bluemarble

Thanks for the follow-up. That's the first I've heard of that option. The Cunard FAQ even states the following. "Pre payment of the hotel and dining service charge It is not possible to pre pay this charge prior to boarding the ship, however should you wish, you may pre purchase on board spending money which can be used to cover the cost hotel and dining service charge, bar, wine and salon services charges added to your on board account and other costs you may incur on board." I'll be interested to hear if you end up being grandfathered into the current lower rates for your June cruise as a result of your prepayment.

Oh, it just occurred to me that it's always possible to prepay any amount you want to be appiled as a credit to your onboard account prior to a cruise. Is it possible that's the situation here, rather than your specifically prepaying the service charge (like you'd prepay for an excursion or a drinks package)? Just thinking out loud here. If that's the case, Cunard could still end up charging you the increased rate for the hotel and dining service charge during your cruise. That would leave you with a net charge of $3 per person per night compared to what you have prepaid into your onboard account to cover that service charge at the current rate.

Thanks. I didn't know it was possible to pay the gratuities when you book a Cunard cruise. Is the Ice White on July 1 and the Masquerade on July 5?

Inquiring minds would like to know. How did you go about pre-paying your hotel and dining service charge? I wasn't aware that was possible to do for Cunard either. Is that something you arranged through the Cunard call center or through your travel agent? Or was that part of one of the promotions where Cunard offers to pre-pay the hotel and dining service charge as part of the promotion? That's fairly common with North America promotions. On a totally unrelated matter, would you mind letting me know what the dress code and theme schedule is for your June 30 QE cruise? That's one of the remaining gaps in my QE 2023 Dress Code and Theme Schedule document. Your itinerary is a bit of an outlier for QE's Alaska season since it's only seven nights. Thanks for any help you are able to provide with this query. You can find the schedule in the Day Calendar section of your booking in My Cunard.

Are the new service charge rates showing up for you in the "Money matters" section of My Cunard (as I mentioned I saw for the first time last Thursday)? That probably qualifies as something akin to fine print and is pretty well hidden. An email would have been helpful. But it is there on the US version of My Cunard for my future bookings anyway. "Service charges For your convenience, a daily hotel and dining charge will automatically be added to your shipboard account, dependant on the grade of accommodation booked as follows: > US$16.50 per person, per day - for Queens Grill and Princess Grill accommodation. > US$14.50 per person, per day - for Britannia accommodation."

I'll do the ship spotting for this one. This is Cross Sound Ferry's Susan Anne which operates on Long Island Sound between New London, Connecticut and Orient Point, New York. This scene shows Orient Point.

I believe it was 8 February 2023 when Cunard first posted a version of their "Vaccination and testing" page implying their vaccination requirements now only applied to their list of "Voyages with enhanced requirements". The last voyages on that list were the same as now, ending with the 3 April 2023 QV departure, the 7 April 2023 QM2 departure and the 24 May 2023 QE departure. Those are essentially the final segments of the QM2 and QV world voyages and QE's Japan itineraries where Japan's rules still apply. Back then in February they stated "Please note, we have only confirmed voyages with enhanced vaccination and testing requirements departing up to and including 31 July." Now with the 21 March 2023 update, I think they have helped clarify the terminology a bit by simply calling their list "Voyages with vaccination and testing requirements" rather than voyages with "enhanced" requirements. I also note they no longer provide a date for how far into the future they have confirmed the list of voyages with vaccination and testing requirements. Now they simply state "Our vaccination and testing policy is reviewed on a regular basis and may be changed at any time." and "Please note currently all Australia and New Zealand voyages still require vaccine and testing and we anticipate all Australia and New Zealand voyages beyond the dates above (including our 2023, 2024 and 2025 departures) will still require vaccination and testing." My take on all this is that the current list of "Voyages with vaccination and testing requirements" as of 21 March 2023 is the last such list they intend to publish except for voyages to countries with their own vaccination and testing requirements for cruises in the future. Of course we will all need to keep a close eye on the stated requirements for any updates. At this point though I am not expecting Cunard to reinstate vaccination and testing requirements for voyages to Europe and the Americas unless those regions reinstate their own requirements. Let's see if that's how it actually plays out.

Oh, I've been looking in entirely the wrong part of the world for @sfred's latest contributions! I identified @Host Hattie's photo of Fishguard shortly after midnight today my time, so technically I'm not eligible to identify either of those two new images quite yet. In any event I'd like to give those in the UK a sporting chance at identifying them first.

I think I finally found this one. I spent way too much time trying unsuccessfully to prove this was the other port on our list from Pembrokeshire. It didn't help that I was working from an old version of our ports list where I hadn't yet included our most recent addition from there. We now have a personal photo of this port so we no longer have to rely solely on the images from the Museum Wales website. Well done for that, @Host Hattie, even if this view does not include Mauretania or Lusitania.😀 I think this is Fishguard, Wales.

I see they have recently updated the service charges in My Cunard for our upcoming voyages on QM2. Quoting from "Before you sail", "Important to know", "Money matters": "Service charges For your convenience, a daily hotel and dining charge will automatically be added to your shipboard account, dependant on the grade of accommodation booked as follows: > US$16.50 per person, per day - for Queens Grill and Princess Grill accommodation. > US$14.50 per person, per day - for Britannia accommodation."

