Cunard Guides website

[TheOldBear]

I was checking the voyage personalizer today [see if my guarantee cabin had been assigned] and noticed a new link to cunardguides.com

 

For my pending M234A sailing the link is https://www.cunardguides.com/M234A/Southampton 

Note that you do not need to have a booked voyage to visit the site, and it does offer shore excursion choices not currently available in the personalizer. [and tries and fails to link back to the VP when selected]

 

Apparently you can visit the guides home page and search there by voyage number or browse an alphabetical list of ports.

 

There are more than a few teething problems with the cruise / port listings. I had no idea that Singapore was on a Norwegian Fjord cruise itinerary 🙂

There does not seem to be any links or contact information for reporting similar flubs.

[TheOldBear]

No electronic contact information - but I did find this:

 

Whilst every care has been taken to ensure the accuracy of this guide, some of the information included is subject to change. Opening times, admission details and prices were correct at time of publication, however they should only be used as an indication. If you find any information to be incorrect, or have any suggestions for what else we could include in this guide, then we would like to hear from you. Write to: The Editors, Cunard Line Port Guides, Cunard Line, Floor 3, Shore Operations, Carnival House, 100 Harbour Parade, Southampton, SO15 1ST

[carlmm]

Quit an interesting addition.

Especially if it is true that the restaurants and so on are indeed locals' recommendations.

[bluemarble]

Very interesting. Where did you find that link to "cunardguides" within the voyage personaliser (My Cunard)?

 

We have the Caribbean cruise H405B booked on Queen Anne which is way off in February 2024 so perhaps we don't have that link yet. But I discovered the link you provided works for our cruise when I substitute our voyage number "H405B" in the URL. In our case, we have Sydney, Australia listed at the end of our Caribbean itinerary!

[WestonOne]

1 hour ago, TheOldBear said:

I was checking the voyage personalizer today [see if my guarantee cabin had been assigned] and noticed a new link to cunardguides.com

 

For my pending M234A sailing the link is https://www.cunardguides.com/M234A/Southampton 

Note that you do not need to have a booked voyage to visit the site, and it does offer shore excursion choices not currently available in the personalizer. [and tries and fails to link back to the VP when selected]

 

Apparently you can visit the guides home page and search there by voyage number or browse an alphabetical list of ports.

 

There are more than a few teething problems with the cruise / port listings. I had no idea that Singapore was on a Norwegian Fjord cruise itinerary 🙂

There does not seem to be any links or contact information for reporting similar flubs.

I had a look at the Southampton Guide about an hour ago.  It is, is my view, very poor. Southampton has masses of history, including the Walls, the Old Town, the Titantic, the Mayflower, Lots of monuments and so on.

 

None of which is mentioned in the guide, which is about where to buy coffees and beers.  Ok, that may be worth knowing.  But stand in the town centre and you will see plenty of shops selling coffee.  Again in my view, the ones they mention do not stand out as better than the ones they don't.

 

I hope this is more of a test than a finished guide.

[WestonOne]

Oops!  The guide does cover some of the history and other options - my error.  It arose because It moves between Southampton and Winchester in a strange order - food at each, culture at each and so on. To me it seems more sensible to do all things for Southampton then all things for Winchester.  But my apologies again, the guide does have more information than I thought 

Edited August 1, 2022 by WestonOne

[bluemarble]

2 hours ago, TheOldBear said:

Apparently you can visit the guides home page and search there by voyage number or browse an alphabetical list of ports.

 

Oh, yeah. The home page at https://www.cunardguides.com/ provides search by voyage number.

And this link https://www.cunardguides.com/all# provides the alphabetical list of all ports.

 

Edit to add: I don't seem to be able to scroll through that alphabetical list of ports on any of my Windows desktop browsers. It works on my phone though. Is this one of their teething problems or am I missing something obvious to get the scrolling to work on my desktop?

Edited August 1, 2022 by bluemarble

[mcloaked]

I just tried it on my Firefox browser on my laptop and scrolling through the alphabetic list worked fine.  As an extra test I tried the same on the Chrome browser and scrolling worked fine on that too.

