bluemarble

That's correct. Assuming you and your wife are both Platinum, you will each have $80 internet credits. That works out to three separate 24-hour segments each (at $24 per segment for the Essential plan). Depending on the length of your cruise and your specific connectivity requirements, you might also consider one of you purchasing three individual 24-hour segments during the beginning of the cruise. Then the other could purchase the last four days (at $18 per day for the Essential plan for the remainder of the cruise) when there are four days left in the cruise. That strategy works well to provide full connectivity for a cruise of seven nights.

Here are the port timings I'm seeing for V334. Dec 11 Southampton Depart 16:30 Dec 14 Cadiz Arrive 09:00 Depart 17:00 Dec 15 Malaga Arrive 08:00 Depart 23:59 Dec 17 Valencia Arrive 08:00 Depart 17:00 Dec 19 Lisbon Arrive 09:00 Dec 20 Lisbon Depart 17:00 Dec 23 Southampton Arrive 06:30 Unfortunately I can't name specific travel agent/cruise booking websites. But I can offer a clue that Cunard's partner websites for Spain, Austria and Switzerland list the timings. One secret I've mentioned in the past is that you can even find the port timings on the Cunard website if you know where to look for them hidden within the HTML code. Here's an excerpt from the viewing the page source for the V334 itinerary on the Cunard website which reveals the timings for Cadiz. "arrivalTime":"09:00 AM","arrivePartOfTheDay":"Morning","departTime":"05:00 PM","departPartOfTheDay":"Afternoon","portDetails":{"id":"CA1","name":"Cadiz, Spain"

Prior to the shutdown in 2020, the prices for Steakhouse at The Verandah were $25 for lunch and $39 for dinner. The Kings Court/Lido Alternative Dining venue was $19.50 for dinner. During our first voyage after the restart (November 2022 on QM2), the price for Steakhouse at The Verandah was still $25 for lunch but the price had increased to $45 for dinner. The Kings Court Alternative Dining venue had increased to $25 for dinner. This past May on QM2, the price for Steakhouse at The Verandah had increased to $30 for lunch and $50 for dinner if booked on board. The Kings Court Alternative Dining venue was still $25 for dinner. But a $5 discount had been introduced if you booked Steakhouse at The Verandah prior to boarding the ship. That meant dinner at Steakhouse at the Verandah was still $45 if booked in advance but $50 if booked on board. That parallels what they have done with the drinks packages where you receive a discount if booking them prior to boarding. I'm not certain at this point if they also offered a $5 discount for booking the Kings Court Alternative Dining venue in advance. That pricing structure for Steakhouse at The Verandah is what I'm seeing listed on this page on the Cunard website: https://www.cunard.com/en-gb/activity-types/dining/the-verandah "The cost for dinner is $45 if booked pre-cruise, or $50 if booked on board, and for lunch, $25 or $30, respectively."

If you print the labels at full size on A4 paper and fold them as instructed, you end up with a long narrow label designed to be looped and stapled around your luggage handle without the use of a separate luggage tag holder. That's what I do. The resulting dimensions of the labels folded that way are 11.7 inches x 1.5 inches. I suspect those who use various sized luggage tag holders may fold their labels differently, perhaps ending up with something along the lines of 5.85 inches x 3 inches. They can confirm those details.

The scheduled times I'm seeing for Newport on July 6th are 7:00am arrival and 6:00pm departure.

Oh good. It sounds like they extended your stay an hour to make up for the hour late arrival this morning. At least the itineraries I have indicated a scheduled 8:00am arrival and 8:00pm departure. But then maybe the plan was for a 9:00am to 9:00pm call all along.

No, the new smaller "Your Ocean Awaits" booklets are quite generic. No luggage labels and no details about shore excursions as in the past. The only details I can find specific to the voyage are found on the front cover (guest name, booking reference number, departure date, ship and voyage number). The Welcome page is also customized with "Dear Mr. John ...". I booked three consecutive voyages as separate bookings (eastbound crossing, Norwegian fjords and westbound crossing). As a result, I received three separate "Your Ocean Awaits" booklets. As far as I can tell, all three booklets are identical except for those voyage-specific details printed on the front cover and a numeric code printed along the lower right corner of the back cover which looks like it might indicate the date and time the booklet was printed. The only items I can find within the contents of the booklets which indicate they aren't totally generic are references to Queen Mary 2 and venues such as Kings Court which are specific to Queen Mary 2. In other words, there is apparently some customization to the contents for the different ships.

