Fairgarth

Afternoon tea in the Queen's Room is always a bit of an 'occasion', especially if they have a live band and dancing too.  I just discovered on our last crossing that the sandwiches, cakes and scones with clotted cream are also available in the King's Court. Go help yourself.

We prefer early dining.  I don't like the idea of finishing dinner at 10:30pm.  Your choice.

21 hours ago, Jeffrey1950 said:

 Also, Can someone tell me of an Airline that has direct flights to or from Edinburgh. 

Direct or non-stop?  From where, exactly?  East-bound or west-bound?  I believe United does a non-stop out of Newark and Delta does a non-stop out of JFK.  Aer Lingus has been mentioned and you might also take a look at Air Canada with a connection in Toronto.  Then there's Emirates out of Dubai, QATAR out of Doha, Turkish out of Istanbul, Delta from Boston, easyJet and Ryanair from everywhere......  Avoid Norwegian, they will go bust and take your money with them.

Here's a suggestion on seat selection:  you can check-in online 24 hours before departure.  Part of the check-in process allows you to see what seats are available and you can move to a different seat.  Done it many times.  There's a big advantage in your case - because of your connection to, you are checking in for the long-haul flight hours before the local boardings can so you will get a better selection of seats than they do.

You must be quite unlucky.  I have been flying Air Canada for the last 30 years and all my booked flights operated as planned.  I think they - and others - have a real problem with the grounding of the 737 MAX.  They have 24 of those, each with 169 seats.  If each aircraft does three flights a day on average (I have no idea what the real number is) then that's over 12,000 passengers a day on 737 MAX.  Which means 120,000 passengers over the next ten days have to be re-routed.  Clearly, that is going to take some time and manpower.  In fact, passengers are booked 40, 60 or 90 days in advance so it could have meant that a million had to be re-routed following the grounding.  What a mess!

Heathrow?  Gatwick?  City?  Stansted?  Luton?  Southend?

On 2/3/2019 at 2:16 PM, Jack E Dawson said:

One more recommendation, in addition to the bag tag that Cunard sends you to attach to the outside of your bag, make a copy in place it in your bag on top of everything. This way if your outside tag is accidentally torn off, the first thing that the luggage handler will see when he opens your bag is your name and cabin number.

Now that's brilliant!!  Thanks for the suggestion.  Cunard has kindly provided me with four bag tags but I only have two bags.  Now I can usefully employ all four.

1 hour ago, TTEllis said:

 Darkwood, Valley Church, Beach Limerz and Turner's, all the exact same bay and on the same road. I think in that order too.

Not quite.  Beach Limerz is north of St. John's, north of the port, right next to Fort James.  The others are all south of Jolly Beach with Turner's furthest south.

I have made many visits to Antigua and have driven all over the island, it's perfectly safe and I now know my way around.  However.....for one day?  You'll get lost.  Maps are useless and there are no road signs.  Speeds are low - I doubt if you'll ever see 50mph - and there are plenty of road hazards such as wandering dogs, kids, chickens, cows, donkeys and potholes, oh my! the potholes.  I slammed into one at night - never saw it - and got instant deflation and a big vee-dent in the rim.  I think you would need a local licence which the car rental place will issue on the spot for $20 but that adds to your cost.  So I'm inclined to think you could hire a minivan driver for the day for about the same price and he will take you wherever you want to go and make sure you get back to the ship in time for sailing.

Bear in mind that the port of Civitavecchia is a long way from FCO.

Oh dear, oh dear, will they never learn?  "Caveat emptor".  Goodbye WOW.  Next?

You have two options, basically either end of Sandals.  I would suggest the Antigua Village parking lot as being the easiest.  That is where Ana's is too.  The other access is up by Sneaky Pete's.

Bear in mind that the cruise port of Civitavecchia is a long way from FCO.

Short answer:  no.  But Beach Limerz has Fort James right next door.  Free entry, come and go as you please.

A couple of years ago, a captain with Celebrity wrote a blistering letter to the port authority in Antigua.  He had been told the depth of water but in the event he had only two feet under the keel, much less than advertised.  So yes, methinks draft is the factor here.  Cruise ships are wide and shallow.  QM2 goes deep.

There are three airports to choose from:  JFK, Newark and La Guardia.  We got a Cunard bus to Newark and were there by 9:15am.  I think they also offered a tour ending with airport drop-off but not enough people signed up so it was cancelled.  I imagine JFK would also be served.  We took the commuter train from Newark into Penn Station for the day.  Your only potential problem is that there is no left luggage at Newark except for United passengers.

