bluemarble

Yes, that's my understanding concerning refunds for pre-purchased internet plans. I can't confirm from actual experience, but this quote is from the Internet terms and conditions posted on My Cunard. "Pre-booked Packages can be canceled and refunded in full to the original debit/credit card up to 3 days prior to departure." By the way, I think I figured out the reason for the discounted pricing for internet plans I posted earlier. That's where I am seeing the pricing for the Premium Voyage Plan listed at $19.58 per day (discounted from $20 per day) and the Essential Voyage Plan listed at $14.71 per day (discounted from $15 per day) for one of my voyages. It has to do with the length of the voyage. I'm seeing that discounted pricing on a voyage of 17 nights. Here's the relevant quote from My Cunard. "Discounts are available for multi-device plans and plans on voyages of 16 nights or more in duration."

Thank you for that schedule. And welcome to the Cruise Critic by the way. Gala evenings don't always have themes. They could add a theme for July 2nd at a later date, but since none is listed now, it may well remain without a theme. Since that's the evening of your second port day in Halifax (and before your first evening in Boston the next day), I suspect they may be intentionally omitting a theme for that gala evening.

Thank you very much. Could I ask you to double check the date of your second gala evening? I was expecting that to be on 28th August, your sixth evening. The usual scheduling for a 7-night crossing is to have the gala evenings on the second and sixth evenings.

I had to go back a few years, but here's what I found showing where the old Voyage Personaliser showed our dining choices as confirmed or waitlisted. Edit to add: As I look back through screen snippets from the early days of My Cunard when we were commenting about all the bugs it had, I'm seeing it only mentioned registering a preference back then. Here's one I have from the early days of My Cunard where the bug was that it didn't actually show you which sitting you were requesting.

Thank you for that follow-up. I don't receive the Booking Confirmation documents from Cunard unless I ask for them from my travel agent, so I don't have those for either of my current Cunard bookings to see what they say about our dining arrangements. I usually ask for those closer to sailing once I've applied for the Shareholder Benefit to confirm the OBC for that. I suppose the Cunard Booking Confirmation document ought to be the official place to indicate if our selected dining arrangement is confirmed or waitlisted. I doesn't look like My Cunard is showing that information. I have to admit my memory isn't all that great at times any more. But I'm pretty sure My Cunard (or perhaps the previous Voyage Personaliser) indicated whether our selected dining arrangements were confirmed or waitlisted for our bookings here in the US. That could well be a false memory though. Either way, I suspect you are right that what My Cunard is showing us now doesn't mean much.

@WoorimBeachLady, I'll help rotate your lovely photo which I presume is showing QE at Bali.

@IDLnyc, my first question (which may be the same as yours), is are you actually waitlisted for second seating? I'm wondering if anyone in the US actually gets a confirmed dining assignment anymore. I'm also in the US and have two upcoming bookings. One is on QM2 in 2024 where I requested "Early Dining" and the other is on QA in 2025 where I requested "Open Dining". Both of my bookings simply indicate I have registered my preference and "This will not be confirmed until you are on board". And in both cases the other two alternatives I haven't selected are listed as "Available". Now my booking on QM2 was made under the terms of the low-fare "Independence Day Sale" which might mean I can only specify a preference for my dining arrangements. I'm not sure about that. But my booking on QA was done during the "Upgrades on Us" promotion not that long after bookings opened. I would have thought I'd have a confirmed dining choice on that QA booking. So I guess my question for anyone with a US booking is, are you actually seeing your dining choice listed as "confirmed" in My Cunard or simply as a "preference"?