I concur with the suggestions to check what themes will be offered at the Lido Alternative Dining venue for your cruise once you are on board. If you are on an Alaska cruise (per the subject of this thread), I'm reading where Cunard might be introducing a "Frontier" theme at the Lido Alternative Dining venue for Alaska cruises. This would be in line with the "Nordlys" theme they introduced for cruises to Norway and the "Riviera" theme they introduced for Mediterranean cruises. I don't know what the menu will be if they do introduce that new theme on Alaska cruises. But it might influence your decision about how to use your free dinner perk.

Since we've added various other straights to our list, it's appropriate to add Great Belt, Denmark as well. I thought that bridge looked familiar. Not from seeing it in person, but it was included on the route of last year's Tour de France.

The gap in QM2's schedule is from October 22, 2023 when she arrives in Hamburg until November 16, 2023 when she resumes service from Southampton. My assumption is she will be at Blohm+Voss shipyard in Hamburg during that time. Here are a couple previous threads where we have been discussing/speculating about this.

Now that I think we've established Cardiff as a Cunard port, we should make it official with one of your Cardiff photos, @Host Hattie since we can't assume that Mauretania postcard is showing Cardiff. Something taken around the port area/waterfront would be ideal, but as you know we haven't been particular about photos actually having to show the port itself.

Yes, that is an interesting site. It was one of the sources I used while researching Cunard ports for our unseen ports list. Some of those ports go by different names on modern itineraries (Fiume = Rijeka, Leghorn = Livorno, Smyrna = Izmir, Syra = Syros, Constantinople = Istanbul). That's why you won't find those older/alternate names on our unseen ports list.

I may have found evidence of Cunard ships having called at Cardiff. Quoting from: https://www.shippingwondersoftheworld.com/cardiff.html "Other Atlantic liners which have berthed in Queen Alexandra Dock or have called at Cardiff and embarked passengers by tender include the Cunard White Star Scythia (19,761 tons) and Ausonia (13,912 tons)" There's also a British Pathé video titled "HOME TO THE LAND OF MY FATHERS" (AKA U.S.L. GEORGE WASHINGTON) (1928). The description of that video mentions "Titles and first section of story missing, that showed Cunard Liner Scythia bringing hundreds of Welsh-Americans to Cardiff for the National Eisteddfod."

That's a fair point that a postcard from a hotel in Cardiff showing Mauretania doesn't necessarily demonstrate Mauretania actually called at Cardiff. It's circumstantial evidence similar to that Cardiff bank shipping gold on the Antonia. And accepting a photo of Braemar may be a bridge too far since it wasn't a Cunard ship at the time. Let's keep looking to see if we can demonstrate a Cunard ship called at Cardiff before we add Cardiff to our seen ports list. It certainly seems logical that a Cunard ship would have called there at some point.

That works for me. Let's go ahead and add Cardiff to our seen ports list.

I don't think we have been able to determine that a Cunard ship has ever called at Cardiff. If we can document that a Cunard ship has called at Cardiff, then by all means a photo of Cardiff would be appropriate.

Those museum photos of Fishguard should count to make our seen Cunard ports list. That link @ExArkie submitted was for our subgame to list Cunard ships with names of regions that have been visited by Cunard ships. I think that may have been before we relaxed the rules for our main game to accept images of Cunard ports from sources other than personal photos or webcam images captured by contributors. Based on our current more relaxed rules we should add Fishguard to our seen ports list.

One additional piece of the puzzle is that the New York cruise schedule has now been updated to include the 2023 schedule for the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal (BCT). The last time I checked a day or two ago it was only showing the schedule for the Manhattan Cruise Terminal (MCT). Here is the link to that NYCruise schedule maintained by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC). To my knowledge this is the closest we have to an official schedule for those terminals. https://nycruise.com/schedule/

Here is what I have for Cunard's "Attire Suggestions" for the Red and Gold theme. Full disclosure, this is a few years old from when it used to be called the Royal Cunard Ball. Also, please keep in mind participating in the themes is entirely optional. "Formal Wear Red or Gold Dress code Gentlemen - Tuxedo Ladies - Evening gown Appropriate red and/or gold gowns and accessories"

That's it. Well done. You've found the Tasmanian devil-ish West Beach camera. That's a view of QE's arrival at Burnie earlier this year on January 25th.

No need to confine yourself to photos of ports we haven't seen here yet. We've had numerous repeats and welcome any shots you think might offer a different perspective on a port we've already seen. We've also long since relaxed the requirement that your photos have to show a Cunard ship or that they were even taken during a Cunard cruise. Photos showing a Cunard ship are preferred but no longer necessary. Anything to keep this game going! By the way, we have seen Yalta on this thread before so don't go digging too deep for one of yours unless you'd like to include it. Thanks to your contribution we can now move Nessebar from the unseen list to the seen list but Yalta is already on the seen list.

Here's my follow-up hint for this one. I'm going to keep you working for it though as this hint may not be particularly revealing. Rather than saying this image is "devious", it might be slightly more helpful to change the last few letters of that word and say it is "devilish" instead.