Roland787

DaisyUK,

My previous comment was merely my opinion of QM2's present state, as compared against my previous 20 or so sailings on her, and what areas I would place attention to during a dry dock period.  It was not my intent to worry future passengers.  I'm sure that you will have a lovely time aboard QM2!  She is still my favorite ship, and I am happy to be onboard till we reach NYC, and I am looking forward to sailing her again over Christmas / New Years, to go to the Caribbean.  The crew on QM2 are fantastic, so in the unlikely event you were to find anything out of order with your stateroom, they will quickly get it sorted out for you.  This morning, they replaced the broken part in the air condoning unit for my cabin, so no more helicopter noise.  I think the pandemic shutdown likely led to most if not all passenger ships becoming behind on some of their day-to-day upkeep and general maintenance.  A current table mate of mine recently sailed on the Norwegian Dawn, and she said practically everything on that ship was either broken or in some state of significant disrepair and she was happy to be back onboard QM2.

Being currently onboard QM2 at the time of this posting, they definitely need to prioritize catching up on general repairs and maintenance, before investing in any major alterations to the ship.  As someone who loves this ship, it pains me to say that she is currently in the worst state of repair that I have seen the ship in to date.  They really need to strip the hull down to bare metal from deck 7 down and fully repair the extensive rust damage around many of the ship's windows.  The glass paneled wind walls on the terraced back part of the ship have extensive rust damage.  Given the age of the ship, the lifts throughout the ship should have their buttons and indicator displays replaced or updated, and some of the banged up and deeply scratched lift doors should be replaced.  The steel handrails around deck 7 should have the layers of paint stripped to metal and repainted.  They should replace all of the light fixtures in the corridor on deck 9.  They are still using compact fluorescent bulbs in these fixtures that have discolored the lamp shades, making most of these shades look terrible, hardly fitting to be outside the doors of some of the ships most expensive suites.  They could stand to repair or replace the mechanicals of the individual cabin climate control systems.  The blower on the one for my cabin sounds like a helicopter.  I think that all of the time that the ship spent in "warm layup" with only a skeleton crew put the ships engineering team in a difficult situation where they are having to play catch up on routine repairs and maintenance which didn't occur during covid.  

Captain Hall addressed the ship on the PA this afternoon.  He indicated that the current plan for the ship is to start sailing back to Southampton the evening of the 2nd.  He stated that those plans are subject to change.  They are trying to line up charter flights to NYC for the North American passengers for the 1st and 2nd.  So, while he gave few details, I do appreciate him addressing the ship.  I realize Cunard find themselves in a bad situation and I do believe that the Captain and everyone at Cunard are doing their best to get everyone home as safely and comfortably as possible.   

I need to mention that the crew onboard this cruise have been amazing!  I am very concerned what this hasty return to Southampton means for the future of the ship and her crew.  Cunard put an awful lot of effort into training a truly wonderful crew, and has been getting the ship back into shape after being in "warm layup" for two years.  I really hope that as soon as the Omicron surge subsides, Cunard will be able to resume QM2's schedule, and that people will resume sailing this wonderful ship!

The ongoing lack of communication is really frustrating many North American passengers who have received zero official communications today.  We're getting tired of Cunard treating us like mushrooms.

There's a new unsubstantiated rumor going around that several key members of the bridge team had become positive causing them to halt the cruise, as they need to fly in more ships officers.

It's wonderful to have to rely on other passengers and Cruise Critic to get information about what is happening onboard rather than our captain providing any useful information.

I am currently onboard QM2.  We are at anchor off Barbados.  To put it kindly Captain Hall has provided no context to passengers as to why the cruise has been halted.  We have been given zero information as to the status of COVID cases onboard.  There are rumors of a charter flight having been booked to fly North American passengers home on the 1st and 2nd.  My family and I are beyond disappointed with the near total lack of communication from Captain Hall / Cunard.  I have sent Captain Hall the following letter via the pursers desk:

"Captain Hall, 

I would like to first thank you and all of your crew for all that you have done and are doing to provide a pleasant and safe journey for all onboard Queen Mary 2 under such extremely extraordinary circumstances.  I am also grateful to all Cunard, Carnival UK, Carnival shoreside personnel who are working to make arrangements for North American passengers to return home.   

