ClefsDor

Have Silversea said if they will replace the itinerary with something else? Surely the ship isn’t going to be anchored somewhere for 2 months?

I am wondering what other differences there may be between Moon and Muse in this sort of regard. I think on Moon, Atlantide is also open for breakfast and lunch but not on Muse? I hope Muse, being the slightly older ship without some of the bells and whistles of Moon isn't subjected to lesser standards and amenities.

11 hours ago, gcornell said:

I was on the Muse a few weeks ago (Alaska) and Kaiseka was not open for lunch.  When I asked they said instead they added a self serve sushi station to the buffet but it was clearly not made by a sushi chef and had a strange (not in a good way) mix of rolls.  

This is what I remember reading. I hope they switch back to opening Kaiseki at lunchtime. 

Thanks, misseli for all the information you provided. Really pleased to hear Kaiseki is open for sushi and sashimi at lunch time. I'm sure we're going to really enjoy the Silver Muse. I wish Muse had SALT Kitchen, Bar and Lab but I guess we'll just have t book something on the Moon as well!

We've just booked the Seward to Osaka cruise on Silver Muse. This will be our first cruise with Silversea - we’ve previously sailed exclusively on Crystal. We know there are some doubts about being able to enter Japan and personally I’d love it if the ship just high tails it to Australia, saving us a return flight home 😀. I guess we’ll find out in due course - I just hope the cruise isn't altogether cancelled and that it will end up somewhere in Asia as it brings us closer to home and is one of the main attractions of the itinerary for us.

So my questions are:

Thanks, Roy for your thoughts on this and hope you continue to enjoy your current cruise. Really enjoying reading your blog Rakkor!

This one is going to spark a lot of heated debate I'm sure. By way of background we have only cruised on one other line - Crystal Cruises (who are now no longer but it appears they might resurface from the ashes next year with a new owner). We have about 10 Crystal cruises under ur belt and thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the line from dining to entertainment/enrichment. We decided to try Cunard as we are after a cruise that is local and requires no long haul flights (we live in Sydney) and that was ideally in October or November. We happily found the Queen Elizabeth, Freemantle to Sydney cruise for 8 nights. We were late in booking and Britannia Club was booked out (as is Princess Grill but we are not interested in paying that amount for an 8 day cruise. Queens Grill is still available but again, incredibly expensive). We are on a wait list but for an extra AUD4000 for 8 days we are wondering if we should bother, especially considering there is no difference in room size. So I would love to hear peoples perspective who have cruised in both categories - Britannia and Britannia Club. I know food is incredibly subjective. For us it is a big part of the cruise experience. One other thing I would be interested in is the ambience of the BC dining room. I have seen pictures of the Britannia Dining Room, Princess Grill and Queens Grill but can't seem to find much in the way of photos of the BC Dining room on the Queen Elizabeth. Any insights, opinions, and thoughts would be appreciated.

Thank you!

I've been posting a lot of random questions this past week as we are new to Cunard and taking our first cruise on Queen Elizabeth in November. Question for today (not the last, I'm sure 😀)  what are the show times on Queen Elizabeth? Are there two nightly shows? I think I read on one post that there was a nightly show at 10.15 but I presume there must be one a little earlier for those passengers who have elected early dining at 6.00pm? (or in our case, have no other choice as late dining is waitlisted)

I certainly hope they do change to open dining. I have a feeling that our waitlist for Britannia Club is not going to open up in November and being able to dine any time we want was the main reason for trying to book BC.

Thanks, Bell Boy - sounds like you had a wonderful experience!

8 hours ago, Bell Boy said:

I understand from speaking with a member of the ships management during my recent time on Victoria, that with effect from 'September 2022' Open & Fixed dining will be introduced in the Main Britannia Restaurant,  by utilising the upper and lower area of the restaurant .

Would this just be on QV or on QE too? I very much hope this happens on QE for our cruise in November. I dislike fixed dining immensely - 6.00 too early, 8.30 too late. This is one reason why we would happily pay extra for Britannia Club but unfortunately we booked late and are waitlisted. If they do revert to open dining by then our dilemma is over.

3 hours ago, BklynBoy8 said:

Our menus were the same as Britannia but for Dinner we did have an extra menu that gave us the Pre Grill Experience. IOHO....we enjoyed many of the Pre Grill Choices over the Regular Dinner Menu. And our Dining Room Capt. treated us each night to a table side Flambe's over the regular desserts.

Sounds wonderful! As I mentioned we've asked our TA to waitlist us for BC and we very much hope there is an opening. 

35 minutes ago, Lakesregion said:

In the mean time I am perfectly happy to order off menu in Britannia and leave the tiniest portion of the ship to the wealthy grill passenger.

Can one order for menu in the Britannia dining room?

