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Thoughts on the Britannia Club dining experience - Queen Victoria short break


Kynance
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My partner and I just returned this morning from Queen Victoria's 3 night short break to Le Havre - we originally weren't going to do a cruise this year but my resolve weakened during the summer and I started looking for a short break in the autumn. We normally book the Cunard fare so that we get a table for 2 on the late sitting in the Britannia but looking at the pricing for this trip it presented an opportunity to try out Britannia Club dining for just over £30 pp per night extra. So what did we think then?

 

The dining room itself is lovely - beautifully decorated, light and airy, with a very relaxed ambiance: a complete contrast to the bustle and (sometimes) frenetic activity of the main Britannia. There is quiet background music which isn't intrusive. There are plenty of tables for 2 - they are reasonably spaced apart and at least 6 are by the windows. 

 

In addition to the daily menu, there is a small a la carte section consisting of 6 starters, 4 mains & 4 desserts, plus side orders of the steamed vegetable of the day and various potato options. You can find more details in the FAQs section of Cunard's website: the sample Club a la carte menu is identical to the one we had. 

 

Service was very leisurely - on the first couple of nights we spent 2 hours over dinner, which suited us. We very rarely go to the shows and didn't see any during this trip, so we were very happy to "rest" between courses and dwell over our mint tea at the end of the meal.  Service was noticeably quicker on the third night, perhaps because, despite going in around 8, the restaurant was still fairly quiet due to the late arrival back of the coaches from Paris. (I estimate at least 8 people came in after 8.30 - highlighting the advantage of Club dining if your tour is late.) 

 

On the first night our sommelier had clearly forgotten about our wine order - it hadn't arrived once we'd finished our starters and we had to remind him about what we had ordered. Aziz, the head waiter who runs the Club dining room, was very attentive and had his eye on the ball. Our two waiters were fine but I didn't think their service was noticeably more refined than in Britannia. 

 

I had a couple of starters from the a la carte menu, including escargots, one main course (scallops), one dessert (chocolate fallen cake - which I think I saw later in the Lido) and a selection from the cheese trolley.  I love scallops so am pleased to say they were cooked just as I like them. The escargots were properly garlicky and moreish. The cake was ok but nothing to get excited about. On the final evening, just because we could, we ordered a cheeky side of fries to go with our fillet of pork wrapped in bacon.  😁

 

We had one lunch & one breakfast in the Club restaurant (the latter something of a personal triumph, marking as it did the first time we have made it down to breakfast in the restaurant as opposed to the buffet since we started cruising together in 2009). Despite our breakfast outing taking place on disembarkation morning, it was a pleasant, unhurried experience.

 

Another couple asked Aziz about table side flambés on the formal night when baked Alaska was served and he said that they were not doing them on this trip because it was a short one. (This might also explain why there were no hot or cold canapés served in the Commodore Club before dinner, though there were bowls of crisps and salty snacks). 

 

There was no information about the alternative pillows on offer in the Club cabins - we would have asked about them on a longer trip. (In fact, last year on QM2 we requested and received firmer pillows). 

 

A few other observations which might be of interest: the Commodore Club was only really busy before dinner on the final night, which surprised me.  Normally, it is packed out by 7.30. Again, this might be down to the nature of the trip, with lots of first time guests who didn't make it that far. The 6pm change over to smart or gala attire was also stretched - well after 6.30 on the gala night maybe a dozen people were still drinking in the clothes they had probably been wearing during the day. I wasn't particularly bothered by this but would be very surprised to see this on a longer trip. However, on the whole, the evening dress codes were observed in the bars (and in the Club restaurant). 

 

Having said all of that, and at greater length than I intended (sorry!) - what was our overall view of the Club experience? Well, I am pleased we tried it for the extra ninety-odd quid each it cost us and would consider it again at that rate for a short break. However, looking at the 2 week Med cruise we have booked for next October, the same cabin (an A2) would cost us nearly another ninety quid per person, per night. Based on our habits and preferences (my partner prefers the Lido for breakfast and rarely finds anything on the Britannia lunch menu he likes) we don't think, for us, that the up-charge could be justified or give us value for money over a longer trip. We prefer to eat later rather than earlier, so only went into dinner slightly earlier than we would have done on late sitting anyway.  We also had, bar one main course, pretty much all of the dishes on the a la carte menu which appealed to us, so over two weeks we'd end up repeating ourselves or just eating the others for the sake of it. We feel that late sitting in the Britannia with a couple of trips to the evening alternative dining to ring the changes works well for us. However, I do think the Club dining room is great if a leisurely experience is important to you - or you want the calm of a smaller dining room without stumping up for the grills. 

 

Gosh!! I really must end this now. Thank you for reading if you made it this far - hopefully this might be helpful for others thinking of trying out Club on a short trip before committing to the expense on a longer voyage. 

 

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We were on this cruise too, although in a Princess P2 suite,  and compared to our two previous longer cruises felt there was something missing overall.

 

We had a guarantee cabin, and it was only assigned sometime on the day before, and we were only able to print out the e-tickets and labels the morning we sailed. When we got to our cabin, we had a table assignment in our name, but tour  tickets and other paperwork, birthday card and balloon for another couple,  I brought this to the attention of the cabin steward and concierge, but still received disembarkation documents in their name, along with ours!  Slightly worrying that their computer can get 2 couples in a cabin, we assumed that it was a late cancellation that had not been cleared from the system!

