ToadOfToadHall

Comprehensive tests not that long ago revealed a lot of hand sanitisers are ineffective, but when they are germ killing they are also potentially harmful.

Spot on.

It's yet another example of received wisdom.

But the problem is with stuff like this is that companies/governments/whatever can't or won't back down and admit they are wrong. So if Cunard did remove them (since they are of little or no value), a lot of ill-informed people would be up in arms about it.

I am thinking of bringing my own if nothing changes.

How would that work then, from a practical point of view ? I assume you'd arrive at the MDR in the morning, sit and your table and then hand over your tin on beans to the waiter and ask him to give them to the kitchen to heat up for you ? Hmm... really ?

But I agree about the coffee and toast. Both are shocking. The bread would be referred to as "hen bread" by my late Grandma - a term she always used for cheap and nasty poor quality bread.

And the coffee is like something Mrs Miggins would serve , as described by Blackadder as "Brown grit in hot water".

From a safety point of view surely the door should be able to be opened from both sides

Indeed yes. That is what I was referring to.

Could you imagine the ramifications if an incident sure as a fire in a theatre occurred and it later transpired that the main doors to the auditorium could only be opened from one side ?

Both myself and Mrs Toad always wash our hands immediately prior to entering the dining room etc and so do not use them as there is no need. Also, compared to washing your hands, they are pretty rubbish by comparison.

Obviously if you can't wash your hands then then are better than nothing, but you can in this case, so they are effectively useless.

Of course, an observer such as yourself would not know if someone has just washed their hands immediately prior to entering wherever.

Many years ago, I worked as an usher at the Sydney Opera House. One of the best design features was the doors to all the theatres. Once closed, they could not be opened from the outside (no handles, no knobs). During a performance, the inside usher could crack the door during a break, in case any latecomers were waiting.

I know this is not workable on a ship, but I sometimes wonder why more theatres landside are not built that way.

Let me think about the reason for less than 1 millisecond...

Wow, I can't believe the whining about drink prices. Folks I travel 100% with my job - Go to the bar at any Marriott, in any decent sized city and a cocktail will be $12 - $15 and beer will be $9 or $10 plus a tip when you settle up.

But not in the UK it's not.

For example, I sometimes drink in the Hilton in Liverpool. A pint of beer is between £4 and £5 depending on what you have. That's the price, no one expects a tip. £5 is $6.45. It's not $10 + tip like you are expecting to pay.

And that's the problem right there; It seems reasonable hotels in the US (Hilton,Marriott etc) are changing roughly twice what the UK charges.

So, as can be seen from the comments on here, people in the US think the prices on Cunard are reasonable (because they compare them to what they pay in a hotel in the US) and people in the UK think they are expensive because they too compare them to UK prices.

$6.50 For a pint of Guinness is £5

It's actually more like £5.80 as the 15% is not open to debate.

LOL.

 

So we can put that topic to rest because "Alternative Facts" ?

Not really.

The prices on Cunard are very high. The prices on Celebrity are obscene. Just because Celebrity prices are, quite frankly, laughable (almost 10 quid for a bottle of London Pride - I mean, come on), does not make the Cunard prices acceptable.

Last year they did a shuttle boat. You could either get a return for either day, or an unlimited ticket that covered both days. I can't recall the exact price, but there wasn't much between the two types of ticket.

The problem with using wine (or indeed cocktails) to compare prices is that there are too many imponderables. Specifically wine, you can't just compare a glass of [insert grape variety here] in one location with [insert grape variety here] somewhere else unless a) the size of the glass is the same and b) it's the same wine (i.e. the same bottle).

So you really need to compare two known entities otherwise the comparison is meaningless. The best thing would be a bottle (or draught) of brand X beer. Then you know you are comparing eggs with eggs.

..... with a maximum of 550 passengers.

 

A Cunarder has 2500 passengers and up, longer checkin procedures and only a handful of security scanners

True, and it has 1000 and up staff to handle 2500 passengers as opposed to around 15 to 20 for 550 plane passengers.

As I say, it's really not that hard.

1. People don't arrive all at once for airlines. They self-stagger their arrival. I gave the example of the flight where we DID all arrive at the same time, and the airlines could not cope, thus showing that Toad's analogy was incorrect.