Bear in mind too, if you are already at Beach Limerz then Fort James itself is right next door.  If you have the time, just browse around - no entrance fee, just come and go as you please.  You can soak in a bit of Antigua/Royal Navy history.

Celebrity will be in St. John's.  The cruise port is right in the middle of town.  Falmouth has no dock so it's a tender port which is very seldom used, maybe five small ships a month in season, as opposed to four a day in St. John's.

Ah, well now, Falmouth is an awful lot further than the cruise port in St. John's.  Still, I wonder if the $80 is actually EC.  If you go on to a website "Antigua Nice" you will find taxi fares - regulated - for various trips.  The highest price I could see was $31 from one end of the island to the other.

1 hour ago, Stateroom_Sailor said:

 

 I assume that higher end British Food is delicious as well.

 

You are too kind.  I had a cab driver in Montreal many years ago who loved London but said you had to go to Paris for a decent meal.  I believe British standards may have improved somewhat since then.

I should add to my earlier post that QM2 has 400,000 bottles of wine on board and by far the longest wine list of any ship that I have seen.  And a huge selection of port.  And Fever Tree tonic.

Well, I think they are very different.  Cunard celebrates its history, tradition and Britishness.  There's a Golden Lion pub with fish'n'chips.  They have English beer on tap.  Breakfast in the Britannia can include Cumberland sausage, English bacon and Bury black pudding.  (Good luck with that on Celebrity)  Food and service in the MDR is better on Cunard.  Guest speakers are way superior.  Formal means formal: 95% in a tux.  More than half the passengers are Brits (at least on a crossing).  You never see or hear the cruise director except to introduce a guest performer.  There is no loud music to spoil your cocktail.  The only announcement is the captain at noon.

We wanted a quiet drink in the Martini bar on Celebrity Constellation while there were very few people there.  We asked the barman to turn down the loud music but he would not.  We filled in a comment card and then the phone in our cabin rang.  It was the cruise director.  "Sorry we can't turn it down.  Miami makes us do it."  Dear God!  Seriously?  It was the same in the Italian specialty - loud music which was not even Italian.  Other than that, we did like Celebrity and will certainly go back.  So yes, they are different.

We enjoyed the Nero d'Avola at $33.00.  Better than some of the more expensive wines so we had it again.

29 minutes ago, Folkfan13 said:

Now if only the transportation options from NWK to Manhattan (we're arriving several days early to experience NY) would work out so well.    That part is still giving me a headache.   🙂

We came off the QM2 on October 25th and took the Cunard bus to Newark.  We were at the airport by 9:20am.  Since our flight was in the evening, we headed into town.  Take the airport skytrain thing to the railway station where there are frequent trains into Penn Station - from memory it's about a 30 minute ride.  We held up the queue at the ticket machine trying to figure out how to buy a train ticket.  Nobody there to help you, of course.  It was going fine until the machine wanted a zip code i.e. to match to the home address of your credit card.  I don't live in the U.S. so I don't have a zip code.  Clearly, New Jersey transit is designed to exclude immigrants and visitors.  After much heartache, the solution:  use a debit card.  It doesn't care where you live.

There is no left luggage at EWR except at United.  We were flying Air Canada - Star Alliance along with United - but the agent was adamant that it was for United only.  We politely (we're Canadian) but steadfastly refused to move.  She finally took our bags.  And didn't want a zip code.

On 11/25/2018 at 9:52 AM, ABoatNerd said:

Excellent analysis by everyone.

 

I agree the bean counters are not the drivers. But I believe neither are the marketing folks (my career), they are the investigators and provide competitive information and strategies to the CEO and board based on the corporate objectives.  It is the board who decides to drive down the experience or upgrade the experience - always first and foremost is the requirement for increased share price and glorious increased profits, every single quarter.

I was hoping somebody with a Marketing background would chip in.  Thank you for that.

I believe it comes down to expectations.  If we fancy Azamara or Seabourn we pay up and cruise with them.  If we choose Royal Caribbean or Cunard, we don't expect Seabourn but why wouldn't we enjoy Cunard anyway?  And we do.

May I suggest you verify that the charge is actually from Cunard?  I got annoyed when my credit card statement showed a similar 'extra' charge.  It was the bank.  I used a U.S. Visa card, issued by a U.S. bank in USD for my on-board charges which were billed in USD.  My U.S. bank added what turned out to be "Foreign exchange fee".  What foreign exchange exactly?  But it was billed from U.K. not from continental U.S.  That's all the flimsy excuse they need to hit you up again.

If you are off a cruise ship and have to get back, I would say it's not possible.  Forget Prickly Pear.  There are another 365 beaches to choose from.