Edited August 1, 2022 by mcloaked
Changed sentence to be more clear

[TheOldBear]

58 minutes ago, WestonOne said:

Oops!  The guide does cover some of the history and other options - my error.  It arose because It moves between Southampton and Winchester in a strange order - food at each, culture at each and so on. To me it seems more sensible to do all things for Southampton then all things for Winchester.  But my apologies again, the guide does have more information than I thought 

Since you are local - and they kindly provided an actual address, perhaps you can provide them with some in person feedback?

I did notice what seemed an over emphasis on bars and coffee stops - should highlight more cultural / historic places.

[mcloaked]

8 minutes ago, TheOldBear said:

Since you are local - and they kindly provided an actual address, perhaps you can provide them with some in person feedback?

I did notice what seemed an over emphasis on bars and coffee stops - should highlight more cultural / historic places.

 

It looks like it varies - I looked at Cadiz (not alphabetic possibly due to the accent over the 'a') and it did include beaches and parks. So maybe it just takes time for people to add in more of the individual data for some (or many) in the list? I checked Lisbon and although it does include some of the parks, it does not include Parque Eduardo VII which is very large.

Edited August 1, 2022 by mcloaked
Added sentence

[bluemarble]

19 minutes ago, mcloaked said:

I just tried it on my Firefox browser on my laptop and scrolling through the alphabetic list worked fine.  As an extra test I tried the same on the Chrome browser and scrolling worked fine on that too.

 

Thanks for the follow-up. Are you seeing a scroll bar that you are using to scroll through the ports list?

 

Here is what I am seeing in Edge, Chrome, and Firefox on my Windows desktop. No scroll bar. The Page Up/Down and Arrow Up/Down keys don't do anything either.

 

[mcloaked]

I don't have a scroll bar on the display either (on either browser), I see the same as you, but on the laptop scrolling on the touchpad by sliding my finger down the pad does scroll. So it is possible a wrongly coded web page at the server, since I can't remember not seeing a scroll bar on pages I use normally. ( I will go and try on my desktop and see if the scroll wheel on the mouse achieves a scroll on that page and let you know)

 

Edit: I went to the full list on my desktop, and the scroll wheel on the mouse does achieve a scroll, as does using the up and down arrows.  Also 'pg up' and pg dn' work to move the list a 'page' at a time.

Edited August 1, 2022 by mcloaked

[bluemarble]

2 minutes ago, mcloaked said:

I don't have a scroll bar on the display either (on either browser), I see the same as you, but on the laptop scrolling on the touchpad by sliding my finger down the pad does scroll. So it is possible a wrongly coded web page at the server, since I can't remember not seeing a scroll bar on pages I use normally.

 

Ah, that's the trick! It was something pretty obvious I had overlooked after all. I never thought to try the scroll wheel on my mouse. That works to scroll through the port list on my desktop. You got me thinking in terms of the functional equivalent of scrolling via a laptop touchpad and that lit the lightbulb for me. Thank you!

[bluemarble]

33 minutes ago, mcloaked said:

Edit: I went to the full list on my desktop, and the scroll wheel on the mouse does achieve a scroll, as does using the up and down arrows.  Also 'pg up' and pg dn' work to move the list a 'page' at a time.

 

That's odd. Don't know what I'm doing wrong that the arrow keys and the PgUp/PgDn keys aren't working for me to scroll through that ports list. But since the scroll wheel works, I can live with that.

[mcloaked]

You may be doing nothing wrong - sometimes browsers on different machines behave differently depending on which hardware you have, as well as which operating system you are running - so it could be different on a Windows machine compared to a Linux computer (which I use) or an Apple machine. The web server has to be written to account for the different ways people access the web page, and some web code is incomplete or has bugs in it. as you said your phone worked but the desktop didn't.  Well written web sites will work whatever machine and browser is being used, but others do not. It is a constant frustration - sometimes I have to revert to chrome from my usual Firefox browser for some shopping sites - a classic situation is when the Captcha fails to work on one browser, or a payment authorisation won't work on one browser but will work fine on another!  Might be worth contacting the site and asking about the scrolling not working as expected?

