groryjm

I loved the views from the hot tub on Silhouette when in Norwegian fjords. After a trip up the cable car into the snow then there is nothing better than a lovely hot soak in the bubbles with a drinkie watching the mountains.... perfection

As far as I understand it ,and I am open to being wrong, all guests in a the state room regardsless of relationship, marital status etc will be treated and regaurded for the cruise as the same CC status as the status of the highest level guest in that cabin . So if a Zenith brings a select guest on in the same cabin they will both be given Zenith privaliges for the duration of the cruise. Guests can also if married or partners apply to have their CC status matched.

The Tub on the balcony is great what ever the weather😎

Is Olympia still running the bar in the Retreat Lounge? If so could you ask her if she will be there in May. She is one of the best barman we have experienced in the Retreat/Michael's and dare I say it, better even than the amazing Cranston.

I would have thought SAT because you are travelling on a Saturday 😎 EZE would be a code for the terminal or dock

Yes it is still available but you have to book direct.

The pleasure of cruising for me is that some one else can make my drink for me.... at home I am an amature who works, but on an X ship I am a customer treated like a king 😎

my bar..... I try very hard to make sure it is all kept fresh......🍷🍸🍾😎

Carpano Antica is usually a available at WCB and if you ask nicely it will be available from the Retreat too My fridge too......

As someone who doesn't drink wine or beer I usually have a cocktail with a meal.... and before and after too 😎 On the S class ships the cocktails for MDR and Luminae are made at the passport bar. Sushi on 5's are made at the World Class bar. Murano's were made at the Ensemble Lounge but the don't seem to list signature cocktails in Murano any more. So for any of the cocktails from these restaurants you can go to the relevant bar. For Tuscan, Blu and LPC it is trickier as thier signature drinks are all made in a back bar shared by all three. Many of these drinks have ingredients you won't find in other bars such as Green Chartreuse, Montenegro or Strega. So for these it is a bit harder to get in other bars.

When you cruise in am upper suite, RS and above, you get unlimited speciality dinning...... We have on occasion eaten in say Tuscan and then gone to Murano for cheese and a glass of port. Or eaten in Luminae and the had the hot cookie and ice cream desert in the Lawn Club Grill. You need to ask nicely but they always have said yes. 😎🥂

Out of curiosity which ship are you on . On Silhouette the four forward familly rooms with a small veranda are now actually suites and priced above sky suites

It may have been our 30th but they do know how to top make it special . The buttlers and staff on silly where amazing. without doubt Joey is the best buttler we have ever had

I've lost count of the number of times I have dreesed for a black tie event only to find an anoying tab causing an itch on my collar 🤣🤣🤣

These are all RS and PH from post pandemic. We first got the purple strip in April this year but in Aug last year they did put a sort of X sticker on . On Reflection in July we had the old landscape ones. There are, after all, only 10 or 13 upper suits on S Class and 14 on E Class so it seems a bit unnecesary. They used to have a printed sheet with photos in luminae and Michaels.

to be honest this seems to be more of a guide than a list of availables. On various ships in RS and above we have had on request ..... Courvoisier VSOP Zacapa 23 Cointreau Tanqueray Ten Cointreau Campari Diarano Amereto 😎🍸🍹🍷🍾 along with a bottle or two of PJ 🍾 for our breakfast mimosas

If we're going to bring this thread back to life then I need to add a few of my new gotos. Since this thread began in 2017 the WCB and Retreat sundack have come into my sights. The Retreat Cocktail my Gastrognomes new fav

Too be fair to Ian Fleming a Vesper is mostly gin...... "Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon peel."