As a passenger who joined Queen Mary 2 in Brooklyn on the 22 nd, I would respectfully ask that you please consider sharing with North American passengers the context of how Cunard came to the decision that Queen Mary 2 will head directly to Southampton UK vs. stopping at a North American port to disembark North American passengers.  From news reports it would appear that the port of New York has closed due to Omicron?  Is there a reason Queen Mary 2 could not make a stop in an alternative North American port to disembark North American passengers?  Cunard forcing North American passengers to disembark in Barbados and fly commercially during the pandemic feels a bit like Cunard is abandoning the North American passengers.  My elderly parents and I drove to the Brooklyn Cruise terminal rather than flying from our homes in Central Virginia specifically in order to avoid flying during COVID.  We had not foreseen any possible circumstance under which Cunard would not return us to North America via ship.  If you would kindly consider sharing with the passengers some additional information about why Cunard has had to make the difficult decisions that it has made, that would go a long way towards alleviating some of the anxiety and concerns felt by myself, as well as many other passengers.   

Best wishes to you and all of the Queen Mary 2 crew!"

Does anyone know why QM2 has not departed Ocean Terminal yet?  We are booked to board her on the 22nd in Brooklyn and keeping our fingers crossed everything will go as planned with no last minute changes.

To an extent I can sympathize with Cunard's IT folks, as in my job as a network engineer I have had to fight with management to be able to purchase necessary additional Internet bandwidth for our college campus. Back when we only had a 100Mbps Internet connection, during peak times the internet on our campus was nearly as bad as it is on board QM2. We had to go from 100Mbps to 1Gbps (1000Mbps) to be able to provide good service to campus and we are currently adding a second 1Gbps connection.

Ironically, last June two days before boarding QM2 for my Westbound TA, while I was in the bar at the thyme restaurant in the Southampton Premier Inn West Quay, located next door to Carnival House where Carnival UK has the Cunard / P&O headquarters. I overheard some Carnival UK managers having a meeting with people who appeared to be representatives from their satellite Internet provider, talking about how much bandwidth per berth they could offer. I was hopeful they were negotiating for faster speeds, but my recent sailings would not seem to indicate that they have added any satellite bandwidth. I was halfway tempted to interrupt their meeting and beg for them to add more Internet bandwidth to QM2 from a customer standpoint. They really should be embarrassed that the Internet connection on Carnival Corp's flagship the QM2, is so pathetically slow it is almost unusable much of the time. These days customers expect and need to have connectivity particularly on TA's. There are a lot of people who hate flying but need to conduct business on board QM2.

Pop singer Ed Sheeran, who is a regular QM2 traveler having recorded one of his songs aboard while on a TA, has complained about QM2's Internet on a TV talk show.

Sadly, trying to get closer to the Wi-Fi access points in the hallways in most cases won't significantly improve your chances of getting good Internet connectivity, since the bottleneck in your connection is from the satellite dishes on top of the ship to the satellites land based downlink. I've tried using the computers in "Connections" on deck 2 and the speed is no better than from the Wi-Fi. The speed of any Internet connection is only as fast as it's slowest point in the path between you and the servers you are connecting to, and on ships the slowest point is the satellite connection.

I'm a network engineer and I manage the Wi-Fi / wired network for a sizable college campus, so I'll offer my observations from using the Internet onboard QM2 over 7 voyages.

During QM2's "Remastering" QM2 received an entirely new Wi-Fi network with nearly state of the art Aruba Networks 802.11ac access points throughout the ship providing complete Wi-Fi coverage inside and out. The actual Wi-Fi system is a very nice system and appears to have been well designed for seamless coverage. I would estimate that they spent several million dollars $$ US on the Wi-Fi network improvements.

Quite sadly their very nice Wi-Fi network equipment is totally crippled by their horribly inadequate satellite Internet connection. Because the satellite Internet connection was not upgraded at all during the refit or since, the speeds of the Internet onboard has gotten progressively slower with more and more devices connecting to the improved Wi-Fi network.

