MylesS

7 hours ago, Liberal_Baggie said:

Fantastic photos shows just how much work is going on it must be costing an absolute fortune in scaffolding alone! Would be very interesting to hear from Cunard about what they are changing looks like a great big filter is being lowered into the stack. They need to get a move on with the painting though! 

Painting will probably be the last thing they do - don't want to risk scratching it or ruining it with everything else going on at the same time

18 minutes ago, foodsvcmgr said:

Post #92 - Curious as to the function of the large truck which appears to be suspended next to the ship with lines or hoses connecting it to a small shell door in the hull?

Maybe she needs a jump start 😉

5 hours ago, matdark said:

Thank you very much! The sea-day-at-3-knots will be fun 🙂

I remember in March last year going back to Southampton from Le Harve and we were zig-zagging to (I assume) not arrive too early.

2 hours ago, ExArkie said:

We were on QM2 last December 15 - 22, complimentary upgrade to a Q1. Did not have a Christmas tree.

From my knowledge, you're given the option to have one. This may have to be requested a while before the cruise though, and maybe because of a (late?) upgrade, it was missed.

4 hours ago, Pushpit said:

Captain Aseem Hashmi MNM, from Coventry, who has been with Cunard since 1985 (and is still one of their younger captains). It's not continuous service, he was a 737 pilot with British Airways in the 1990s and has worked for P&O.

I love his daily anecdotes on sea days

12 minutes ago, exlondoner said:

Possibly also, there is a distinction between contractors and shipyard employees?

I'd imagine contractors are hired for specific jobs & tasks. For example, contracting electricians, fitters, etc. I'm sure the shipyard can/would do it, but with a project this scale they probably outsource a lot of things, too.

31 minutes ago, david63 said:

Not quite - when a ship is being built the cabin modules are dropped in starting at the bottom and working up so to take them out in one piece would mean removing all the decks above

They're slid in from the side, seperated by the steel that makes up the decks. Removing one cabin would not require the others to come down.

8 minutes ago, david63 said:

If they were would they not have been on the deck plans when cruises post refit went on sale?

 

Cannot imagine anyone booked in a cabin on that deck being very happy to turn up and find the cabin gone!

Yep completely agree, that's the only thing that makes me doubtful of my theory.

There is a posibility that for the future voyages those cabins haven't been available to select, but that would take a lot of planning and I doubt that much thought would have been put into it (as well as a loss of revenue I'm sure).

I guess we'll have to wait and see!

I wonder if they may be introducing more Queens or Princess Grill suites in various parts of deck 8 based on that first photo? Could explain why they've removed the walls?

On 10/15/2023 at 4:22 PM, 3rdGenCunarder said:

Halifax is lovely. You can stop by and say hello to our founder! There's a statue of Samuel Cunard near the cruise terminal. 

 

Just don't expect to get a good look at the July 4th fireworks in Boston. The ship leaves Boston "early morning" on the 5th. Last time I did this cruise, "early morning" was 1 AM, so there were no excursions to view the fireworks--traffic in Boston is always bad, but it's insane after the fireworks. A lot of passengers expected to go to see the fireworks and were disappointed.  You can see the fireworks from upper decks, but they aren't close. There were rumors of an excursion to a hotel rooftop viewing site, but that didn't happen.

 

This first picture was taken with a slight zoom and the second with greater zoom. I took these from my deck 11 balcony. The Westin i the foreground is a bit more than a half mile from the ship. The fireworks are launched from a point a little more than a mile beyond the Westin. 

Due to the fog, we were unable to see the fireworks from the ship this year, so these photos provide great context to what was missed. Some of us were lucky enough to be close to a gentlemen watching them live on their phone!

QM2's summer itineraries look really appealing, especially with Iceland. Interestingly enough I see the Indepedence Day cruise has been "flipped", where the first port of call is now Newport, and the last is Halifax.
 

After speaking with my other half it looks like we'll be spending the summer onboard as we did this year. We'll have to go the Fjords twice, but the 2nd time around there is some extra ports compared to the previous week which is nice.

It seems like this has been a lot more organised than our delay into New York some months ago (wow, time flies!) - great to see that Cunard have seemed to learn from that in order to prepare for similar events such as this, and any in the future.

Forgive me if this has been mentioned before, either on this thread or another, but I thought I'd put my two cents in regarding the possibility of changes to existing tiers & how you obtain them.

There may be a chance that Cunard opt to follow what P&O have done with their Peninsular Club - after gaining 150 "points" (which is gained after 15 nights onboard) you join the club, and from there each night you spend onboard you are awarded 10 points.

Rewards and perks are then "unlocked" as you earn more points, for example, if you have between 501 and 1,000 points you gain a 7.5% on-board spend discount. They then seem to have two tiers which are reserved for passengers who really go the extra mile with their loyalty.

