sfred

Thanks @alc13!! This is Akita, Japan. A new port for the game. It did look rather dreary for your arrival yesterday 26 April. I was able to find a live webcam of the port area showing QE. The weather banner at top said only 14c and rain. Much appreciated for all the photos. Hope your voyage has been fun. Do you continue on after Yokohama tomorrow, or disembark? .

That's what made me remember these suites from the Stephen Payne insight lecture. During the Q&A someone asked him what he would change about QM2 if he could do it all over again. One of the things he mentioned was that he would remove the scenic lift access to the suites. Apparently rather often. passengers going to deck 11 mistakenly try to follow a Q2 resident into their deck 10 suite.

If you are flying into Narita, you can take the Narita Express (NEX) Japan Rail train. The first stop is Tokyo station, where the train splits with half the carriages continuing on to Yokohama. It is a fast train, and it will likley be quicker than the bus services, given typical Tokyo road traffic congestion. There are several hotels within walking distance of Yokohama station. There's also several hotels, including a Hyatt, near the Motomachi-Chūkagai train station, adjacent to where the Cunard provided shuttle bus will take you to Daikoku pier and QE on embarkation day. Getting to Motomachi-Chūkagai from Yokohama station would require either a change of trains from the Narita express, or a short taxi ride.

Ah, I see what you mean. Apologies. The brochure page 118 shows the layout of Q2 aft duplexes, not the forward 10003/04 suites. Nor does our Australia Cunard website have anything on these suites. As far as I know, these forward suites have always been a part of QM2. I remember Stephen Payne mentioning in an insight lecture that Cunard put him up in one of them during that TA.

QM2's PG cabins have a very nice "head". Having a bath is nice - Mrs sfred particularly likes the soaking experience. My only concern is stepping out of the shower-over-bath. The bath is deep and therefore the wall of the bath can be a challenge to step over. I'm comparatively fit and active, but still always feel like I'm going to slip. Like @tv24, I love QM2's quirks. A traditional habit of mine when aboard is roaming the ship in the very early morning when many are still asleep, and then watching the sunrise from outside with a cup of coffee. QM2 has so many interesting nooks and detours which make the walks consistently interesting.

It's not much, but page 118 of Cunard's recent Aug23-May25 brochure shows layouts for the Q2 suites. PDF attached here. Adobe Scan 25 Apr 2023.pdf

Best wishes to all ANZ'ers, and all visitors here in Australia-New Zealand, for a nice ANZAC day today 25 April. Mrs. sfred and I attended the dawn ceremony this morning in Brisbane's ANZAC square. It is always a very moving occasion.

As @exlondoner pointed out, upside down would be appropriate for an Australia photo. 🙂 I also noticed your initial posting of the Busan welcome delegation before you edited it to the cruise terminal photo. You could try rotating the photo in image editing software, and then posting, but that is probably much more effort than you're wanting to do during your enjoyable holiday. I think we all just appreciate that you're willing to post photos from your voyage, whether they are upside down or not! Hope your port day today in Kanazawa is a good one. This would also be an unseen port in the game.

That sounds right. QE's air draft is a little over 56 meters on average depending on loading. The Busan bridge clearance is 60 meters, depending on tides. On our recent QM2 voyage in Norway, we passed under the Bergen Askoy bridge during our arrival and departure. The Askoy bridge has a clearance of 62 meters, and is apparently the lowest bridge in the world that QM2 passes under. (By comparison the Verrazzano Narrows bridge in NY has a clearance of 70 meters.) The captain said we had only about a meter of space. Many of us, including me, braved the very cold and very wet evening to get a photo during our departure. I overheard someone nearby commenting that we should nominate a single volunteer to take a photo and share it around, so the rest of us could go inside to the pub.

