IB2

Isnt that just the 5% they knock off for WC early bookers? Which will already be in the price you paid.

It felt like a reasonably sized single to me. Certainly not a double bed.

They do a lot of maintenance while at sea, but the refit is a chance to do some more significant changes to the various parts of the ship. When I was on her in October staff were expecting some reasonably significant changes and had been consulted for suggestions as to how the design or facilities of their areas could be improved - but back then nothing had yet been decided.

I took Essential for both of my QM2 TAs last year, and it was fine - good for browsing, Instagram, Facebook, email. Yes, you couldn't watch videos on YouTube and the like, but that was hardly a handicap during a week on the ship. Connectivity was good in the public areas of my ship and fine in my cabin - which was on Deck Three. On the longer decks some passengers said connectivity in their cabins was less good/reliable.

There’s a whole separate thread (indeed more than one!) on the ever-changing dining arrangements …

Well I hardly saw any, over fourteen days. Having been in a ‘long corridor’ standard cabin before, I’d say the foot traffic along those is much higher, especially if you are near a laundry.

Having done the crossing four times with a dog, there isn't a lot of barking out on deck in any case. The barking comes from those dogs left locked up during kennel opening times, because their owners are off doing something else. The kennel section is inside the ship's bulkheads and I'd be very surprised if any noise travelled through the deck to the rooms below. On a nice day the passengers sunbathing on the QG sun deck will hear the occasional doggy noise from the dog deck above, but that's about the size of it.

The share price is low because of all the extra debt they took on to make it through the pandemic years with no income, now made a bigger burden because of rising interest rates, and residual restrictions such as having to run with some cabins vacant for potential quarantine. One other line has already gone bankrupt, and Carnival faces a challenging task to return to profitability - while the ships will continue to run, it isn't impossible that they are forced into a refinancing that puts some or all of the existing shareholders' capital at risk. So always DYOR!

Having done QM2 crossings in 2019 and 2022, I'd say that it's now more relaxed, with more people wearing business suits for formal nights and skipping the jacket for regular nights (the latter of course used to be mandatory but now isn't). Everyone was perfectly presentable but post-pandemic there does seem to be less rigour over dress codes.

I'd stick with the fixed dining. I certainly didn't enjoy the flexible arrangements running for the late sitting on the QM2 in October, queing up every night not knowing where I'd be sent, and one night finding myself on a table where only one other person spoke English. To be fair, the other nights all worked out fairly well, and it was quite fun meeting different people every night - and by the end of the crossing encountering a few people for a second time. But dressing up and going to the Britannia not knowing how dinner would pan out wasn't enjoyable, particularly on formal nights. The only downside of the fixed arrangement is if you land on a table you don't get on with, and in such a case it is always possible to ask for a move.

The one bottle rule has been around for some time, I think, but I've never known it policed. Particularly if you put one bottle in each case, they'd never bother to dig any further!

Yes, the cabins are great and they're easy to find (once you're in the know) - the key is remembering which way to turn when you come round from the centre lifts. The location is good, between staircases C (for Kings Court) and D (for stuff at the back of the ship), and very handy for the Britannia which is so close. There's a kettle and tea/coffee stuff in the cabin. The only - very minor - issues are that the attendant serves other cabins - probably at least the solos on deck two - so he or she isn't always around and not as easy to find as when you're on a longer deck. And there's no laundry, so you need to travel up to one of the higher decks to do your washing. And there's a very minor design fault in that the wardrobe door can catch in the handle of the bathroom door, so the bathroom doors tend to have long scratches in them.

No. And they're not really large enough.

They're not Queen size, I'm sure. Here's my photo

I did two crossings last year in a third deck single cabin, and it isn't noisy at all. There's a poster in another thread who said that the corridor is used when the nighclub turns out, but I didn't notice this on any of my crossings. There was hardly ever anyone walking down the corridor - just people going to and from their rooms, or the cabin attendant - and the only noise I heard was a little bit through the wall from the cabin adjoining. The steps and heavy fire doors at each end of the corridor make it feel secluded from the rest of the ship. These cabins are very good - but also very popular - and highly recommended if you can get one!