When you hover your mouse over the Wi-Fi connection icon on your laptop and see a "connection speed" of say "45Mbps," this is only referring to the speed of the connection between your Wi-Fi adapter and the Wi-Fi access point that your device is associated with. Unfortunately, this speed is in no way any indication of the actual speed you are getting to the Internet. If you were really getting 45Mbps to the Internet, you could easily stream Ultra High Definition movies from Netflix or do video conferencing without issue. The reality is that the entire ship is likely sharing a 100Mbps-300Mbps satellite Internet connection for everyone including crew to share. I would say that during busy times of the day, the actual speed to the Internet that passengers can get through the Internet package varies from as low as 0bps to maybe 300Kbps, and yes I said 0bps, that's not a typo, very often you can't get ANY data across their slow satellite connection. The connection is so oversaturated with traffic that it drops most data packets, and all the devices onboard are left in a state of constantly trying to retransmit their data with little data actually making it through. Trying to cram that much data through the slow satellite Internet connection is like trying to suck the ocean through a straw. Of course, the timer on your "Internet Package" still counts the time that you can't do anything at all with the connection as time that you have used and the "Internet Packages" are expensive for horrible Internet service. They will give you credits of time back to your account if you complain to the attendant in "Connections" on deck 2 as I have had to do on many occasions. Their system would be more fair if they charged you by the byte like cellular data companies tend to do. The time you are connected to the Wi-Fi costs them nothing, the cost is in transmitting the data to and from the satellite.

The reason Celebrity has better speeds is that their parent company Royal Caribbean International has invested millions in a low earth orbit satellite system, which can provide large amounts of bandwidth to their ships. Supposedly, Carnival Corporation has recently signed an agreement with a company to launch similar satellites to be used to improve the Internet connections to their ships, but they are likely several years away from improving access to most of the fleet.

If you have to use the Internet for work aboard QM2, I would strongly suggest completing that work early in the voyage, as the Internet speed will get progressively worse as people sign up for Internet accounts and try to use up the time on their accounts later in the voyage. Their accounting server also likes to act up late in the voyage and often won't let you log into your purchased account. I think they probably under specked the accounting server or whoever installed it never actually sailed on the ship to see how it performs under a load, since when the ship is in port hardly anyone uses it. Cunard should not be proud of the state of their IT infrastructure.

Good luck with trying to work via the QM2's satellite "Internet" connection!

I was aboard for the Christmas New Years cruise from 12/22/2017 to 1/3/2018 and had a wonderful time onboard QM2. Although, I will say that in my 7 voyages aboard QM2, made up of 4 TA's, and 3 Caribbean Christmas New Years cruises, this particular cruise had the greatest number of atypical Cunard passengers onboard. There was a large contingent of unruly teenage passengers who were going around causing some problems, such as throwing food off of a balcony down onto deck 7. Captain Wells personally took the kids and their parents to task and promised to ban them from sailing Cunard in the future if they didn't improve their behavior. I witnessed an American guy start an argument with a Scottish passenger while waiting for a shuttle bus back to the ship in Barbados and they almost came to blows. I also saw a pair of twins go behind the counter in Kings Court and start picking through the food with their hands and double dipping in the New Years Eve chocolate fountain. They were quickly chased off by a Kings Court manager. I did observe an older Russian guy dining in Britannia wearing a baseball cap, even on formal nights. In spite of these few rude and inconsiderate passengers 95% of the people onboard were wonderful, and I enjoyed making some new friends as well as bumping into old friends from prior cruises. I was not about to allow the small minority to prevent my enjoyment of QM2. I experienced excellent service in Britannia and found the food in Britannia and Kings Court to be very good. I did observe that there were a large number of passengers who seemed to be suffering from colds, but no greater a percentage of people than I had observed with colds in NYC the day prior to boarding.