 

A lot of table side cooking and flambes were happening at our end of the  Princess Grill, but with a short cruise, I think it is difficult to build a relationship with the staff. On the sea day ( trip to see the Lizard!)  we went to the theatre 3 times, sitting on deck 3, 2nd row from the back.  The morning was an interesting  'Learning to fly the Spitfire' lecture,  afternoon was the film  'Mamma Mia, Here we go again', for both these the sound level was great, but in the evening when Roy Walker did his act, we were unable to hear him, all around us people with commenting about it, and one passenger went to the sound booth to ask if anything could be done, and told it could not, we stayed a little longer, but eventually walked out.

 

 

 

 

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Sorry about the huge font I appear to have used! I wrote out the review in the notes app on my iPad and copied and pasted from there. I couldn't find the "preview" button so pressed "submit" and low and behold, the text looks absolutely massive when viewing it  on my iPad, albeit slightly better when looking at it via an ancient Windows laptop. I have tried to edit the post to reduce the font size but can not find the "edit" function anywhere... 😤

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We were on this cruise too and also in Club, we were very impressed with the food and the restaurant on QV really is beautiful. Whilst we had the advantage of the extra options in Club in most cases we ate from the main Britannia menu and the food was a huge improvement from when we sailed on QM2 last year, with the exception of a very dubious Spotted Dick! We both felt Cunard had upped their game. 

 

We are happy to report there were hot canapes served in the Commodore club - we are late diners so were in CC around 7.30pm and we had them offered to us every evening.

 

 Anyway, it's back to Britannia for us in a few weeks for the New Year's eve cruise on QE so hopefully she as good as the Vic :)

 

 

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37 minutes ago, The Bullingdon Club said:

We were on this cruise too and also in Club, we were very impressed with the food and the restaurant on QV really is beautiful. Whilst we had the advantage of the extra options in Club in most cases we ate from the main Britannia menu and the food was a huge improvement from when we sailed on QM2 last year, with the exception of a very dubious Spotted Dick! We both felt Cunard had upped their game. 

 

We are happy to report there were hot canapes served in the Commodore club - we are late diners so were in CC around 7.30pm and we had them offered to us every evening.

 

 Anyway, it's back to Britannia for us in a few weeks for the New Year's eve cruise on QE so hopefully she as good as the Vic 🙂

 

 

That's good to hear.I was going to post that Cunard were shooting themselves in the foot by not offering the standard things on the short cruises.These are in a way,taster cruises for some newbies and Cunard should if anything go out of their way to offer an enhanced experience for these potential regulars.Shame the flambes weren't offered every night though.

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23 hours ago, Host Hattie said:

I might be able to reduce the font size if you like.

Great report, thanks for posting

 

Thanks Hattie.  If you're able to reduce the font size that would be great - I think it would make it a lot easier to read!

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10 hours ago, The Bullingdon Club said:

We were on this cruise too and also in Club, we were very impressed with the food and the restaurant on QV really is beautiful. Whilst we had the advantage of the extra options in Club in most cases we ate from the main Britannia menu and the food was a huge improvement from when we sailed on QM2 last year, with the exception of a very dubious Spotted Dick! We both felt Cunard had upped their game. 

 

We are happy to report there were hot canapes served in the Commodore club - we are late diners so were in CC around 7.30pm and we had them offered to us every evening.

 

 Anyway, it's back to Britannia for us in a few weeks for the New Year's eve cruise on QE so hopefully she as good as the Vic 🙂

 

 

 

Good to hear that the hot canapés found their way to you - we must just have missed them. 

 

I agree that that the food was better than when we travelled on QM2 last year, which was a bit of a culinary nadir I thought. Shame there were no soufflés on this trip - I think the vanilla soufflé with limoncello sauce may be my all time favourite Cunard dessert. 

 

Enjoy QE at new year - she is my favourite ship. 

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17 hours ago, ew101 said:

We concluded last week in Mid Atlantic that most of the fun happens in steerage.  However that is a good report and for a low price we would be interested in trying it out.   

 

Thanks - I think it is definitely worth a try if you can get a deal similar to the one we had. 

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We too enjoyed our experience in the Britannia Club Class on our cruise last year on the QM2.

 

It was our second experience in the Club and like you, enjoyed many of the points you brought up in your review. 

 

Our first cabin was on Deck 12 and the last in the new Deck 13 additions from the refit. We prefer the Deck 12 location which we have for next years sailing on the QM2.

 

We especially like the more private pre-grill dining room experience and menu choice.

 

Someday we will make our way into the true Grill restaurants.

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I was on the cruise just before you embarked by 1230 so took some snaps whilst not many people around,I wasn’t Britannia club but took a photo of the Britannia club restaurant as I was walking back from the Britannia main dinning room level 2

It certainly looked lovely.0B505F29-042C-4609-8E0F-A250B76710B0.thumb.jpeg.7cfa5c0e33438b1ae46101457423f910.jpeg

 

DFFCF8A9-8A44-44B7-9092-6136BA86C615.jpeg

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Regarding your cheeky chips order - you can always ask for a plate of chips in the Britannia restaurant. We usually do at least once on a cruise. On one cruise the whole table was provided with a plate between us every day! Not requested by me, I hasten to add!!

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