As of October, they hadn’t finalised the schedule of works and we’re still taking wish lists from the various departments. You’re right that it’s likely to be more than just a bit of painting and repairs.

I didn’t take the risk of asking him before I made the booking! Cunard have tried a new system this time of requiring kennels to be requested from the customer centre when booking the cabin, then they come back at the end of the week with the good or bad news. This is, I think, just for the first week that bookings are open, and replaces the old system where you had to contact the kennels afterwards, with the booking number, and they then told you yes or no straight away. I was relatively relaxed as I booked within the first 45 minutes, but for those booking later it must have been nerve wracking and from the figures a bunch of eastbound passengers have found themselves on the waitlist already, in some cases quite a long one. Plus I received four notification emails from Cunard for each of my bookings and had to read them all and check each attachment, just to make sure they all said the same. Cunard admin at work, I guess?

So with the opening of summer 2024-spring 2025 bookings, there's been the usual scrum for kennel places, and the current position appears to be: The 5 May eastbound crossing is already sold out upper and lower, with a waitlist for the upper kennels and the lower waitlist already full and hence closed. There are still upper kennels (for cats, or dogs weighing less than 26 lbs) on all other crossings. For lower kennels, the eastbound 23 May and 6 October crossings are sold out and the waitlist is already full and hence closed. The 16 June eastbound is already sold out with a long waitlist, as is the 6 July eastbound. The 28 July eastbound is sold out with a short waitlist, the 23 August eastbound is sold out with a reasonably long waitlist, the 15 September westbound is sold out with a short waitlist, as is the 25 October eastbound; the 3 December eastbound is sold out with no waitlist currently. For the remaining crossings there are, as of today, still between four and seven (out of twelve) lower kennels unsold.

Yes, they could certainly do it in six days, possibly five at maximum speed - the slower pace is a mixture of economy (the diesel generators are cheaper to run than the aviation fuel turbines that push the speed up to maximum), contingency (so that they always arrive on time, regardless of weather or medical diversions), and marketing - they do seem to believe that crossings of a round-week maximise their appeal and income. The old QE2 was originally scheduled to a five-day crossing, but dropped back to six days in the 1990s, I believe?

OK, fair enough, I checked the two crossings I booked yesterday myself online, and my first thought was, ‘wow’, the prices have gone up already…but it was simply that I’d been billed with the 5% early bird discount.

Are you sure that isn’t simply that the website advertised prices don’t include the 5% early bird discount?

Yes, I just checked mine as well, and mine for 2024 are actually cheaper than for 2022 - but in my case I don't take the flights. For this year's travel they took £200 off each of mine because I didn't take a flight - I now see that the prices are quoted ex-flight and you have to add the flights on - and they all cost a lot more than £200! Clearly the £200 refund being given in the past was a bad deal!

As a p.s. to my post above, I checked both my crossings online today to confirm the prices, and there is a KC cabin still available on both of them - despite my being told yesterday I was getting the last one! So I can only assume that some of yesterday's bookings didn't go through, or that people changed their mind and another cabin has become free?

What a mess. When I booked (for 2024!) yesterday, they said it is still policy that you can’t travel with covid symptoms, but didn’t say how this would be enforced. They also asked some question about conditions requiring oxygen, which I don’t remember before.

The popular cabins will go quickly and they are then left with the marketing task of filling up the ship and all the less popular ones. When the QM2 was being designed, the owner of Cunard was adamant that he wanted the ship to have half its cabins with balconies - which was a challenging goal leading the ship to be designed higher (requiring some clever work with the funnel to still be able to get under that New York bridge) and wider (which meant abandoning the original goal of being able to fit through the Panama Canal) than originally intended, the length already constrained by the turning circle in Southampton docks. But the Cunard boss surely knew his business in terms of getting a balance of cabin types that would sell!