Brooklyn boarding mess 7 September

Flew from Manchester to New York. In priority line but still took 30 minutes.

Immigration in JFK took two hours. They have machines that read your passport but the first machine we tried broke down. The second one read my wife's passport OK but my form came out with a big X on it so we had to queue for nearly two hours in a seperate line.

Joined QM2 in Brooklyn on Sept 7th. Checkin took about two hours. Cunard staff said that the problem was because everyone arrived at once, just after 12noon. We got there at that time because we were on a Cunard holiday and that was the time the coach took us there.

Disembarking at Southampton - left our room at 8.30am. Told there was a delay as due to winds the gangplank had to be re-positioned. Got on the coach to the airport at 11am.

That makes a total of seven hours queueing. Never again!

These are the things that we remember aren't they? Even if the rest of the cruise/vacation is good. They don't normally happen all on one vacation as happened to you, fortunately, but I would be fed up too if I had had to go through what you did. On entering the USA by flight, we are always sent to the machines for immigration. My husband always fails, always, so we know we will have to queue that second time. At least we haven't had to queue 2 hours for that, but even waiting a shorter time is very annoying, but you just can't let that show can you? We can't understand why he always fails that immigration machine, and of course they don't tell you why. Well one did say there must be another person with the same name who is a problem, but who knows? At least we get through eventually. We have also had the 'wind moved the gangway' in Southampton too, and were delayed disembarking. About 11am before we were out of the building. Oh and twice with Cunard we have had computer problems and delays at checkin. Must be a pretty common occurrence!

It won't all happen on one cruise again I am sure.

For her 200th crossing QM2 had a special sail by in front of the Statue of Liberty. I'm not sure how many of the other ships and ferries in New York harbor appreciated that.

If I recall that did happen around 9pm, I remember ordering desert and saying 'I'd be back', and she did put on a light show to compensate for the inconvenience. A once every 200 years event is not the same, sorry.

If I recall that did happen around 9pm, I remember ordering desert and saying 'I'd be back', and she did put on a light show to compensate for the inconvenience. A once every 200 years event is not the same, sorry.

Are you sure that you don't have this confused with another celebration? The 200th crossing took place on July 6, 2013 on an EB TA. I was on that crossing and this took place during daylight hours. The sail by portion of the publicity video can be seen here:

Are you sure that you don't have this confused with another celebration? The 200th crossing took place on July 6, 2013 on an EB TA. I was on that crossing and this took place during daylight hours. The sail by portion of the publicity video can be seen here:

You're right, I'm thinking of the 175th year sailing from NY. My bad.

Joined QM2 in Brooklyn on Sept 7th. Checkin took about two hours. Cunard staff said that the problem was because everyone arrived at once, just after 12noon.

That is a crock. We arrived at 12:30 and there was a steady stream of passengers arriving behind us. Desks were understaffed.

Disembarking at Southampton - left our room at 8.30am. Told there was a delay as due to winds the gangplank had to be re-positioned.

The ship needed to be repositioned, not the gangplank. We were in the self-disembark queue at 6:45 and disembarked around 7:30. Sounds like the delays gotta worse as the morning went on.