Bedruthen

We will be taking a transatlantic crossing to New York then a road trip and a return crossing back to Southampton 3 weeks later. We don’t need to take our formal wear on our road trip so we were wondering if there is any way to leave a suitcase in CUNARD’s care, or even onboard. I have looked at their White Star service, but that seems to be more of a luggage delivery service, unless I am misunderstanding. Any ideas please?

I would think £5k each and 60 days would cover the vast majority of cruises undertaken by your average cruise customer.

Quite possibly, but the average cruise passenger probably doesn't have a life limiting, potentially terminal illness. It rather changes your outlook as we have found. We want to travel whilst we still can and 14 days to the Med has been replaced with a desire to see parts of the world which we have never visited. Those cruises tend to be 30 plus days.

Not everyone can get full travel insurance, and UK customers can't get Cunard Care. Because of a cancer diagnosis, we can't get cancellation cover for more than £5000 per person, nor for more than 60 consecutive days. My partner will have to be 5 years post diagnosis before we can be considered for increased cancellation cover. We could find ourselves in a similar situation :(

Very strange conversation with UK Cunard today. The person on the phone was insistent that from 20th June to 30th June, QE is doing a Vancouver to Vancouver sailing with absolutely no port calls. She wouldn't budge on that even when I said it's a strange sort of cruise that goes nowhere....

Then 30th June to 3rd July it's Vancouver to San Francisco.

Guess more patience is required.

The last info that I was told from Head Office, was that they would either announce the cruise in Nov 2017 or March 2018, presumably to coincide with other brochure launches

What a lovely review, thank you for sharing and I hope you get to have many more wonderful times like this one! I am not a bit envious - much :*

Bedruthen

 

I believe we are on the same cruise (as per roll call), and we do have a lot of sea days, if the itinerary does not change.

I actually prefer the spa on QM2, for many of the reasons as already has been said. I think it is quite expensive in the Royal Spa in view of limited facilities; the aqua pool is certainly not for swimming, but good for muscular therapy. It can get crowded on sea days when the weather is inclement, everyone having the same idea. There is a sauna cabin at the back of the ladies/gents changing rooms which is free and rarely used. Also I find it very annoying when people just come into the area to use the larger shower cubicles!

I would prefer to spend the $$$ on some good massages, even better when they have offers, and use our balcony to laze with a book and use the outdoor swimming pools as they are always very well heated. Hopefully the temperatures will pick up once past the Azores.

Sorry if tI am off-putting, but if you are happy to idle away the hours on a bed in a steamy hot environment, then the spa is your oasis!!

Thanks LadyL, yes we are on the same cruise! I think you're probably right and we will be okay with the balcony once it gets a bit warmer. I hope we don't get any additional sea days though, as you say we have quite a few already!

As we have a generous OBC on our forthcoming cruise, I was contemplating taking a spa pass for the duration of the cruise. Has anyone else done this? Did you think it was worth it, currently $300 for 20 days. Does it get busy - we have a lot of sea days to fill?

Any other feedback would be welcome, thanks

I was speaking with Cunard today and I was told by their representatives that the Alaskan cruises will be released along with the Christmas 2019 itineraries. The date indicated was release in Feb/ March next year.

The CUNARD website is all over the place. Cruises are there, then they disappear, the transatlantic crossings randomly display prices with or without flights, it's actually a mess.

I have spoken to CUNARD about the whereabouts of Queen Elizabeth in June 2019 and it appears they are as mystified as everyone else. According to the lovely Rose, she leaves Vancouver and then appears to just float around in the ocean. Even more strange, there were sailings online this morning for cruises from San Francisco to Southampton. LA to Southampton and Iceland to Southampton, which have now disappeared again. The excitement is all too much.

It's not just that part of the web site that is a mess. We have been looking at the transatlantic crossings for a couple of months. Sometimes the pricing includes the flight, sometimes it is the cruise cost only which automatically comes up, The optional button to include/ exclude flights sometimes works, but usually it leads you to a message to use the option, which actually isn't there. I think they have some real IT issues going on behind the scenes

I actually emailed them about this last week. This was their reply

Thank you for your email to the Cunard World Club. Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay in our reply.