Canoncruiser was your experience in Britannia Club? If so then indeed the menus are very different between BC and Britannia. Alas we are on a waiting list for BC so very much crossing fingers there are some cancellations. 

I know that in QG and PG one does not have to choose a time to dine and is allocated the same table and no one eats at that table before or after you which means you can stroll in anytime you wish for both lunch and dinner (during dining time opening hours). I was wondering if the same applies to the Britannia Club dining room? 

Also, I have read that the food and menus for Britannia and Britannia Club are the same, just separate dining room. However on one of the sticky's above the breakfast menu for BC is more extensive. Can anyone confirm if the menus for breakfast, lunch and dinner are the same in both dining rooms? Thank you!

Excellent information, thank you very much everyone! I think we will do the drinks package but order a bottles of wine in the evenings. I know we tend to drink far more than we do at home when we cruise so I think it'll probably still work out to our advantage. One thing I will do however is not order the package until the second day. No point paying for a whole days worth of drinks package on embarkation day as we will only have drinks that evening.

Thank you for your responses! I see from the wine list on QM2 that the 250ml wines by the glass are all indeed over the $12 mark. I have read elsewhere that waiters in the dining rooms tend to be very generous with the pours so one just orders the 150ml size and normally gets poured much more but the scenario that Bell Boy saw others on drinks packages experiencing is off putting for sure.

I'm sure this is covered elsewhere but in terms of the wine package is this just a discount of say 20% off the marked prices on the wine list? One other thing I'm curious about is if we bring wine on board (I realise it's just 1 bottle each - although some say people they bring on much more than that) I presume we can have this served in the restaurant and pay a corkage? If we do push the rules and bring on say 4 bottles will they still serve a bottle each night and charge corkage or will they stop after 2 nights/2 bottles?

We are trying to decide on whether or not we should bother with the drinks package on an 8 day cruise later this year. Our decision to go ahead or not will mainly be based on what wines are available up to the $12 mark. We like to drink cocktails before and after dinner but during meal times we want to enjoy wines, nice wines. So I was wondering if anyone is able to post a current list of what wines are available by the glass on the Queen Elizabeth. If most of them are over $12 it might make more sense for us to just pay for what we consume - pay for cocktails and then order a bottle of wine with dinner and just by the glass at lunch.Thanks in advance

Best news I've heard for a while! We loved the Mozart and were so disappointed when Crystal decided to remove it from their fleet of river ships. I would do the Vienna return cruise on the Mozart again in a heart beat. I wish there were more options for the Mozart in terms of itinerary but the experience was so fabulous that I don't mind revisiting the same areas again.

Another Italian/American food terminology which I find strange is the term "gravy" used I think when referring to what I assume is ragu or meat sauce. I first heard it being used in the Sopranos years ago. Is that still a thing?

On 8/5/2020 at 7:44 AM, BWIVince said:

Since it's happy hour (again?  already?) in my corner of the world right now, how about "ID That Cocktail"?  🥴  This one should be pretty easy because the garnish is less common.

 

 

Vince

One of our favourites - is it per chance a pink flower cocktail. I always get it wrong and think the name is pink lady for some reason!

Vince, every cruise we have the intention of ordering the Japanese breakfast at least a couple of times but we rarely get to do it even once. We're either up too late, have an early excursion or we've looked at the Waterside menu for lunch and there's so much we want to order that we wouldn't be able to eat the Japanese breakfast as well. But next time, things. will be different 🙂

Actually a good idea would be to have the Japanese breakfast available in Waterside at lunch - problem solved! 

Whilst we have a couple of states in Australia which have been Covid free (i.e. no new cases and no active cases) for some weeks, there are some states still having a very small amount of community infections. But the aim was never to eliminate Covid but to flatten the curve enough that we would not inundate our health care system. Well we've well and truly done that as we have 7,000 ICU beds available and only 2 are currently being used for Covid patients. Unfortunately now in Australia we have gone to the extreme of thinking that a daily infection rate of under 20 people in some States is a "second wave" and lock downs are being reintroduced. With this attitude towards such low numbers I can't see the government opening our borders to anyone from the USA for quite some time.

Unfortunately it's not just the lifting of bans for cruise ships that will be an issue. I don't think our borders, both here and in NZ will be open to anyone until at least the end of the year and it may be even longer - I would hazard a guess that the summer cruising season here will not happen.

Returning citizens and residents need to undergo a 14 day hotel stay quarantine, paid for by the government and with armed guards in the lobby. Given the rising case numbers in the US and elsewhere I can't see this changing for quite a while. On top of this Australia has somewhat lost it's appetite for cruise ships after the disaster we had with the Ruby Princess so this will add to the slow timing of cruise ship restrictions being amended.