Yeah, I'm not seeing anything relating to spa passes here in the US either, just discounts on various spa treatments. Concerning the Internet plan prices, I have two upcoming bookings, one on QM2 in 2024 and one on QA in 2025. Those discounted prices I posted above are from my 2025 booking on QA. When I take a look at my 2024 booking on QM2, that's showing the Starlink promo prices of $20 per day for the Premium plan and $15 per day for the Essential plan. So, I'm not sure if those lower prices of $19.58 per day for the Premium plan and $14.71 per day for the Essential plan are a mistake or are only for specific dates, ships or voyages. As a Cunard World Club member who receives on board Internet credit, a limited-time sale on Internet plans is probably irrelevant to me anyway. I can't purchase a plan ahead of time. I assume I'll be applying my Internet credit toward whatever the current pricing is at the time I sale. They do say "Once you board your ship, you can use your credits to purchase internet by the day or for your entire voyage, according to the prices shown here." I have my doubts though that they'll offer me plans on board at those discounted prices if the prices go back up prior to sailing.

I just logged into my current booking on the US version of My Cunard and look what I am seeing; a Black Friday Event is going for spa treatments and gift packages on existing bookings here in the US. Note this is in addition to the Black Friday Event for booking voyages since my current booking was not made under that promotion. Here is a list of the Spa treatment offers. Black Friday savings 20% OFF Up-do (long hair) $89 $71.20 Elemis pro-collagen grooming treatment and haircut $149 $119.20 Fire & Ice manicure and pedicure $159 $127.20 Mareel massage $179 $143.20 Acupuncture introductory session $199 $159.20 Bamboo Massage $199 $159.20 Elemis pro-collagen age-defy facial $199 $159.20 Aroma spa seaweed massage $249 $199.20 Aroma stone therapy for two $399 $319.20 Here is a list of the Gift package offers. Black Friday savings 20% OFF Celebration Package $265 $212 Luxury Celebration Package $500 $400 There are "Book Now" buttons for each of these offers but they don't actually allow me to book them. As of now, all the Spa treatment "Book Now" buttons take me to a page that simply says "Coming soon". The "Book Now" buttons for the Gift package offers take me to a page directing me to call their sales team to book them. Somewhat oddly for me being on the US version of My Cunard, I'm directed to a page on the UK site giving me the UK phone number to call. I don't see any mention of Black Friday offers on Internet plans. They were already doing a Starlink introduction promotion where the price of the Premium Voyage Plan was $20 per day and the price of the Essential Voyage Plan was $15 per day. But now when I check the prices of Internet plans in My Cunard, here is what I am seeing. These prices (if they are real) are approximately 2% off the previous sale prices.

Thank you for getting back to us, @HopefulCruiser123. Glad to hear you were able to book the June 6th crossing on QM2. The part I missed even though you made it abundantly clear was your requirement for an accessible cabin. The behavior you have described is exactly what happens when you request an accessible cabin. You can't actually see availability of accessible cabins on the Cunard website until you check each individual category and in your case get the dreaded "Room is not available." message for each one. I'm not sure I can call that a bug but it's certainly not very user-friendly. Happy to hear you were able to get a satisfactory cabin in the end.

@HopefulCruiser123, I know of one bug on the Cunard website that does make it look like categories are sold out when they actually are not. When I start a booking on the Cunard US website for the June 6, 2025 westbound crossing, it shows availability in all categories including Princess Grill. Here's what it looks like when I select Princess Grill Suites. Then when I select "View fares", I get this screen showing "Our lowest fare" as Sold out and the "Explore with More" fare as available. If I then click the X to close that "Select your fare" window instead of selecting a fare, this is what happens. It now certainly looks like the Princess Grill Suites category is Sold out. However, if I start over at this point and actually select the "Explore with More" fare this time, it then takes me to a voyage summary screen where it has chosen suite 10016 for me. Now I don't know if you ran into this specific bug. Probably not. But the morale of this story is that it should be possible to book a Princess Grill Suite on the June 6, 2025 westbound crossing using the Cunard US website. Now I'm not saying booking directly with Cunard via their website is the best way to go. Just saying it's possible if you manage to navigate through bugs such as this. By the way, by my count there are currently 47 Princess Grill suites available on the June 6, 2025 westbound crossing. I wish you well in securing one of those if you do decide to proceed with your initial plans which went so awry the first time around.