While Cunard does not provide the actual arrival and departure times, they can be found on various travel agent and cruise booking websites, including several of Cunard's partner sites for other countries. Here are the port timings I'm seeing for your cruise. Oct 09 Barcelona Depart 23:00 Oct 11 Toulon Arrive 07:00 Depart 17:00 Oct 12 Livorno Arrive 07:00 Depart 19:00 Oct 14 Ibiza Arrive 11:30 Depart 21:00 Oct 15 Valencia Arrive 08:00 Depart 18:00 Oct 16 Barcelona Arrive 07:00

Here you are. This is a scan of one of my recent "Your Ocean Awaits" booklets. It's A5 paper size.

Here's an earlier thread discussing the new bidding process. And here's a link to Cunard's page about it. https://www.cunard.com/en-gb/stateroom-upgrade To answer your second question, yes you do have to log in separately to My Cunard to retrieve each of your bookings one at a time using their individual booking reference numbers. There is no single login to your account where you can see all your bookings in one place.

Not a particularly auspicious return to Halifax weatherwise for QM2 today, I'm afraid. Even with the extra delay of a few more hours leaving New York yesterday, I thought QM2 would still be able to make Halifax at her scheduled time of 8:00am this morning. She was giving it the old college try with speeds in excess of 24 knots at times. She almost made it as scheduled but I suppose the fog had the final say. Here is what it looked like about an hour ago as she was alongside at Halifax a few minutes before 9:00am this morning. QM2 ought to be on prominent display in this view. This is a capture from the Pier 21 webcam at the Westin Nova Scotian Hotel found at "www.novascotiawebcams.com".

The boarding pass should be in Adobe Acrobat ".pdf" format. Does your platform have support for reading ".pdf" files?

Just for the record, based on the past track shown on marinetraffic, QM2's departure from Brooklyn appears to have been at approximately 2:40am this morning.

I noticed the changed voyages started showing up on the Cunard website yesterday. The initial search results still show the wrong dates and durations. But when you "View voyage details", the correct dates and durations show up. For example, if you search for June 2024 QM2 voyages on the Cunard website, the search results show this misleading information for one of the westbound crossings which is being shortened to 6 nights. Westbound Transatlantic Crossing (M416) Ship Queen Mary 2 7 nights Embark Southampton, England, UK Jun 9, 2024 Disembark New York, NY, USA Jun 16, 2024 But then when you view the voyage details, here is the almost correct information. I say "almost correct" since the short blurb describing the voyage still says it's a 7-night voyage. Westbound Transatlantic Crossing, 6 Nights Queen Mary 2 Jun 9, 2024 - Jun 15, 2024 Departs : Southampton, England, UK Arrives : New York, NY, USA Embarking in Southampton, this 7-night voyage will whisk you across the Atlantic Ocean. Savor the freedom to spend each luxurious sea day however you please, indulging in the things you love most.

The estimated 3:00pm arrival time today is looking like a pretty good estimate at this point. If that is the case, I'll be interested to see if they can manage to cut two hours off the usual turn-around time and turn that 8 hour arrival delay into only a 6 hour departure delay for an 11:00pm departure.

Ah, yes. Quite right. QM2 is of course going to be off on her Independence Day Celebration cruise, not a crossing back to Southampton quite yet. It's ironic that her first port of call will be Halifax. As originally scheduled, QM2 would have 38 hours to make that roughly 600NM distance, at an average speed of about 16 knots. If we assume she will have a shortened 30 hours available now, that can be accomplished at an average speed of about 20 knots. That's obviously well within QM2's capabilities.

Here's my timeline of the delay that occurred for the diversion to Halifax. 1) Diversion began June 29 at approximately 02:00 Halifax time. QM2 had to turn 90° to divert from her generally westerly heading toward New York to a generally northerly heading to Halifax about 200NM away. 2) Arrived Halifax at approximately 11:00 local time. 3) Departed Halifax at approximately 12:00 local time. 4) Back out in the open ocean with an equivalent distance to New York as at the point of diversion at approximately 14:00 Halifax time. Therefore, I calculate the diversion cost QM2 about 12 hours total. The fact that she is now scheduled to arrive only 8 hours late tomorrow June 30 is a testament to her ability to make up 4 hours by increasing her speed an average of roughly 3.5 knots during the final run into New York. Now if we assume QM2's departure tomorrow will be delayed 8 hours, I figure she can make up that time by adding about 1.2 knots to her average speed over the duration of the crossing to arrive in Southampton on schedule. That shouldn't be a problem.