I booked three more sailings on QM2 while I was aboard at Christmas, Norway roundtrip from Southampton immediately followed by a TA to NYC, and the next Christmas New Years Caribbean cruise. I'm sorry that the rude minority of passengers this past Christmas succeeded in spoiling the QM2 Cunard experience for some passengers.

We did the self disembarkation at the end of the Christmas cruise in Brooklyn on the 3 rd and we were among the first off the ship at about 7:10 am and we got to our car at about 7:30. This was by far our quickest disembarkation we have had, I'm sure this can vary, so I would budget some extra time just in case customs takes longer.

Enjoy your cruise!

Which trans-Atlantic are you taking?

Having thoroughly enjoyed reading other CC members write-ups over the years, I thought would I would write about my experience aboard QM2’s December22 to January 3 Caribbean cruise. Warning, this will be a long post, I apologize in advance if this is too rambling.

This year, we parked our car at the Brooklyn Cruise terminal, which was convenient for boarding the ship, there was ample parking available, and traffic entering the terminal was relatively light. The security screening and passenger check in process went smoothly and seemed better organized than last year, when the security line was backed up out the door.

Upon boarding, the ships photographers were less aggressive abouttrying to take embarkation photos than on most departures, which was a welcome surprise. The Grand Lobby was nicely decorated for Christmas, with a large Christmas tree secured in the center, flanked by the characters from the Wind and The Willows, and Christmas lights and garland along the banisters. As my cabin was aft of the D lifts, I cut through the unoccupied Britannia Restaurantto get to the D lifts bypassing the massive queue of passengers waiting for theC lifts, and as I expected there was no one queueing for the D lifts.

I was disappointed to see that the stateroom passageways and staterooms received no Christmas decorations at all this year. Having sailed QM2’s Christmas cruise the past two years, previously the stateroom number plates had a bit of Christmas decorations attached to them, and each stateroom had a red poinsettia placed onthe table for decoration, creating a nice festive atmosphere. Greeting me in my stateroom was only the standard Welcome Back card and full bottle of Pol Acker. It seemed that this year’s Christmas decorations throughout the ship with the exception of the Grand Lobby, had been scaled back compared to the last two years, which was something I heard many other passengers commenting about.

A portion of the passenger bags were loaded quite late from the terminal on this cruise. My bags and my dining room table mates bags did not arrive in our cabins until moments before the lines were thrown. I later heard that supposedly there had been a problem with one of the X ray machines for screening baggage which slowed the loading process considerably.

Chris Wells was captain for this voyage and Paul O’Loughlinwas the entertainment director. I always enjoy Captain Well’s updates, as he brings his sense of humor to them, such as while we were traversing the “Bermuda Triangle,” he said that he would put our chances of being abducted by aliens as “extremely remote.”

Christmas onboard was very festive as usual. Captain Wells gave a reading of “The Night Before Christmas” for the kids onboard in the Grand Lobby, and they had the senior officers singing carols. The chefs had made a large gingerbread village which was on display in the hallway of deck 3near Sir Samuels.

We enjoyed our three sea days en route to St. Thomas, and arrived in St. Thomas on the morning of the 26 th. We took an excursion to visit Magens BayBeach, which was very relaxing in spite of a few rain showers that passed through. They have done a good job of clearing theroads on St. Thomas following the hurricanes, but the damage to trees and buildings remains extensive. Many buildings on the island have major roof damage, and Captain Wells said that much of the island still has no electricity. As the ship departed St. Thomas after dark, there was hardly any vehicletraffic on the streets, and much of the island was dark, it was almost eerie sailing away from the mostly unoccupied island. Someone on board said that the island is to remain closed to non-cruise tourism throughout 2018.

While departing St. Thomas, I observed something I’ve neverseen aboard QM2, a bunch of unruly unsupervised teens on an upper balcony were throwing food down onto deck 7. Later in the cruise, I overheard a parent lamenting to another passenger that they and their kids had been called in to appear in front of Captain Wells, and that Captain Wells said they had better shape up their behavior, or they would be banned from sailing on the ship in the future. I was pleased to hear that Wells laid down the law on them, but can’timagine how parents could be so hands off in the discipline of their kids while onboard that it could get to the point that the ships captain would have to discipline them himself. In my opinion, the parents should have been ashamed.