Two little things I’d forgotten to mention coffee and overnights. One thing I failed to find was a café style bar for a coffee similar to Café al Bacio on X in the central aitrium. There are a number of elegant places to have tea on Victoria and I felt that Cunard is very much more a tea ship than a coffee ship. It might seem an odd thing to say and coffee was most definitely available at most bars but there didn’t seem to be a café vibe as such. There is the Golden Lion pub which is similar to X’s craft social but these are more pubs than cafés. Also there is the Winter Garden but that lacks the café vibe too even if the smell wasn’t bad enough. So I think for coffee X wins. I may have missed a venue which would have been a shame. The in suite coffee machine in the Qs is Illy and while it produces ok coffee. We did have to look up how to use it online, when we had a signal in port, as our butler didn’t know. The Lavazza machine in the upper suites on X does, in my opinion, makes better coffee. So good in fact that we bought one on amazon to use at home. Over nights……. When you advertise on an itinerary that the ship is over night on Day 7/8 and Day 8/9 with 4 sea days and shows this on the website DAY 5 at sea DAY 6 Tromso (Norway) DAY 7 Tromso (Norway) DAY 8 Narvik (Norway) DAY 9 Narvik (Norway) DAY 10 at sea DAY 11 Stavanger One might expect to be able to book one of the many private and well-reviewed Northern Lights tours that operate out of both Tromso and Narvik. No. It took a bit of digging but I eventually found out a couple of months before sailing that days 7 and 9 were also sea days so 6 sea days and 4 port days not the 4 sea and 6 port advertised . Despite numerous unsuccessful calls to Cunard to establish what time the ship was due to leave either of these ports the best I ever got was at “sometime in the morning of the second and the captain will confirm upon departing Southampton”. I found the actual departure times on the relevant port authority web sites, thank goodness for Google translate, to be 1.30am and therefore an all on board of 1am. As far as the most of the private tour companies were concerned they could not guarantee a return before 3am and I understand that that is to them the norm as the lights and weather are so unpredictable. We only managed to find the amazing tour we did through a German speaking member of our CC rollcall’s diligence. Thank you @HeinBloed. For some reason Cunard no longer seem to publish their actual port times, as other lines do, making booking private tours quite tricky. Is this a deliberate policy to encourage people to book ships tours rather than risk private? Don’t take this the wrong way I am not complaining about Cunard but saying how useful it can be to collaborate with fellow passengers via CC rollcalls to sort private tours and even if Cunard don’t advertise their times the port authorities usually list the time slots the cruise lines have booked.

Cream first obviously.....

Or if we're in an upper suite on either pop over and i'll mix you one 😎🍸🧉🍹🍾 Sadly though for two of our cruise next we've only got CS's booked. Like a Q3 but with a door to the bedroom are but saddly no included bar set up😧. That said we'll probably try for a move up bid 😉

I started this thread to compare, what on paper at least, seem to be two similar lines and share my experiences at dipping a toe in unfamiliar waters. Celebrity is our familiar place and one where we feel comfortable. We are trying to fly less and can’t fly long haul anymore and would like to be able to cruise around Christmas. Celebrity is from 2023 keeping one ship in Europe over the winter but it is Infinity and we prefer the newer S Class ships. We have now dipped our toes and for the most part thoroughly enjoyed our experience. One of our growing regrets about Celebrity has been the decline of the formal dress code and we very much enjoy dressing for the evening. Both lines now seem to only have about three special dress nights on a two week cruise. Celebrity’s being now called Evening Chic and Cunard’s Gala nights. For the remaining evenings Cunard set the dress code as smart attire and Celebrity as smart casual. On Cunard we found the passengers generally adhered to the code with probably 90% of men in black tie (tuxedos) and the rest had jacket and tie for the more formal nights. The smart attire nights saw most men in collared shirts and even a few in black tie. On Celebrity out of the UK I would recon about 15% men in black tie on the more formal nights and very few even in jackets on the more casual evenings with this number dropping for European sailings. Of US sailings I have no first-hand knowledge but gather the level of dress is even lower. So for us in this Cunard is wins but for others Celebrity might. So in answer to @swjumbo ‘s question If there were two identical itineraries out at the Southampton at the same time of year, one on Queen Victoria and the other on Celebrity Silhouette, which would we choose? On balance I think we would choose Celebrity. I suspect however someone who’s familiar safe place was Cunard and had just tried Celebrity for the first time would probably answer Cunard. We did very much enjoy our cruise and would do it again in a heartbeat but the itineraries of both lines are not the same and for the most part, out of Southampton, for us a mix of both lines would give us the best of what we want. If we were traveling with my adult daughter and her girlfriend we would choose X but if we were going with my sister and law and her husband Cunard is definitely on the cards. For a cruise for just us we steer more towards X, probably as it has been our familiar place for so long, but will certainly add Cunard to our list of possible for our next round of bookings. We are booked up with three Celebrity cuisses for 2023. We await 2024’s itineraries with much interest. To conclude my aim was to see the Northern lights for my Sixtieth and that I have now done, and in such style……. Here are a few pics taken of the lights on three different nights. And of course a sunset or two wich is one of the joys of being on the water.

Very very good question..........

Having cruised Celebrity S Class PH and RS and the Cunard Q2 I would say the Q2 is half way between RS and PH in size and the need for a compass less than a M Class PH. Visited one of those once but all my actuall bookings gat cancelled😧

... I ment Queens Grill