To bring our guests an enhanced online experience we are currently reviewing our website and digital facilities, which includes the Cunard World Club account facilities. During this time the online account management tool is no longer available. We plan to introduce a much improved version in the future. Further updates will be available online at www.cunard.co.uk/already-booked/cunard-world-club/

In the mean time, should you require a list of your voyage history or need to make any amendments to your records, we would be more than happy to assist. Alternatively, you are welcome to speak to a member of the team within our Customer Contact Centre via telephone on 0843 374 0000 (Lines are open 0800-2000Monday - Friday, 0900-1700 Saturday and 1000-1600 Sunday. Calls cost 7p per minute plus your telephone company's network access charge).

It's a tough one and we have just been through the same dilemna. In the end we plumped for QV for three reasons.

1. We preferred the ports of call in the Caribbean and weren't fussed about New York.

2 QV had a better choice of balcony cabins left.

3 Financilally QV was significantly less and the obc was much higher.

The last personal reason is that we hope to do a transatlantic crossing next year, so wer saving the QM2 experience for later.

My understanding is that of course you can take alcohol onboard, however in the unlikely event that you turned up with enough alcohol to start your own bar service, then they reserve the right to confiscate it.

I assume you are flying, in which case there is a large duty free shop in the airport arrivals hall. There is no duty free at the port. Why bother bringing it with you, as the duty free in Dubai is cheap.

Alcohol is a very murky legal area in the UAE as technically to purchase or consume alcohol in the country you should have a liquor licence, but in reality the rule is not enforced unless you are unlucky enough to get arrested for something else......

Thank you, we have gone ahead and booked deck 5.

The cruise we are considering has aft BD grade cabins only available on deck 5, 6 and 7. The decks all look identical so does it matter which we choose? The cruise is transatlantic so am thinking a lower deck may be preferable.

Any thoughts please

We had bath robes when we went to the Canaries, possibly on Ventura, in 2014, we think. Oriana has none to buy. If we had known, as we sailed from Southampton, it would have been simple to pack our very posh robes from Hurtigruten, given to take away last time we sailed with them, admittedly in a suite as they have limited balconies! On Oriana we have a balcony cabin.

Oriana had bathrobes for purchase in June. There was a display by the guest services desk, advertising them

So much depends on the demographics of the ship and the destination. Oriana for example attracts a larger percentage of elderly people and first dinner sitting is always over subscribed. On the other hand, a family cruise to the Caribbean on a larger ship and second sitting is more popular, so there is no hard and fast rule. With regard to trying to change sitting this used to be a question of queuing at the MDR and first come first served. Now the ability to change dinner sitting is decided on the fare you booked. If you book a late saver then pretty much forget it.

On our last cruise in June, independent passengers had to wait for their allocated boarding times, but coach passengers were given grey cards and called to board immediately. Now call me a cynic, but I don't believe all the coach passengers had exactly the same boarding time.....

I can only relate this to our recent onboard experience. The loyalty club desk was in constant use, and whenever we walked past, there was always a couple of people waiting. Now we have never used the service before despite being regular cruisers, but on this occasion we got talking to the loyalty manager onboard one evening in the bar and so we started asking about the onboard booking benefits. They were telling us that more and more people wanted to pay the low deposit for a future cruise and that FCD was nowhere near as popular as it used to be. If their view is correct, then maybe P&O had crunched the figures and realised that encouraging people to book onboard generates a greater revenue stream than giving money away in the form of FCD and therefore want staff onboard to be available for future cruise sales only? What we did observe was that people were making speculative future bookings, in some cases multiple bookings, knowing that they would only lose their £100 deposit if they had to cancel or amend the booking in the future. I wonder how much revenue that generates in a year for P&O ????

We have encountered a similar problem in the UK. Even the company that Cunard recommend will not cover their world Cruise.

The only Uk company that we found that would cover a trip over 100 days and over £10000 was ITHC.

Here is the link to their website

http://www.int-travelandhealthcare.co.uk/

The big advantage of actually making a booking onboard is that you just pay a £50 deposit and the balance on the payment isn't due until the usual 12 weeks before departure. This is a huge advantage if you have health issues as you only lose the £50 deposit should you have to cancel.

If you buy a future cruise deposit, then the moment you book your cruise you have to pay the full 15% deposit at the time of booking.

Both booking onboard or a future cruise deposit give the same amount of onboard credit.

The onboard offer applies to select fares only and there are no additional discounts, however once you get home you can transfer your booking to your usual travel agent who will then apply their normal discount.

Should you wish to book a world cruise, the reduced deposit is £750pp.

Just returned from Oriana and and confirm that on this cruise embarkation times were strictly adhered to, although it went a little quicker than anticipated and we boarded approx 15 minutes before our allocated time.