LittleFish1976

You can arrive at the port without your luggage tags printed. No need to travel with adhesive tape. They will give you blank luggage tags when you arrive if you let them know they are required.

And if you're in Australia your booklet will be awaiting you on your return home from your cruise! They don't seem to allow for the fact that the post might take a bit longer to get here.

That sounds fantastic! I'm very envious. You'll be very comfortable on the ship I'm sure and having a sea day every few days should be perfect for an otherwise busy itinerary.

Yes, it's a main ferry port for boats going to the Aeolian islands and also across to the mainland.

What a frightful ordeal for that poor woman and what awful treatment she received from CoverMore. To fall from a deck which is 50cm off the ground is the repsonsibility of the resort! That's too big for a step and big enough to cause yourself an injury if you don't realise it's not a step and fall from it. But also small enough that you might misjudge it if there's no cue that it's not a step. A deck which is higher than a step should have a safety rail or some sort of visual/physical cue to alert you to the fact that it's not just a few inches off the ground. I'll make sure I remember not to renew my annual travel insurance which I took out with CoverMore last year knowing I had a few trips planned for the year ahead. Companies that are going to refuse claims are poor value at any price (and it wasn't particularly cheap anyway).

Providing receipts for what you didn't drink is rather difficult!

I'm sure Bogart would have been safe - he had a bit of a boozy reputation if I'm remembering correctly.

The QE took bottled water on in Australia; they were using (inter alia) the Capi brand which is bottled here in Victoria. (I've never heard of someone becoming ill from bottled water - how dreadful. And I've had the unfortunate experience myself of campylobacter so I feel for you. Shudder). There would be no reason not to trust any product they could purchase here in Australia; our food and alcohol safety laws are probably as strict as any in the world. It would just mean a bit more effort for Cunard to take on additional suppliers. Drinks unique to more distant locations just need to be planned for. Big label liqueurs and liquors etc are all made in the one place - it wouldn't matter where in the world they were purchased or brought on board.

Maybe the ship had been drained of provisions prior to arriving here! Nothing to stop the company having orders delivered directly to distant ports if they can't for whatever reason transport adequate stock onboard their own ships from Southampton.

The QG sommelier told me that all supplies of drinks (and I'm sure many other things) are all delivered to Southampton and can only be replenished when the ships are in that port. Given it's months between visits there during their southern hemisphere summer season it seems that that strategy leads to inconvenient shortages. The only way they could resolve the problem (if they insist on only replenishing in Southampton) is to load enough stock to cover the months away from 'home'. Clearly that's an imposition on the storage space and weight and I suppose an undesirable solution. I was very disappointed to find a number of wines in the QG dining room (well, the whole ship, in fact) were out of stock including the English sparkling wine which given I had the drinks package was something I had been looking forward to trying. No acceptable alternative was offerred; I was told that there was prosecco (no thanks). I ended up paying for champagne on occasion as a result. Given Cunard travel from Australia to Japan for a shortish season there and from there to Alaska, I cannot fathom how they could realistically offer an acceptable level of wines on board to satisfy those markets if the explanation given to me were correct. They must have re-stocked after their Aust/NZ season. I felt that, in that regard at least, the ship presented poorly here despite there being other quality wines in stock. There was just a few too many out of stock. Also, I don't recall either QE or QM2 having had this problem in the past although I did chose differently having the package this time. The list for the QG cabin was odd to say the least.

This is what was available on the list on QE in February this year. The struck-through items were unavailable. F7B2AFB0-71E3-4F8B-BD18-328838B18138.heic C95D8AC9-7C46-4F9A-8838-EB0A4D74B5F0.heic

Thanks so much for this! Very helpful.

Windsor Castle is a lovely day trip tour. Very interesting and home to Queen Mary's dolls' house.

Does anyone have a screen shot of the menus? Both A and B so we can compare them. I hear people prefer menu A so I'd love to see what the differences are. Thanks

I still have my vinyl copy from (when?) 1975 or 1976? It was pretty unusual in its day.