That's correct. The reported ETA is 12:30pm local time in New York. That may be the time to pick up the pilot which would make the arrival time at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal about an hour after that. But that's just going by what the ship is reporting via AIS. Hopefully there will be an announcement soon from the ship to confirm the expected arrival time at Brooklyn.

The TickerFactory site is new to me. I've just been taking a look at it myself. Don't copy the "BBCode" or the "HTML code". Copy the "Ticker Web Address" instead as @BklynBoy8 advised. That's a URL to an image that can be pasted into your signature. That should work better for you.

Interesting discussion about registering at the muster stations. I had no idea either that they accepted boarding passes at the muster stations. Perhaps it's different procedures on different ships. My experience on QM2 has been the same as @D&N's. My assumption has been that Cunard wanted us to collect out keycards and watch the safety video on our stateroom TV before attending the muster station. That's the procedure we've followed on QM2 but that's apparently not necessary. I can tell you when we last boarded QM2 in May in Southampton with the first group of diamond guests, we noticed the staff weren't at attendance at the muster stations to register anyone until about half an hour after we boarded. Edit to add: We were booked on separate back-to-back cruises in May, so it's possible my recollection about when staff were at attendance at the muster stations in Southampton might have been for the second half of our voyage when we were in-transit. Sorry, I can't say for sure at this point.

One item to note concerning the short cruise you have chosen is that it will be the first one after QM2 returns from what we presume will be a drydock. There's a gap in QM2's schedule from Oct 22 to Nov 15, 2023. The short 3-night cruise to Zeebrugge departing Oct 16, 2023 will mark her return to service after that gap. Naturally there won't be any carryover of passengers from a previous cruise in this case. Everyone will be newly-embarking on Nov 15 so that in itself will give your cruise a different vibe from most. There may be some passengers who will combine this cruise with the subsequent crossing to New York and cruise to the Caribbean. There is one gala night scheduled for your cruise (a Black and White gala the evening of Nov 17) so you will get a chance to experience one of those. As @Pushpit has noted, there won't be much opportunity for a robust series of Insights guest lectures on your short cruise. Your one sea day on Nov 17 will be the only opportunity for those along with a host of other activities typically only offered on sea days. Enjoy your cruise for what it will be; a taster of what the Cunard experience is all about. But it will be a different experience from a longer cruise with more sea days to settle in and enjoy everything Cunard has to offer.

To expand upon the process at Brooklyn, the staff who greet you as you enter the terminal will remind you to have your boarding pass and passport ready for inspection. The first queue at Brooklyn is to reach an agent who inspects your boarding pass and passport before you are allowed to proceed to the security scanners and then on to the check-in desks after the security screening. Now I don't know what happens if you can't present a boarding pass (either paper or electronic). I suspect we would have heard stories here if folks were denied boarding for lack of being able to present a boarding pass. But I wouldn't want to test the process to find out what extra steps might be required at Brooklyn if you can't show a boarding pass.

For a couple that are both diamond members, a 12 day cruise is the sweet spot for being able to stretch your internet connectivity over the entire cruise at the Essential Plan level. One person can use their benefit to purchase the first 5 days as individual 24 hour packages of $24 each using up $120 of their $135 diamond benefit. Then with 7 days left, the other person can purchase the full voyage plan at $18 per day using up $126 of their $135 diamond benefit. For a longer voyage such as a 14 day cruise, a good strategy at the diamond level is for one person to spread out their purchases of 24 hour packages to cover 5 separate days at the beginning of the cruise, perhaps skipping purchases on port days if applicable. Then once again, the other person can purchase the full voyage plan when there are 7 days left in the voyage.

As a diamond member, I also prefer the new plan, especially for voyages of 7 days. The prices went up earlier this year from $15 to $18 per day for the Essential plan for the full voyage and from $20 to $24 per individual 24 hour purchases. The $135 diamond perk now covers 7 days at the full voyage price of $18 per day or 5 days of individual 24 hour packages at $24 per day. So, for a 7 day voyage, the diamond benefit now provides 24-hour per day connectivity for the entire voyage. The old diamond benefit of 480 minutes meant you were limited to about 1 hour per day over a 7 day voyage.

When you buy an individual day, you have a full 24 hours from the time of purchase. So if you purchase an individual day at 2:00pm, you have until 2:00pm the next day to use it.