Artists/Speakers/Musicians/Celebrities on board the QM2, Voyage M403, Southampton to Cape Town. Departing 11 January 2024.

[Zeg]

According to the Cunard website. I’ve counted forty one Artists/Speakers/Musicians/Celebrities ‘booked’ on board the QM2, Voyage M403, Southampton to Cape Town. Departing 11 January 2024. 
 

These include The Bootleg Beatles, Michel Roux, Bear Grylls, Sally Gunnel CBE….

 

Can this be right? How can there be so many? Do some hop on and off bearing in mind it’s one leg of the World Cruise?

 

Puzzled. 

 

Any confirmations/explanations welcome. Thanks. 

[Host Hattie]

Where have you seen this? Cunard used to publish a list of speakers for individual cruises but it's not been available for a while. 

[Host Hattie]

For instance if you are looking at this Guest Speakers  if you click find out more next to Sally Gunnell, there are no voyages shown.

If you select View Voyages it shows you all of them.

 

[Zeg]

3 hours ago, Zeg said:

According to the Cunard website. I’ve counted forty one Artists/Speakers/Musicians/Celebrities ‘booked’ on board the QM2, Voyage M403, Southampton to Cape Town. Departing 11 January 2024. 
 

These include The Bootleg Beatles, Michel Roux, Bear Grylls, Sally Gunnel CBE….

 

Can this be right? How can there be so many? Do some hop on and off bearing in mind it’s one leg of the World Cruise?

 

Puzzled. 

 

Any confirmations/explanations welcome. Thanks. 

Edit. 
 

Since writing this, the Cunard web site page has changed. So my post is no longer correct.  Maybe someone at Cunard does monitor Cruisecritic!

[bluemarble]

@Zeg, Cunard have not posted any guest speakers on their website for your voyage M403. You can tell that since there is no "Guest speakers on board" section on the voyage information page for voyage M403 itself found at https://www.cunard.com/en-gb/find-a-cruise/M403/M403.

 

Unfortunately that's the case for most voyages these days. It's mostly just special event cruises such as the "Literature Festival at Sea" and some of the Alaska cruises where Cunard post the speakers ahead of time on the website.

 

I suspect you are looking at the general "Guest speakers on board" page which @Host Hattie mentioned. Many of the entries found on that page are out-of-date. I you are using a desktop browser and hover over the "View voyages" links for the speakers listed on that page, that will indicate which voyage the speaker was on.

 

Here are the voyages (which have already sailed) indicated for the guest speakers you mentioned.

 

The Bootleg Beatles: Q315 (Apr 19-28, 2023)

Michael Roux: M329E (Sep 22-29, 2023) - That was the "Festival of Food and Wine" crossing

Bear Grylls: Q320 (Jun 8-20, 2023)

Sally Gunnell: Q313 (Apr 3-19, 2023)

 

When the "View voyages" link is for a past voyage, that link will cause all future voyages to be displayed instead. That's probably how you came to the conclusion those guest speakers were going to be on your voyage M403. Hope this helps explain what's going on.

 

Edit to add: I now see your follow-up post where you indicate what you were originally seeing for the speakers on your voyage has changed. I suppose that was some sort of glitch. Glad to hear it's been resolved. Hopefully my post was of some use anyway, at least to indicate when those speakers you mentioned were actually scheduled to sail in the past.

Edited January 6 by bluemarble

[Zeg]

15 hours ago, bluemarble said:

I suppose that was some sort of glitch. Glad to hear it's been resolved. Hopefully my post was of some use anyway

Indeed it was. Most helpful. 
 

M403 (and all world cruise sectors) has, only in the last 24 hours, been removed from the Cunard website ‘find a cruise’ page, (including sold out cruises), probably because of the imminent departure date.

 

Could explain the confusion. 

 

This time yesterday the glitch definitely showed M403 and the 41 acts I mentioned attributed to M403, which took some believing, hence this thread.