LibertyBella

Trying to compare cruise ship dining is rather silly, because overall they are more similar than different, no matter how many entrees are offered. On my honeymoon we stayed in French Relais & Chateaux. There are fifty diners max in the room. Dining is an ART. Food is matched and prepared exquisitely. Meals last for hours. The chefs value those star ratings and monitor every tiny detail. No cruise ship will ever match that experience, no matter how good they promote themselves to be. Dining will never be my first priority on any cruise.

Ha-ha, I like reading about all those who mainly focus on food on cruise ships. When I was a little girl I took my first cruise for two weeks in the Med and the Black Sea (1973!), and I was a VERY picky eater. I would only order soup and canned fruit cocktail for dessert. Yes, for two weeks EVERY night. No baked Alaska, cherries jubilee, etc.--just canned fruit cocktail. Blessed was my waiter for taking caring of me. I am among the few that actually enjoy losing weight on my cruises! I like fine dining, but I never stuff myself. I actually feel very guilty wasting all the food. At home when I dine out I can bring home the leftovers. I like cruise ship dining, but overall the ships are serving thousands, so they will never be quite as elite as a special on-land restaurant that serves less than a hundred at a time. In any case most of the cruise ship food is quite healthy, and since I eat three good meals a day and monitor my portions, I am quite happy. I also like running around the ship and visiting many great ports. I feel relaxed and I am exercising. I have never ended a cruise unable to fit into my clothes, like so many others. Less than a month before my QM2 voyage, and I am looking through my gowns to see which I want to wear! And most definitely, husband will have his tux. We LOVE the formality of Cunard because it takes us back to the original days of grand cruising.

When I was in high school I decided to never miss a day, so at the end of four years I could receive a tiny pin that said "perfect attendance". I was very proud on the school awards day to wear that little pin. Now it is in a drawer somewhere. I have many of those little cruise pins from various lines and I hardly care anymore. I am honestly not even sure of my status level on some of the lines. I travel where and when I want on whichever cruise line I choose at the moment. Husband would rather be on a ski trip somewhere in the cold mountains any day over a cruise, so I have to push for my ship time. I choose Cunard often because I really do love to dress up! (I have a closet filled with fancy gowns.) I am still in very good health, so I do not need to get on or off the ship faster than anybody else, I do not really drink that much even though I get invited to many cocktail parties, and after Covid began to retract I received more great cruise offers than I could digest. I think that the status is a bit of an incentive gimmick, similar to TripAdvisor that tells me I have earned another badge when I review a new hotel. Buying status is not the same as earning status, as many, many years of work and education have made me fully understand!

Why is Cunard thought about as some corporate entity floating above us that makes supreme decisions, whether good or bad? Cunard has been in business for centuries, and I have been cruising with them for decades, so I have faith that the staff are trying to do their best, even in difficult circumstances. Cunard is a company composed of individual people who are only human, and can quite easily make mistakes. Covid has stressed many of us over the past few years, and the world is still NOT back to normal, especially including cruise travel. Many travel staff are overwhelmed as they try to manage and merge old processes with new requirements. When the bank teller hands me an extra bill, or counts wrong and puts the incorrect balance amount in the computer, I will first inform her of the error, and then perhaps a higher up, but I would never write a review in the BBB about my bank! A long time ago I was a bank teller, so I completely understand that mistakes do and will happen. I never leave the ship without checking my final invoice, and if incorrect charges do pop up, I would certainly contact the company various ways immediately to resolve the issue, and document the process. I would probably be annoyed, but I would also try to be patient and kind, because that person's error could mean a negative mark on their employee review. Or, perhaps there is an employee with criminal intent, and thus the supervisors need to be informed so they can address the problem. In any case, because I am a persistent person, the issue would soon be resolved, and then I could move forward to planning my next cruise!

Wow, what a lot of discussion about dancing on this cruise forum! I am also a serious recreational dancer--in fact, I have formally taken eight different kinds of dance lessons throughout my life, including ballroom. The others are ballet (my second favorite), tap, modern jazz, flamenco (my favorite), hula (Hawaii), belly dancing, and Bollywood (India). I certainly agree that experienced ballroom dancers can intimidate newbies, due to the exacting moves and intricacies of certain steps, and the fact that good dancers have a flair and a style that could appear like one is showing off a bit. I also think that Cunard should not just have ballroom dancing--they should encourage more diverse types of dancing as well, because dance can represent culture, opportunities for free dancing allow everyone to join in and do their own thing, and access to formal ballroom lessons is very limited in many parts of the world. Additionally many young people think that ballroom represents an older generation. I, personally, would never want to go on a cruise and just do ballroom dancing, unless the cruise specifically stated that this is a ballroom dance only cruise. Throughout the decades many different types of dance have sprung up -- rock dances like the twist, couples dances in disco, the fun moves of hip hop, and now modern Tik-Tok dances, all of which should be recognized to have as much equal value as ballroom, because they are all enjoyable to watch and do!! Yes, ballroom should always have an important place, but it cannot monopolize the dance floor. Cunard probably thinks about this as they consider growing the customer base. Hopefully there can be some kind of compromise, so all feel welcome and all can participate in the joy of dance!