The ship anchored just outside English Harbor in Antigua onthe 27 th. They lowered a tender boat, but after measuring the rise and fall of the tender against the loading platform on the side of the ship at a height in excess of 1 meter, Captain Wells determined it unsafe to conduct tendering operations in those conditions. So, we spent the 27 th as an extra seaday. I overheard some passengers grumbling about the missed port, but I think Captain Wells made the right call, as I cannot picture the average QM2 passenger safely boarding a tender that is bobbing up and down as much as a meter or more, compared to the side of the ship. I overheard some crew talking about how they never successfully tender in Antigua because of the typical wave conditions there, but that for some reason Cunard management keeps scheduling it as a port.

On the 28 th the ship had a beautiful day in St. Kitts. Having previously explored most of St. Kitts itself, we chose to take a boat excursion over to visit Nevis Island, where we enjoyed a beautiful afternoon on the beach.

On the 29 th the ship docked in Bridgetown Barbados, where we shared the port with 4 other large ships and one smaller ship. I recalled reading a CC report by a passenger about the Queen Elizabeth’s most recent visit to Barbados, describing the situation of getting to and from the ship within the port as “chaotic.” That statement proved very accurate due to the design of the port. The gangway sticks out into a lane of traffic, such that as vehicles are passing it is not safe for passengers to be stepping off the gangway. They also had a chaotic setup of busses to take passengers to the main port building. Alternatively, passengers could choose to walk the 1/4 mile distance along a narrow raised sidewalk barely wide enough for two people to pass in opposite directions. The busses are impeded by forklifts loading and unloading provisions from other ships, and the walkway is crowded with passengers from multiple ships. It is by far the most ill-equipped port I have visited. We did an excursion called “The Best of Barbados.” While our guide was very kind and informative, the tour used, used Japanese tour busses which had seats far to narrow and close together to comfortably accommodate most averagesized US and European passengers, also the a/c barely worked, so it was sweltering hot in the bus. This was by far my least favorite of all the Cunard sanctioned excursions that I have ever been on. Returning to the ship, I took the narrow walkway back while the rest of my party waited for the busses. They saw an American and a Scottish guy pumping their fists at each other almost coming to blows after one accused the other of cutting ahead in the queue. We were all glad to sail away from Barbados after that day.

Our last port day was Amber Cove on New Year’s Eve. Having read a lot of negative things about Amber Cove from other CC members, I was prepared for the worst, but the port itself is nearly brand new and was much nicer than I expected. We shared the port with a Costa ship. Having said that, our experience went downhill after our “Monster Truck Adventure” left the port. Just after leaving the port, the guide made everyonesign a waiver, which no one could recall Cunard informing anyone about. From the description of the “Adventure” one would think the vehicle would be going on off road trails to remote areas. In reality it is just an ancient former military truck with seats in the back and no suspension that takes an unmaintained road along the coastline to a remote beach. The beach where we ended up was nice, but the guide warned people that while visiting the Dominican Republic if you are stopped by the police, be prepared to pay the police a bribe to be let go, he said that all the police there are corrupt and stop people to get bribes. Based on my experience in Amber Cove, if Iever return I would probably not leave the secured port area.

New Years Eve was very festive on board as always, they celebrated UK new years in the Chart Room at midnight London time, and had balloon drops in the Queens Room and Grand Lobby at midnight ships time, which was 1 hour ahead of NYC time. At midnight ships time they opened up a special New Years buffet in Kings Court which wasan unbelievable spread of food. It was alot of fun to watch the chefs get the Kings Court spread set up and theychanged a 2017 ice sculpture to a 2018 one at midnight.

Our last day on board took us back into wintery weather, asthe ship passed through freezing rain and sleet. It was a harsh welcome back to reality as we approached NYC.

All in all, we had a wonderful time spending Christmas andNew Years aboard QM2 for the 3 rd year in a row!

QM2 is by far my favorite ship!