It's not incorrect because all an airline does is give you a departure time and advise you how long to arrive before hand at the airport (in fact, they seem not to do that anymore of recent).

So airlines do not stagger passenger arrivals. Obviously the entire plane load of passengers do not all arrive at the airport at exactly the instant in time, but they will all arrive at roughly the same time.

So airlines do cope every day with people turning up for their flight at pretty much the same time.

Ours arrived yesterday. It looked very modern - but there was nothing in it.

As others have said, you get your table number on a card in your cabin when you board. On the first evening everyone is shown to their table when they present said card. On subsequent nights, if you can't recall your table's location/you get lost, a waiter will assist you in finding it.

I'd also imagine that the table layouts and numbering may change from cruise to cruise. I'm not sure about that, it's just a guess.

2000 people on a ship and they all have to arrive at different times it seems in order for the poor staff to be able to cope. And yet plenty of planes have several hundred 100 passengers and they are not told to arrive at different times. It makes you wonder how airports manage with 1000s of people arriving constantly ? How do they do it !!??

And embark early and add to the chaos for passengers and crew : cheers

Here's a question:

Are you retired or still at work ?

I'm still at work, so arriving the day before would mean:

a) Another £150 expense

b) More importantly, an extra day taken of my annual leave allowance.

Why should I, and plenty of others, have to incur extra costs and lose a days holiday ? No thanks.

To save any traffic concerns, stay overnight in a Southampton Hotel.

Or, as an alternative, allow sufficient time for your journey.

I still fail to understand the issues of traffic etc.

 

It‘s just a one hour hop from Hamburg to London for us, but we would not take chances - we always stay the night before in Southampton - or NYC etc.

 

So you take no chances when flying from Germany, and yet fail to understand why people driving from other parts other UK adopt the same approach and also take no chances ?

You are allowing plenty of time when flying and equally those driving also allow plenty of time.

You'd have a hard job, since it's been demolished.

Well that's good. I could not believe my eyes last June.

What else is there to do anyway?

In Southampton ? Nothing at all. You could wonder around the city centre and marvel at the graffiti covered derelict shopping centre if like !

For those passengers traveling within the U.K., they can easily adjust their arrival time at the port to more closely coincide with their boarding time.

Not really.

If you drive anymore more than say 1 mile in the UK then it's almost impossible to predict with any great degree of certainty at what time you will arrive.

And the longer you have to travel, the worse it becomes. For ourselves, we are around 250 miles from Southampton. On a good day that would take you just over 4 hours. On a bad day, that could be 7 hours or so. So I would allow 7, not 4. And if I arrive 3 hours early then so it.

Stewart, I’m not familiar with the term “ Red top”. What does it mean? Thanks

I think it means people that are one their first Cunard cruise because their cruise card has a red stripped section at the top.

Or he could mean lots of people were reading the Sun, Mirror or Star !

There is a review on QV from the cruise we just finished where the reviewer mentions paying £6k for the cruise. However, on their table was another couple in the same class of cabin who had paid only £2.5K for the same cruise. Now that would annoy the majority of people.

On a previous cruise, we'd paid about £4500. On the very last morning we shared a breakfast table with a young couple who had just finished Uni and they said they booked the cruise last minute and ended up paying around £2000. Good on them was my thought - it did not annoy me. In fact, it annoyed me so little that we did what they did the very next year - booked very late and paid half what we paid the previous year.

It's interesting to see just how much money people spend on drinking when on a cruise (myself included). I've just looked at my records for out last cruise. It was £263 per cabin per day and our bar bill was £95 a day for the two of us. That means we added 36% on top of the base fare.

It means for 16 nights we spent £1500 on pop. To put that in to perspective, we're just booked a week in Cyprus for less than that (and that is all-inclusive). When I think about it like that, I come to the conclusion what an obscene amount of money Mr and Mrs Toad spent on drinking on a single cruise.

If booked direct with Cunard, then the booking conversation was probably recorded. You must refer Cunard back to actual recording as evidence in support of your allegation, In addition ask for a copy of the Booking recording and a written transcript.

I would very much doubt that. Most call centres state "calls may be recorded for training" or whatever, but in reality most do not and certainly they will not keep those recordings for any length of time (if they existed in the first place).

I would be amazed if they produce a written transcript of a call you made 7 months ago.