Ahh well, nostalgia--the package on the QE we took years ago was sail one way and fly FREE the other--or pay an additional $500.00 each to take the Concorde home. I was just too cheap to do it at the time, because we were staying in Britain two weeks and driving all over and enjoying historic hotels. Now I regret having missed that experience. Nowadays I usually prefer to do my own air, because I want nonstop direct flights from my home city, but I sometimes check out what the cruise lines offer. However, I had a bad experience with BA a few years ago (pilot walk-outs), and I am a loyal American frequent flyer, so I also ensure my airline of choice is booked.

There are five other threads about this topic on this Cunard board. Most likely the issue is cabin location or cabin type. (Another passenger who was cancelled stated they only book accessible rooms.) If a traveler is not flexible about being moved, or must have a certain type of cabin, they are more susceptible to change in this day and age. Some of the cruise ship areas are being designated as quarantine cabin floors, and additionally for the staffing challenges, Cunard probably looked at numbers and distance, and tried to calculate how many cabins staff could reasonably be responsible for based on location. Should they have contacted you and asked if you were willing to move? Yes. They probably should have done it by seniority--whoever booked first, rather than loyalty or cabin cost--that would be the most fair. But if it was a blanket decision like all balcony cabins on the third floor, they were just doing it in a computer mandated way and probably did not look at individual travelers. They were also probably too overwhelmed with the concept of trying to potentially rebook or move hundreds of travelers. Don't bring in so much emotion to this issue, because it will only upset you more. You want a response based on a human approach, but the decisions were made much more like a computer logic system (yes/no). My recommendation is to take the full refund, use it to go somewhere else equally as enjoyable, and also start planning a future Cunard cruise with the FCC.

Yes, sometimes the cruise lines contact their passengers before they send notice to the agent. That happened to me just this year when one of my cruises was cancelled (also by short email) because the entire ship was chartered by a single group. Lucky for me I had not yet booked my air, so I just had to move the cruise and dates. I actually called the agent and notified them so they could move my travel insurance. I have been a traveler my whole life and even worked in the industry when I was much, much younger. We are still in the covid and post-covid stages and travel is NOT back to normal. Traveling now means anticipating change and having patience and flexibility. Travel insurance is a MUST if one cannot afford the loss of funds or the inconvenience of rescheduling. Thinking about trying to create some kind of legal action for a situation in which nobody is really responsible, and nobody is really suffering any significant loss, is almost a waste of time and effort. Of course with cruises, ports and itineraries are ALWAYS subject to change, and sometimes ships as well! Being upset is understandable, but don't burn yourself out on issues that have no real solution. The cruise industry is struggling--Carnival has been sending me offers for FREE cruises almost monthly (they just want bodies on the ship who will buy SOMETHING!). Cunard does not want to lose passengers, but obviously there are significant issues so they had to take this serious step. Also, travel insurance filing requires careful paperwork and accurate representation of real financial loss--if everything can just be rebooked (and you receive a full refund AND FCC) the only real loss is the disappointment of not going on the originally planned trip. Best wishes for future travel adventures.

I doubt very much there is any focus on individuals or their cruise costs. Some cruisers demand certain cabins and will not allow any changes. That may have been fine in the past, but when the ship needs to make large scale decisions (e.g. all deck 5 reserved for covid quarantine), if you are a passenger who is not flexible and cannot be moved, or by bad luck your cabin is part of the quarantine area, then yes, cancellations become the final decisions. The Covid challenges are continuing and cruise lines are attempting to navigate risky travel times. They, more than any of us travelers, wish times would get back to normal! In these days of constant change, if one trip gets cancelled, I just book something else and put my cancelled trip on the future travel bucket list. So far the list includes China (yes, my tour was booked, some money still with tour company), Mexico cruise (booked and refunded), my brother's Baltic cruise (refunded), my other brother's eastern European tour (booked and company has money) Iceland (also booked and refunded), Viking cruise (also booked and I have a lot of cruise credit). What have I learned? Do not plan too far in advance, be very flexible, patient and calm, go with the flow, don't extend too much money out if the trip is shaky, and enjoy my travels wherever I end up going!!

I am on the New England cruise in July and I am sorry you will miss it. Did Cunard cancel both of your cruises? I am guessing you would not wish to fly internationally to pick up the U.S. component, which could still be an option. Unfortunately, I do not think the cruise lines were necessarily expecting the ongoing covid infection rates and the high need for isolation rooms when they created all these itineraries. Naturally they would prefer paying customers, but they also do not want to have the ships denied entry if they do not take every precaution. Cruising is still a somewhat precarious endeavor to undertake, due to ongoing cancellations, itinerary changes, infection rates, etc., etc. The Cunard line is one of the few that offers the regular transatlantic crossings, and I am not sure if that would make it more difficult to deal with Covid issues/severe illnesses, as the only medical services offered would be what is available on the ship. I certainly understand the additional challenges of physical limitations, as my mother is in a similar position. Perhaps this is a silver lining in the gray cloud--plan a cruise or tour that has a more local itinerary, and then consider international cruising in the future when things are more normal. At least, that is what I have been doing--I have pets at home and I cannot risk a quarantine in a foreign country, so these past two years I have been traveling domestically only. Best wishes for future travel adventures!