I should clarify my previous post by saying that the QM2 has a wonderful hardworking crew that do an amazing job overall. However, there are a couple areas such as Kings Court and the painting of the black portion of the hull, where moreattention to detail by whomever is managing and directing the maintenance andupkeep of those areas might in my humble opinion serve the ship better.

I fully intend to continue enjoying my time aboard the bestship in the world! I suppose my affinityfor the ship makes me wish she could be babied with a little more TLC in certain areas.

Happy holidays from at sea aboard QM2!

I am currently aboard QM2 on her Christmas – New YearsCaribbean voyage, and while I always enjoy my time aboard my favorite ship, Imust say I am slightly disappointed with the current condition of theship.

I would like to know who onboard and shoreside areresponsible for overseeing the general upkeep of the ship?

I was aboard QM2 on her first post “remastering”trans-Atlantic crossing, and I know Cunard invested a lot of money in the KingsCourt renovations. I am sad to reportthat only a 1.5 years after the new Kings Court opened it is already startingto look battered and worn. Several of themarble and quartz fronts of the serving areas have had their corners crackedand their decorative metal strips broken off and re attached with masking tapein several areas. The plate warmers havebeen turned up to such a hot temperature that the quartz tops have started tocrack from the heat. The chair rail thatruns along the corridor in Kings Court is battered and dirty. It is obvious that no one onboard makes anyrepairs to things as damage occurs. Whydo they not put rubber bumpers on the carts they use in Kings Court to preventdamage? Many of the “wood look” ceramic tilesin the floor are cracked and several light fixtures are broken.

Most of the clocks around deck 7 do not work, and fail tokeep the proper time, even the clock behind the pursers desk in the Grand Lobby is broken.

The black painted portion of the hull is quite heavilyrusted at the moment, including the front of the bow, and all around the lowerboarding doors. I do realize that withall her trans-Atlantic runs, that QM2 has less time in port to be repainted andher paint jobs do not likely last as long as ships operating in more forgivingenvironments. The weather today in St.Thomas was perfect for the crew to do some painting like Celebrity was doingwith the bow of the Equinox, but the only painting going on, on QM2 wasrepainting a life boat davit that had no rust on it. Does Carnival UK / Cunard not realize that appearancesdo matter, because the ship is their brand, and when it has more rust on it thanmany container ships do it does not exactly entice people to sail on theirships? Many people in the port at St.Thomas were commenting about how the Celebrity Equinox had no rust and the QM2has a lot of rust.

Do the Elizabeth and Victoria have similar upkeep issues oris it something wrong with onboard management on QM2?

In spite of these issues I’m likely to continue to sail QM2as I love the ship itself in spite of Cunard’s lack of giving her the TLC shedeserves. Perhaps Carnival UK / Cunardknows she has enough loyal fans to not maintain her to high standards?

I guess I mostly resent that if they just reinvested thecost of one cabin’s fare back into fixing some of these issues each voyage thenthe issue would not exist to complain about.

Thanks for taking the time to post this information.

We will be boarding on Friday for the 12 night Caribbean segment.

I'm happy to hear Chris Wells will be our captain.

See you on board.

Is there always ample parking available at Red Hook, or do you need to have a backup parking plan in case you arrive and find the lot full? In the past we have always driven rental cars to and from Newark Airport, and used a Cunard transfer to get to and from the ship in Brooklyn. This year we have an additional person joining us for the QM2 Dec 22 Caribbean cruise, and will need a larger vehicle, so we were thinking of driving our own larger vehicle directly to Red Hook as the rental costs for large vehicles gets more expensive than paying for the parking.

It looks like itineraries will be changing again, with Maria becoming a cat 5 storm plowing through the Caribbean. Sadly Dominica was hit hard last night, even the prime ministers house lost its roof.

Also it looks like QM2 will be sailing right through Jose soon.

I am booked on QM2's Christmas / New Years cruise this year for the third year in a row. I would not want to be anywhere else over the holidays regardless of whatever necessary changes Cunard must make to the itinerary as a result of the devastation caused by Irma.

