again. We sailed on Queen Victoria last year, expecting a notch up from P&O. Quite a disappointment. Main Dining Room was no better, in fact the lobster was not a patch on P&O, plus they don't have the list of standbys on the menu if there is nothing to tickle your fancy of an evening. The buffet was better (but that's no saying much), the service at the afternoon tea appalling and the Headliners company an embarrassment. Over all, not worth the extra expense (though I had snagged a bargain that was not too much more than the P&O equivalent)

 

There are standby options exactly the same as P&O. We came back from Queen Elizabeth last month and they are certainly available. Did you ask? 

9 hours ago, VintageCCG said:

So now we're criticizing a couple who prefers to sit together?
Seriously??

 Yes seriously. Why do you think that it’s acceptable for one one couple to sit together every single evening whilst the other two couples have to take it in turns and thus only get to sit together for half the cruise? Have you considered that maybe the other two couples on the table would also like  to sit together every night?  The fact that the same couple had also taken the two seats furthest away from the adjacent serving station was probably also fair as well in your view.  At the end of the day It just requires a small amount of consideration for your fellow diners, something that thankfully most people show.

On 11/20/2019 at 2:33 PM, navybankerteacher said:

Lack of willingness should not be an issue - show up as early as possible, and select different seats every evening.

I learnt on our last cruise that there are some people who just wont budge, and who certainly won’t  entertain sitting in a different seat. We know this to be true as they were on our table in October. We had a rectangular table for 6 and they insisted that they had to sit next to each other and not opposite. They would start queuing for the dining room at least 20 minutes before the doors opened and despite gentle hints that we should all try sitting in a different place the next evening, there they were again in the same seats. Nowt so queer as folks.

The power of the internet, our cruise questionnaire for QE just arrived by email. We returned on 1 November.

We returned from a cruise on QE2 earlier this month and we did not receive a post cruise questionnaire. Our cabin steward also used the under bed storage bins for bedding, although it wasn’t a problem for us as we travel light. I actually thought that they were for the steward to use to put the blue covers in at nighttime, we never expect them to be empty.

We had a forward suite on Britannia and the space was huge. They are the biggest suites available, as P&O do not include the area under the sloping forward facing windows in the square footage calculation. So the floor area is much bigger in these suites, though the balcony is not as large as those at the aft.  No problem in accommodating 4 adults. The bedroom and living areas are separate and so the beds have a degree of privacy. There is also a separate toilet, accessible from both the bedroom and the living area. You need to consider which space is more important to you, living area or balcony and which will you be using the most. Don’t forget that aft suites on Britannia have issues with soot deposits.

Actually, on the recent QE cruise to the Canaries, there were so many Diamond members travelling, that Platinum members were given boarding cards on arrival and we had a short wait before boarding. No noticeable priority. I guess if you have 50% of the passengers having attained priority embarkation, it stands to reason they are not all going to get onboard early.

Have just got off QE. I spoke with the tours office about the lack of a Caribbean cruise other than QM2 and the absence of QE.  She said that CUNARD would be waiting for the new ship and then QV would go back on the Caribbean and S America circuits. Seems Queen Elizabeth is shortly departing for Asia and Australia and is not scheduled back into the UK over the next two years. I suspect that other posters are correct in that her future lies outside the U.K. market

I have a question. When we first started cruising, we missed a port due to a technical problem on Oriana. We were all give a £50 obc, which we were told represented a share of the port docking fees. Do cruise lines still do this?

Secondly I do have some sympathy for these passengers. It is not just one port that they have missed but, I think 4 out of the 5 they were due to visit. That is a fundamental change to the itinerary. Of course the cruise line had no option but to cancel the port calls, but I do wonder why this problem was not foreseen, given the sophisticated weather forecasting in place. 

The one port cancellation that annoys me particularly is Amsterdam. This port is frequently scheduled in the Autumn months, yet it is also frequently cancelled due to weather conditions. Seasoned cruisers will know this. Why do the cruise lines persist in using it as a port of call under such circumstances? Is it because the port fees saved are a nice little earner, or is it because a cruise to Rotterdam, which is where the ships frequently end up, would not have the same appeal to customers. 

shareholderbenefits@carnivalukgroup.com

I don’t know if you can still do it, but a few years back we wanted to cruise back from Dubai. But it was actually cheaper to book a longer crossing back from India. So we contacted Cunard, booked India to U.K., but embarked in Dubai. Might be worth asking.

My husband had to go through the arduous process of getting a 10 year Visa, as he had visited Iraq on business ( ironically whilst working for a US company) and was denied a visa waiver under the ESTA scheme. Despite the rigorous interview process involved in getting a Visa, he still gets pulled aside every single time we enter US and has to answer a myriad of questions about where he went in Iraq and who he visited. Last trip we arrived in New York, got detained, visited Canada and got detained again on re-entering US. Not sure what they thought might have changed over a period of 5 days.  Heaven help us in in a few years time when he can’t remember! 

We had Monaco in August on Britannia and also experienced tender problems. The queues became so long that they brought us cold towels and one of the crew kept us entertained with magic tricks. We got on the last tender before operations were suspended again, but sat for almost an hour at the side of the ship rocking and rolling, as they could not unload us. I have no complaint about how they looked after us, but if that can happen in August, then you have to question the sensibility of trying to tender here in the rougher weather months.

Why would anyone want to contemplate travelling without insurance on a cruise.

On our last cruise we had to divert on leaving Gibraltar to Cadiz, which was the next closest available port en route.  The cost involved was £50000 additional fuel usage and £5000 port fees. The port fees were  to be charged to the passenger plus all their unknown associated medical costs. I wouldn’t want to be paying those sort of bills from my own pocket.

However I have yet to be asked for proof of travel insurance before boarding. 

6 hours ago, davecttr said:

Drain smells in the bathroom are usually caused by a dry drainage trap. There is one in the shower and should be one somewhere else in the bathroom. Apparently pouring some water down the drain should reseal the trap.

We were told it was the scuppers.....

I hope tha refit includes a deep clean of all the cabins and replacement of sealant in 5eh showers. We had a suite last month and it was grubby. Nothing to do with the room attendant, it was a lack of time for a proper deep clean. There was also a drain smell which they had to attend to daily.

19 hours ago, Hawaii136 said:

I think you can disembark at any time, but you must vacate your room by 8:30.

one advantage of disembarking before the rest of passengers is shorter immigration lines.

The cruise line will want you off the ship before the passengers without luggage start to leave. I believe that when we self disembarked last year we were off shortly after 7am and last disembarkation time was 8am. We were in Penn  Station shortly after 9 am and that includes the time taken when my husband was  hauled in for immigration questioning which took around 40 minutes.