I think this would make the most sense for Cunard to introduce, as then points can be awarded to existing CWC members as Cunard know the exact amount of nights sailed.

2 hours ago, Spicedog said:

If the wifi is being improved, think they will still charge for internet on board?

It will never be free, but I don't think the cost will increase from what it currently is. There is already Starlink onboard, which actually provides the high speeds, the routers that will be replaced/more introduced will just increase the "local" signal, and a few thousand routers isn't much money for Cunard/Carnival in the grand scheme of things.

That being said, satalite internet will always cost money. Hence it never being free.

Hi all,

We've just spent the last near 2 months onboard Queen Mary 2 - from the 23rd of June to the 11th August (with a 1 week gap, as one trip was sold out!), and I thought I'd share some of the times we had here, as we were onboard for a lot of the "surprises" the ship has had during that time.

Firstly, this was not one whole cruise as I'm sure many will be aware. We did 3 back to backs. The 3 back to backs were the following:
- Roundtrip Transatlantic Crossing & Independence Day Celebration
- Eastbound Transatlantic Crossing (We were unable to get the Westbound crossing after the 21 night trip as it was sold out)
- Mediterraneann Highlights

Queen Mary 2 is our favourite ship, and she didn't disappoint during the last few months. There's been a lot said about her age showing and general wear and tear being "worse" - but for a 20 year old ship, I think she is in splendid shape. We saw a lot of TLC happening, especially in the Med, so I think they were using the gap in the transatlantic crossing schedule and taking advantage of the good weather to do this.

A highlight was on our second Eastbound crossing where the ship was doing 26 knots to avoid a storm in the early hours of the morning (12-1am) -- this is the fastest I've personally seen her go in a while whilst onboard.

As I've previously posted, we were impacted by the late arrival into New York due to the medical emergency and diversion to Halifax. We had our tour cancelled, but we made the most of the almost extra day at sea and sailing into New York & under the bridge in broad daylight is something I don't think I'll get to experience again. After disembarking for immigration, we made the most of a bad situation and went to the local IKEA in Brooklyn for some food and good views of the ship.

Halifx, although foggy was a lovely port and Peggy's Cove is somewhere I think we'll return to in the future. Boston, also affected by weather was a nice port and we enjoyed our tour. Due to the fog that had been following us for the past week, it made it hard to see the 4th of July fireworks, but the themed food in the Kings Court was great. We missed Newport due to weather conditions, but Captain Hall had found us a nice sunny space in the sea, and parked us there for the day.

The 3 transatlantic crossing we did were lovely, with plenty of time to relax and unwind in the spa, play games on deck 2, and enjoy the shows & other entertainment. A first for us, this also included the casino. Weather was great, other than a lot of fog throughtout them.

The Mediterraneann was a lovely end to our travels. Lots of ports and great tours provided by the ship. Hiking in Cadiz, a catamaran in Barcelona reminded us of our Christmas Caribbean cruise, and wine tasting in other ports. The port replacement for Villefranche was great, and props to Cunard & all involved who arranged great tours so last minute.

Weather between Civitavecchia and Valencia was very rough, ironically more so than the bay of biscay and transatlantics. This was great though as personally I love bad weather on QM2.

As reported the day before we had broken our mouring lines. We were returning from our nearly 8 hour tour to see QM2 in the middle of the harbour at an angle. One passenger who spoke Itallian was causing a right fuss, shouting and swearing at our guide in Itallian (we believe he thought the ship was leaving) -- eventually the tour guide just told him to "shut up" and a port police officer had to come on the bus to calm him down while we were taken to the ship's new bearth. 2 hour wait in the terminal before reboarding, but no issues, we just patiently waited before returning to the ship for dinner.

The staff throughout our time onboard were amazing, it was always lovely to see & say hello to those that were surprised we were still onboard/had come back so soon after the last trip, especially the staff in the Kings Court speciality restaurant. We had 3 seperate cabins for each segment, so 3 seperate cabin stewards. No way to fault them, amazing in every way, as were our waiters & sommelier at dinner.

If I had to point out a downside to doing 3 back to backs like this it would be the entertainment. Over the course of a longer trip like this, it can get repetitive, even with the movie offerings in Iluminations. Obviously we understand we were "unique" to staying on for so long, so I'm not complaining. This would just be the only thing I'd like to see changed/improved or as a warning to anyone else thinking of doing something similar.

Great trip and great 6 weeks, and would love to do it again. We're back on for Christmas this year and in the process of fully planning out next years travel, which I'm happy to say will still be with Cunard.

Thanks for reading!

17 hours ago, Marylebone37 said:

Has anyone heard anything more about the work to be performed in Oct/Nov this year?  

Captain Hall confirmed at one of the recent CWC cocktail parties (I think 2 weeks ago, maybe?) that all cabins will have a WiFi access point added.

Other than that, I haven't heard anything more!