Thanks Ondine, yes I was aware of the status matching. Unfortunately it doesn't apply to me (not enough status; not with the right cruise line). I don't see their advertising anywhere quite frankly. I wouldn't have a clue where they're advertising - I've just been doing research and if you know what to look for, their website can be quite informative (but you have to know from say, youtubers, what topic you want to research). I'm now on their mailing list and got an email this morning about new itineraries in the Australian season. I must say, their information is as clear as pea and ham soup. Given Branson's background and his enormous success I am amazed that the website is so poorly designed (in terms of quickly and easily finding out the information you're looking for or discovering what they're offering). Given how rubbish their self-promotion has been here, I will indeed book with them for December because I doubt they'll be back and offerring such a selection next summer or the summer after - people won't cruise with them if they're not induced to book or don't know what they're offerring.

I didn't see a promotion advertised - I've been looking at their offerings in their website and on a third party on-line cruise website. I don't think in this case that the up-front payment indicates woes for the company's finances; I would assume they just want the liquidity and for people not to be last minute cancellations because they have less to lose by having just paid a deposit.

I hear the food is very good which gives them a head start in my opinion. I'm willing to give them a go but wishing I had booked a few weeks ago when there was a better promotion going. Now, to get the lower prices, it's a 'pay in full when you book' which I don't want to do right now. I'll keep waiting and hoping the prices come down or there's at least a better OBC or 'bar tab credit' in the offing. I plan to sail before Christmas; there's nothing departing from Melbourne in either January or February - perhaps as a result of the changes that Ondine reports. Seems from the youtubers I follow that the ages on board tend to be predominantly late 20's to 60's (although there are also much older people on board getting into the swing of it all).

In Australia it seems we're being slugged by huge prices for cruises, relative to say the US and UK. Heard on a youtube channel that I follow that Virgin in the UK are offerring huge OBC such as GBP1,000-2,000 per cabin. Here the offer is AUD100 per cabin and cruise prices seem really steep - as you say, at the rate they're rising today's prices may look attractive in 2 years. I think they might find that the pent-up demand from the no-travel years of covid lockdowns will burn out and they won't be able to overcharge here the way they currently are. Would Diamond Princess and P&O Explorer attract the same customer?

No more of a problem than in NZ I would imagine! You could do what my arachnophobe adult children do and ring me to come and dispose of it! Or if you're staying in any sort of accomodation and find one, call the management. We're not known for our spiders here (I'm assuming your question was a serious one but I'm a little mystified, I will confess). Assume it will be hot in February. There are some apartments (and houses) for rent in Sorrento on the Mornington Peninsula - if you didn't want to hire a car you could get a driver to take you down there and pick you up again. Once there you'd have lots of summer-y things to do like beaches and shops and restaurants (without driving) as well as the ferry over to Queenscliff for a day visit. Also, golf if that's your thing and hot springs/spa not far away. I'm sure there'd be taxis in the area to get you to the springs. Wineries up in the hills nearby (Red Hill etc) for lunches and walks or picnics in their grounds (Montalto does this and also has a little sculpture park).

I'm less and less interested in flying to join a cruise at another Australian port than my own home port so I'm going to start booking with whoever will sail from Melbourne. I plan to book Virgin for December this year for exactly that reason (and it looks like it could be good fun). That 2025-2026 looks a bit light-on so far. No Cunard at all. No Virgin.

There must be lots of adults on board who are big Disney fans and travel without kids. If you're into the characters it could be really fun.

South Atlantic???? Where do they think Tasmania is? 'soul food'?

QE does have them in the Qs as you say. They're freestanding mirrors sitting on the corner desk (in the Q3 anyway) with mirrored wall behind - a good make-up station arrangement.

Not sure why you would hope the requirement to show a photograph of a negative RAT changes. It's not much of an imposition, surely?