 

Edit: I used the 'whois' facility to check on the web site - it seems that the registrant is Carnival plc in Hampshire, and the registrar working presumably on behalf of Carnival is Lexsynergy Limited.  Given the state of other Cunard web sites perhaps it is not too surprising that the code needs 'cleaning up'! It seems that Lexsynergy are merely managing the domain name and not writing the web server code - so it is anyone's guess who Carnival employed to write the web site!

Edited August 1, 2022 by mcloaked
Added paragraph

[bluemarble]

31 minutes ago, bluemarble said:

That's odd. Don't know what I'm doing wrong that the arrow keys and the PgUp/PgDn keys aren't working for me to scroll through that ports list. But since the scroll wheel works, I can live with that.

 

Ah! There was something else I was overlooking. When I hit the tab key a couple times, that places the focus on the first port on the list, Then the arrow keys, the PgUp/PgDn keys, and also the tab key allow me to scroll through the list. The same thing happens for me to enable scrolling via the keyboard if I first do a mouse click between two of the ports (so as not to select any of them yet).

Edited August 1, 2022 by bluemarble

[mcloaked]

3 minutes ago, bluemarble said:

 

Ah! Thee was something else I was overlooking. When I hit the tab key a couple times, that places the focus on the first port on the list, Then the arrow keys, the PgUp/PgDn keys, and also the tab key allow me to scroll through the list. The same thing happens for me to enable scrolling via the keyboard if I first do a mouse click between two of the ports (so as not to select any of them yet).

 

So you can 'make it work' but you should not have to go through that rigmarole - a nice scroll bar provided by the web page code writers would avoid all the hassle at all!

[sfred]

4 hours ago, bluemarble said:

 in the URL. In our case, we have Sydney, Australia listed at the end of our Caribbean itinerary!

 

Hope you enjoy Sydney at the end of your Caribbean voyage, @bluemarble!  Please give a call if you get to Brisbane along the way.

 

I tried the site for our upcoming M235 voyage from Southampton to Norway in November.  This voyage apparently ends in Fremantle, so I will call Qantas later on today to cancel our flights home to Australia.  .

 

Using Firefox, I have a working (although narrow) scroll bar to the right of the ports listing.  A screen shot is below. The mouse scroll wheel also works.  In MS Edge, no scroll bar but again the mouse wheel works.

 

 

[bluemarble]

4 minutes ago, sfred said:

Using Firefox, I have a working (although narrow) scroll bar to the right of the ports listing.  A screen shot is below. The mouse scroll wheel also works.  In MS Edge, no scroll bar but again the mouse wheel works.

 

Ah, yes, very good! I am seeing a functioning scroll bar in Firefox as well if I hover over that area at the right of the port names. It's invisible when I'm not hovering over it, and it's only a narrow 10 pixels wide when I do hover over it. Not seeing that scroll bar in Edge or Chrome.

 

That's a hoot about the apparently random port it adds to the end of the itineraries. Maybe we can come up with a "Where in the World?" type of game to discern the pattern for what port it picks to add to the end of each itinerary. Or chart the bizarre routes it thinks each ship is taking. 😄

[ballroom-cruisers]

Yes a scroll bar appears if you move the mouse cursor to the list..... not sure if that was there yesterday though!!

[TheOldBear]

Looks like the site is not even barely ready

• Text blunders like unicode in the rendered text, or calling a clothing store a 'Closing Store' in Bergen Norway
• Clicking on 'directions' goes to Google Maps - but does not offer the port's cruise terminal as a starting point. A am not really interested in directions to a coffee shop in Tromso from my home address 😉

 

Perhaps it is no surprise there is no online feedback/contact.

 

A fundamental miss is not making the site available as an adjunct to the onboard 'my voyage' site - should be simple to use a 'reverse proxy' to cache the internet content locally on the ship.

Instead the repeated 'About this guide' section includes

To use this guide onboard, internet access will be required. Please make sure to save the guide as a PDF on your device before you travel or purchase an internet package onboard.