18 hours ago, Solent Richard said:

There is also a Japanese as well, Anji Wa....

 

 

My rather amateurish attempt at a translation brings out 'Purple Apricot Harmony' . 😄

 

Oh well.

So happy to have a dedicated Japanese restaurant onboard! Love Asian food.

These have me even more excited for the Maiden Voyage now, but I agree with the question, how will we have time to try it all? Ha

I can't answer your question or give recommendations, but this has reminded me of a recent "acomplishment" I'd like to share.

We've been onboard for just around two months now (we disembark on Friday, and I plan to write a shortish recap thread after) - but more to the point I had a sabatical for this trip, so I was not required to be doing any work (thankfully!)

However, during the May Coronation cruise, I had taken my work laptop to do work as I was not able to get the time off, and this VPN blocking had stopped me doing so (as in my line of work we need to have a company issued VPN to access almost anything and everything)

So, during this trip, I decided to take my work laptop and do some "messing around" on it in order to hopefully get it working, so that in the future we can hopefully take some longer trips and I can "work from ship".

Happy to report that after an hour messing around in the Linux command line, I was able to get the company VPN working with the internet! So, for better or worse, I'll be able to do a few more cruises a year, even though I'll have to do a little work during them.

I was in-transit during this event.

Of course, we had to disembark for immigration, however then had to queue with boarding passengers because there was no seperate queue for in-transit guests.

Rather than sit in the queue or complain, we went to the local IKEA to get some food - also had a great view of the ship! By the time we got back, there was a seperate queue for in-transit guests and we were straight on. The queue for boarding passengers was absolutely huge though...

My personal problem was I heard a lot of people continuing to complain about it throughout the trip. Understandably, it had a lot of people upset, but I felt like everyone bringing it up over and over again was spoiling what was arguably a good trip regardless. Also on a tour overheard someone starting rumours it was the exact same the week before in Southampton, when it wasn't at all.

Agree with all the comments in regards to it mostly being out of Cunard's control. While $25 OBC wasn't a lot, in-transit guests got nothing.

We'll be boarding in Red Hook next week for the Eastbound crossing before going around the Med, so I hope all will be well then...

Just now, BklynBoy8 said:

Yes....

 

Expected arrival - at best 3PM (off the Hamptons Now), Come 6 hours from what the Doc Boarding Pass Time says, All A Boarding - 10PM and expected sailing - 11PM..

 

Should be an interesting day to be at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal day......We're Prepared and Ready.

 

They will get a chance to visit their Crew Mate in Halifax......

Correct - all aboard time today is 9:30pm - going to be a very busy day today..

Just now, ballroom-cruisers said:

All the information that I heard about Cunard from crew suggests that Cunard care a great deal about their employees. It sounds like they have made considerable efforts to look after the unlucky crew member who had the medical issue. After all both crew members as well as passengers could have a medical emergency at any time. Just unlucky it was in foggy conditions, but would have been a lot worse if half way across the Atlantic.

Currently sat in the library and very upset to hear what sounded like complaining from another passenger when they found out it was a crew member who had a medical issue.

Crew or not, everyone is entitled to the same medical treatment and needs to get medical treatment.

Hope they make a speedy recovery.

Captain has just informed us their best guess for the time we'll be alongside tomorrow is 3pm.

On 6/20/2023 at 11:06 AM, LouChamp said:

Aloha. Have been blessed to sail in her many times since 2004.  I remember when sailing in the QE2 it was said she would be the last liner so it is possible that a successor to the QM2 is possible if Cunard is able to sustain itself financially whether with Carnival ownership or another company. I could see hypothetically MSC buying them since they are private and own the massive cargo company. That would be a prestige purchase and of course secure the future of Cunard. 

Carnival would not sell Cunard. It's one of their most profitable brands (at least it was prior to COVID). Arguably its not being treated as such as of late, but the corporation in general is prioritising paying down its debts. I suppose we'll find out how much on the 26th.

Hi babs135, I recently changed a booking so many be able to offer some assistance.

My understanding is that if you book a Cunard Fare, and outside of the 90 day pre-cruise period (before the final balance is due) you can transfer your booking to one of equal or higher value with no admin charge.

If within the 90 day period, or the voyage you're transfering to is of lesser value, I believe the admin charge will be applied.

It's important to note that the voyage you're transfering to must be within 12 months of the existing one, and can only be done once.

This page describes it far better than I can and has more helpful information: https://www.cunard.com/en-gb/contact-us/travel-health-advisories/flexible-cancellation-policy
 

4 minutes ago, Se1lad said:

I’d prefer they move to a system where you had to do a minimum number of nights (or even fairer minimum spend) over a rolling period (say 5 years) to maintain status.  With reduced numbers of platinum and diamond Cunard could potentially improve the benefits as well!

Yeah I agree, make it similar to the way airlines work I think.