From looking at online pictures and videos of the devastation in St. Maarten, the British Virgin Islands and the US Virgin islands, I fear it may be years before these islands are near back to normal. I would be surprised if they are ready for cruise passengers in the next six months.

I do not see how anyone could reasonably be upset with Cunard, or any of the cruise lines for changing their itineraries as a result of this very tragic storm, which killed people on these islands, and left a great many people homeless having lost everything. Having our vacation plans slightly altered is a trivial impact of the storm compared to what the residents of these islands have been through and are still going through.

I hope that the cruise lines will carry relief supplies to be donated to the effected ports, even if the ships are unable to disembark passengers during the port stop. They could stop in these ports overnight, between visiting the less damaged neighboring islands, where passengers could enjoy their holidays as normal.

Cunard should be able to substitute other ports for St. Thomas, and St. Maarten, even if they have to travel to islands further south, though they may need to cruise at higher speed than normal. On last year's Christmas Cruise QM2 lost one of the three sea days travel time enroot to Phillipsburg St. Maarten, as we had to turn back and spend a day searching for a lady who went overboard. Captain Kevin Oprey made up the lost day by cruising at a higher speed and we made it to Phillipsburg right on time. So, if need be QM2 can make it to the St. Maarten area within two sea days from NYC, as it is well within the ships speed capabilities.

I do hope that Cunard will provide passengers with information about how they can make donations to help those in the Caribbean impacted by Irma! The cruise lines have the logistical experience and infrastructure in place to get food and bottled water at low prices and have the ability to carry extra supplies on the ships and drop them off while visiting neighboring islands.

I see QM2 is back in Southampton today. I presume this is the end of Captain Oprey's last voyage as Captain. Is Cunard doing anything for him to celebrate his retirement? I hope he will enjoy his retirement!

Is Captain Well's coming aboard for the New York trans Atlantic crossing, and has there been any announcement about a new captain joining QM2?

I would say that the least pleasant parts of my Cunard voyages aboard QM2 have all involved the Red Hook Brooklyn cruise terminal. Check in for this year's Christmas cruise was disorganized, and the security line was backed up out the door in spite of ample space available inside the building if the staff directed guests through the lines properly. Baggage claim at Red Hook has been a disaster several times, one time my bag was at the extreme opposite part of the hall from where it was supposed to be and on other occasions they pack the bags so close together you nearly have to step on top of other peoples bags to get to yours. Ocean Terminal at Southampton is always so much more organized than Red Hook. I guess I could also echo the other comments here about the Pursers desk staff not being quite up to the standards of the other ships staff. On the Christmas cruise I asked for a print out of my onboard account statement and they acted like they were doing me a favor. To top it off the guy gave me someone else's statement rather than mine. These issues are the exception to otherwise stellar service aboard QM2.

My first trans-Atlantic crossing on QM2 in 2014 is still my favorite trip, as it was my first ever cruise. That trip was planned so that I could check a trans-Atlantic crossing off my bucket list, but turned into an expensive addiction, now that I try to sail aboard QM2 at least once every six months!

Nice Cunard memories include bumping into our waiter from the year prior on Christmas, and him remembering all our names and getting to catch up with him. Also boarding right behind Captain Wells and his family in Brooklyn for the 2015 Christmas cruise. Departing Southampton on QM2's first "remastered" crossing was also special.

I'm hoping to make some new happy Cunard memories soon!

I'm actually a bit surprised that the design cost of QM2 would not have been more than 10% of her total cost. In the Aviation world, there is some speculation that Airbus will never be able to sell enough A380 Super Jumbo's to ever break even on their design costs.

While it might have been nice to have a sister to QM2, I think her total uniqueness only adds to her appeal. The technical side of QM2 puts her worlds apart from all other passenger ships. CCL has certainly gotten their design mileage from their original Destiny class, and Vista class ships. Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth are simply Vista class variants, but QM2 is in a class all by herself.

A very interesting article. I always get a good chuckle when I hear fellow Cunarders griping about CCL's ownership of Cunard while aboard QM2, as without Mr. Arison and CCL, the QM2 would not even exist.