porsena

Yeah, Scenic used to offer something like that on theirriver cruises.

I think all HAL's ships use diesel-electric drive. Isn't the stateroom tapwater produced by seawater ditillation using waste heat from the diesel engines?

ArriveCan is no longer a Canadian requirement. I went into the USA a couple of months ago, did not fill it out, and was not asked for it on my return to Canada. It too is a bit of a pain to set up and use, but it was required for an Alaska cruise out of Vancouver last summer. At a land border or an airport ArriveCan might still speed up entry. On a cruise where everyone has the same travel information, not so much.

QE staff on Q218N checked that all passengers had an ArriveCan clearance several days before returning to Canada. The checks were done deck by deck and, unhappily, it was a two step process. In the first step we showed our documents or electronic clearance to a crew member who checked us off. Having done that, I turned to leave but my wife noticed there was a second step in which you had to tap your room card to record that you had been there. It seems that quite a few people missed this step and the crew did nothing about it. When we got to Victoria, before 9 am, Canadian Border Sevices came on board and would not let anyone leave the ship until they could be assured that all the clearances had been checked. Passengers who thought they had already showed their documentation were called back to show it again. The first passengers went ashore at about 10:20. I hope that QE staff can learn from this mistake and alter their procedure.

On the QE with Castro and Millie. Compliance with the indoor mask rule would be close to 100%, though I have seen a couple of renegades in the theatre. Masks are not required while seated in any of the lounges or dining areas or using the gym.

We had no idea, when we booked our June 4th cruise to Alaska, that it would begin on the weekend celebrating the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee. Appropriately, the galley laid on a special tea in the Queen’s Room. Racks of sweets and a large ice sculpture of the lion, and unicorn with the Royal coat of arms flanked a large cake decorated as the Union Jack. The tea-time sandwiches were supplemented by savouries and a wide variety of small cakes, sweets and chocolates. With just 939 passenger aboard, the sailing feels uncrowded, but there was a line of people awaiting others to finish so they could get seats for the Jubilee tea. Yesterday’s ports speaker told us that Sitka would be a tender port.

I did not ask. We had our antigen test in Victoria the day before embarkation. i believe the Canadian requirment was the day before until quite recently. We had a cruise at the end of April with Holland America under a day-before requirement, but HAL is now going with two days. Cunard may be trying to minimize risk by sticking to the one-day liimit.

Ships boarding in Vancouver today are the QE, Koningsdam, and Majestic Princess. Our assigned boarding time was 1:30. We showed up at 12:45, dropped our bags and went to Cunard's almost empty check-in desk. Check-in took maybe five minutes. Changed for us is that we picked up the key cards from the rack outside the room door. As expected, the delays were at security screening, where the line moved quite quickly, and US border control. We're enrolled in the Canada-US trusted traveller program called Nexus, which let us cut the long line for border services. We were on board by 1:45 and had the pool to ourselves a bit after 2. There was no ship's screeing or bag check to get onboard. A bit after 3 we failed to find anything to eat, even a cookie, in the lido, which closed at 3.

Cunard says here that the pre-boarding submission will cover the whole cruise, which I take to mean that a separate submission from somewhere in Alaska is not required to return to Victoria or Vancouver.