Problems with Cunard.com website?

I've been trying to view the Cunard.com webpage and haven't been able to for a couple days. It'll go to the page, but not bring up all the images. The circle just spins and spins, doesn't load the images and says it's 'waiting for cdn.css.cunard.com' or 'cdn.images.cunard.com.'

I've tried from different locations using my linux system (Firefox), Microsoft Windows 10 (Explorer), and Windows 7 (Firefox). Different locations tells me that it's not an internet speed issue at my house.

Is anyone else having issues? It's so frustrating because I need my Cunard fix... I'm starting to have withdraw symptoms.

Thanks,

Mary

Yes, I have been having intermittent problems with cunard.com today. I was able to get into voyage personaliser earlier this morning, but I have been having issues with the site in general since then. Now, I just received this message from cunard.com.

Edit: That "Maintenance" message above seems to have been a one time deal for me. Now I'm back to "waiting for ..." messages similar to what the OP has mentioned. If I wait long enough though (several minutes), the site eventually comes up for me. I think this issue is confined to the US web site (cunard.com). I just tried a vpn connection to the UK and was able to bring up cunard.co.uk without a problem.

Thank you bluemarble for responding. I guess I'll just sit and wait till they get it all straightened out. But is does seem that there's quirks on their site pretty often. Just dumb annoyances and nit-noid stuff that makes me scratch my head and wonder why...

The website just plain sucks year-round.

Thank you bluemarble for responding. I guess I'll just sit and wait till they get it all straightened out. But is does seem that there's quirks on their site pretty often. Just dumb annoyances and nit-noid stuff that makes me scratch my head and wonder why...

Yeah, I hear you. I think the only reason the site was eventually working for me after waiting several minutes for it to respond is because my browser was probably retrieving items from its cache that it had stored from previous visits. I just cleared my browser cache and now I get a cunard.com site that is pretty much unusable.

Regards, John

This doesn't help but the UK site seems to be OK.

The "cunard.com" web site now appears to be back up and running as of a short time ago.

Woo hooo... you're right.

I did check one of the quirks that I noticed before, and their search still leaves a lot to be desired.

Okay, say for instance I want to search (on the Cunard.com site) for the Independence Day Short Break, I'll search for voyages and use the drop-down "Where would you like to go" and select "USA and Canada". Simple enough right? Well not so much. It doesn't call up that voyage on the search results. It will if I search by date though.

And we just put up with these little annoyances because, well, we love Cunard... but really Cunard, Really?

You can search most website using Google by using the keyword "site:"followed by the website that you want to search. For example, searching using site:cunard.com independence day short break returns the page I think you want as the first result.

Big caveat: as was pointed out in a different thread, this method often shows "orphan" pages that you can no longer access through top-down browsing of the site or the site's own search engine, so things like prices or schedules may not be current on the first result you reach. Cunard seems to leave obsolete content on the site sometimes, just removing other links to it. On the other hand, it's one of the only ways to reach some of the FAQ pages that are on cunard.co.uk but not on cunard.com from the US.

Woo hooo... you're right.

 

I did check one of the quirks that I noticed before, and their search still leaves a lot to be desired.

Okay, say for instance I want to search (on the Cunard.com site) for the Independence Day Short Break, I'll search for voyages and use the drop-down "Where would you like to go" and select "USA and Canada". Simple enough right? Well not so much. It doesn't call up that voyage on the search results. It will if I search by date though.

 

And we just put up with these little annoyances because, well, we love Cunard... but really Cunard, Really?

I hear you again. I think this comes down to how Cunard have classified (or misclassified) each voyage according to its destination. Their cruise search function offers three separate destination choices of "Canada", "USA", and "USA & Canada".

I can find the 2018 "Independence Day Celebration Short Break" voyage (M824) when I choose "Canada" as the destination and I can find it when I choose "USA" as the destination, but as you have found, it does not show up when selecting "USA & Canada" as the destination.

On the other hand, I can find the 2019 "Independence Day Celebration, Halifax and Boston Short Break" voyage (M919) when I choose "USA" as the destination and I can find it when I choose "USA & Canada" as the destination, but I cannot find it if I choose "Canada" as the destination.

Go figure.

Regards, John

You're right again bluemarble. And from what you've explained, really drives home some of the quirkiness of the site.

Let me explain. Try this. Go to Cunard.com and at the top menu, click on "Cruise Deals" then choose "Caribbean" under the "Sailing Soon Savings" . Open that page.

When you're on the page with the listing of the Caribbean voyages (or voyage), now go up and click on the "Find and book a cruise" link at the top menu.

In the dropdown "where would you like to go", you'll see that there is no "USA" or "Canada" option. Only "USA and Canada".