@LadyRemy, as @D&N has pointed out, your photo is an old one from before 2016 when the cabins were added on deck 13. Here is one of my own photos from earlier this year showing a forward profile of QM2 where the deck 13 cabins are visible. As already mentioned, all of the balcony cabins on deck 13 are Britannia Club. All but the five forward-most balcony cabins on each side of deck 12 are Britannia Club as well.

That's correct. It's QM2's recent call to Zeebrugge on November 17th. Well done.

Just for the record, QM2 did undertake sea trials between the time she left the drydock in Rotterdam and her return to Southampton. She did a small loop just after getting into open seas after departing Rotterdam and another loop in the English Channel south of Bournemouth. She also did some other course and speed alterations between Rotterdam and Southampton which I figure were part of the sea trials.

Yes, if you leave the ship, as an in-transit passenger you can go directly to the security check point when you return, bypassing all the passengers who are checking in for the voyage.

There were separate crew and passenger buses for the Cunard shuttle to Westquay at the Mayflower terminal the last couple times we were there this year. They were directing people to the appropriate bus (or to wait for the next bus appropriate for them). The shuttle is still a good no-expense way to get into town. They haven't been scanning keycards on that shuttle recently so I assume it is free for everyone, including those on saver fares.

Here's an image that's a bit different showing a Cunard ship at a port we've seen before. For this one I've stitched together two webcam image captures as the camera panned across the field of view, to provide a panoramic view of the Cunard ship and additional port details. This does makes everything smaller, but this wider view may offer more details to work with overall. Rather odd that there is such a significant change in the lighting apparent at the stitch point. Both images I've stitched together here were captured during the same pass of the camera across the scene.

Based on past history, I'm expecting the 2026 world and grand voyage itineraries to be announced in early March. There was considerable disruption to the announcement dates during the shutdown, but they got back to their typical early March timeframe for the announcement of the 2025 world and grand voyage itineraries this year (March 2, 2023 ).

Yes, Queen Victoria was in drydock at Harland & Wolff in Belfast from May 2 to May 22, 2022. That was just prior to her return to service on June 5, 2022. Similar I suppose to QM2's previous drydock from August 27 to September 26, 2021 at Damen Shiprepair in Brest to get her ready for her return to service in November 2021.

I can't say for sure where QM2 will dock at Dubai next year. But I can provide this link which indicates she docked at the Dubai Harbour Cruise Terminal for the first time last year, rather than at Port Rashid where she has docked in the past. https://cruise-arabia.com/2023/02/02/cunard-flagship-queen-mary-2-makes-maiden-call-at-dubai-harbour-cruise-terminal/

Looks like QM2's trip is turning into a 2-nighter (at sea) anyway. I noticed yesterday the Southampton VTS schedule has her returning to Southampton early, on Saturday evening instead of Sunday morning. And now that QM2 has departed Zeebrugge, she is also reporting a Saturday evening return to Southampton via AIS.

No, there isn't a gap in QV's schedule after the 2024 world cruise. After returning to Southampton on April 28, 2024, she's scheduled for a 7-night cruise to Hamburg, Rotterdam and Zeebrugge (with the first two nights completing the world cruise for those who started in Hamburg). Then she's off to start her Mediterranean season on May 5, 2024. She returns to Southampton on October 21, 2024 for a 9-night Spain and Portugal cruise (including a stop in Tangier) before that gap in her schedule starting October 30, 2024.

Yes indeed. My mistake. Zeebrugge on Friday and a sea day on Saturday (instead of the other way around as originally scheduled) then back to Southampton on Sunday.

Those blue tugs don't appear to be showing up on AIS so I can't identify them by name. But I can provide this closer view of them from a current webcam image if this helps any.

Oh yeah, I had missed that. Found a mention of acrobatics in the Queens Room in this Cruise Critic article about Queen Anne. Could be interesting indeed. https://www.cruisecritic.com/news/cunard-s-new-queen-anne-embraces-tradition-with-modern-twists-live-from-the-shipyard "The Queens Room ballroom will as ever serve afternoon tea, with live music in the evening, but it will also have a few surprises – including a “circ acrobat” directly above."