Cunard webpage... gotta love it!

You're right again bluemarble. And from what you've explained, really drives home some of the quirkiness of the site.

 

Let me explain. Try this. Go to Cunard.com and at the top menu, click on "Cruise Deals" then choose "Caribbean" under the "Sailing Soon Savings" . Open that page.

 

When you're on the page with the listing of the Caribbean voyages (or voyage), now go up and click on the "Find and book a cruise" link at the top menu.

 

In the dropdown "where would you like to go", you'll see that there is no "USA" or "Canada" option. Only "USA and Canada".

 

Cunard webpage... gotta love it!

Yeah, there are (at least) two different ways the lists of destinations can be presented when you select the "Find and Book a Cruise" function on Cunard's web site. Try this scenario for an even simpler way to demonstrate what you found.

Start from the home page. Click "Find and Book a Cruise". You should be presented with a page that says "How would you like to start your search? By destination or By date". The drop down list of destinations on that page includes 24 different choices (including "Canada", "USA", and "USA & Canada").

Now don't actually start a search there, but simply click "Find and Book a Cruise" a second time. You should now see a page that says "Search for cruises" with that "Where would you like to go?" drop down list you mentioned that only offers 17 different choices (including "USA & Canada" but not separate choices for "USA" or "Canada").

Now click "Find and Book a Cruise" a third time. You should be back to that first "How would you like to start your search?" page with a list of 24 different destinations. And so it goes, toggling between the two different search modes each time you click "Find and Book a Cruise".

Gotta love it is right.

I did go to Cunard.com and followed your sequence. Too funny. What a site. Thanks for your help on that by the way.

Also, another quirk (I think). I have a page bookmarked only because I can't find it any other way by clicking around and generally looking. It's the "Ask Cunard" page. It's really helpful. It's not the same page as the FAQs.

Here's the link. https://ask.cunard.com/help/before-you-sail/

But once you're on the page, and you want to click on the link to Ask Cunard (home), you can hover over it and see the address as https://ask.cunard.com/help but once clicked, it just goes back to the cunard.com home page.

So, I keep the bookmark 'Ask Cunard' handy as it has a lot of good info, it's just I can't seem to find it any other way. Am I missing something?

I just noticed something. When I'm on the "Ask Cunard" page, it doesn't appear to be a US site due to the phone number to request a callback. But the URL is clearly not a co.uk web address.

So I clicked on the 'help and advice' at the top right corner of the page (to which Cunard.com homepage does not have), and it brings up a page that says:

We are updating our system

Thank you for visiting Ask Cunard. We are currently busy updating our site with new features for your enjoyment. Please bear with us, we will hopefully be back with you shortly.

To book visit cunard.co.uk

If you have already booked, why not visit Voyage Personaliser? You can view your booking details and pre book dining reservations, shore excursions spa and salon services.

Find out more

------

the "Find out more" is not an actual hyperlink on the page. So not sure what they're expecting here. When I click on the link for 'cunard.co.uk' it launches me to cunard.com (US) site.

So I wonder how I'm actually able to view the Ask Cunard site if it appears that it's a UK site? And, if it's on the UK site, why not the US site too? It sure does have a lot of good info on it.

Yes, the behavior with regard to accessing the "ask.cunard.com" site from the U.S. is exactly as you have observed. It wasn't always that way. I first posted about the change in behavior back in September, 2015 here.

Problem with ask.cunard.com from the U.S.

The "ask.cunard.com" site is indeed specific to the UK in the sense that the answers to any country-specific questions on "ask.cunard.com" (such as about booking conditions for example) only apply to the UK.

Cunard has chosen to redirect accesses to the URLs "ask.cunard.com" and "ask.cunard.com/help" to "www.cunard.com" instead. I believe this is an intentional attempt to prevent those of us in the U.S. from getting potentially misleading answers that only apply to the UK. However, Cunard has made no attempt to redirect longer URLs such as "ask.cunard.com/help/life-on-board" or the URLs for any of the specific questions themselves. Those still work from the U.S. So the tried-and-true method of using google to search for the answer to a question about Cunard will still produce useful search results to specific questions found on "ask.cunard.com".

I can't answer your question as to why there is no robust equivalent to "ask.cunard.com" for the U.S. with answers that are specific to the U.S. market. I can only speculate it's a matter of the costs that would be involved to keep two such sites in sync with each other.

Regards, John

Oh, by the way, why the UK FAQ site is named "ask.cunard.com" instead of "ask.cunard.co.uk" is a bit of a mystery to me. I expounded on the topic of "ask.cunard.com" being a UK web site in some geeky detail in this earlier post if you are interested.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showpost.php?p=50276925

Regards, John