Thanks @alc13 for posting the Busan photo. Much appreciated for your additions to the game. This now raises another decision whether QE's call on 23 April is a new port. @Palmeat's previous photo in post 2490 (showing QE on her 2015 world cruise) was at the cruise terminal on the seaward side of the Busan Harbor bridge. QE's recent call was at the terminal on the city side of the bridge. The bridge's clearance of 60 meters limits the ships that can pass under to use the city terminal. QM2 doesn't fit, and I imagine QE was rather close. The call Mrs. sfred and I made to Busan in 2017 on QM2 also used the seaward terminal. The two terminals are about 5km apart as the Korean national bird the magpie flies - much longer over streets and bridges. The locations are at the upper left, and lower right, of the below map. They have similar names - Busan Port International Passenger Terminal, and Busan International Cruise Terminal. So, can I ask @bluemarble to make the official's call on the field for @alc13's photo? Same seen port or different unseen port for our game? .

Thanks - I wasn't sure about BC on QE. I've only done BC on QM2. Good to know.

Best wishes for your voyage, @asdf1245. Britannia cabins have a kettle, tea bags, and instant coffee, but not coffee pod machines. Princess and Queens grill have coffee pod machines. Elsewhere on the ship, free coffee is available from room service, in the MDR, deck 9 Lido, and Grills lounge and restaurants (if in PG/QG). Paid barista coffee is available from Deck2 Cafe Carinthia. The quality? Depends on how much of a coffee enthusiast you are. I find it adequate for my addiction, particularly in the MDR and Grills restaurants.

Indeed! Sympathies to all those aboard and/or affected by the cancellations. I wonder what the "technical issues" are that have caused the 23/30th cancellations? QM2 was making good speed to arrive in Southampton early, so at that point there was sufficient diesel and gas turbine generating capacity for propulsion and hotel loads. In aviation, there's something called the Minimum Equipment List (MEL) or Minimum Equipment Requirements (MER), which are the things that must be working for an aircraft to legally depart, particularly on a long overwater route. I imagine shipping and QM2 might have a similar list. If so, what went crook on QM2's MEL to require cancellation? Fresh water generation? Fire prevention? Ventilation?

QE is in Busan, Korea today. Interestingly, she is moored at the Busan Port International Passenger Terminal on the city side of the Busan Harbour Bridge. I guess QE was able to fit underneath the bridge this morning, with her air draft of approximately 56m just under the bridge clearance of 60m. When Mrs sfred and I were in Busan on QM2 on 24 March 2017, we used the Busan cruise terminal with the finger pier (adjacent to the Maritime Museam) at the far lower right of the Marine Traffic map shown below -- seaward of the bridge. QE also used this termnal during her 2016 world cruise. (@Palmeat posted a photo of QE there in the "Where in the World" thread). Best wishes to everyone for a nice port day, and perhaps a tasty BiBimBap lunch while ashore.

For the record, I'll ID the port that @alc13 kindly submitted on Friday in post 4685. It is Yatsushiro, Japan, which QE visited on 21 April. Thanks for posting! @bluemarble, you did well to find a webcam showing QE that day, albeit very far away. All I could find were various webcams of river flood control locations. In all my work travels around Japan, I never got to Yatsushiro, nor did I get to the port where QE was yesterday. @alc13, I hope you and the other QE passengers have had pleasant port days.

Thanks @alc13!!!

I've also seen the Boardwalk open during TAs on nice summer days . It was closed (as would be expected) during our recent November voyage to Norway. Wooden tables with umbrellas and chairs are set up on the Deck 12 area forward of the cafe. You go through the cafe, get a tray with your food and drink, and take it outside to the tables. It requires both warm temperatures and a relatively calm wind, as the seating area is more exposed on QM2 Deck 12 compared to the outdoor Lido grill on QV/QE's Deck 9 aft.

Wonderful that you got aboard for your Japan voyage at last, after several years of Covid delays. Best wishes for a great time! I see that QE will be in Yatsushiro tomorrow (21 April). If you have a chance, could you post a photo of QE in the port? It is an "unseen" port in the "Where in the World" game. Thanks!

A really great additional price point (if anyone from Cunard is reading this thread??) would be for say ~$5 for a two-hour block. I don't really need a full 24 hours access. I'm on the ship to enjoy being at sea or at a port, not to be on the internet. Two hours would be enough to do email, check on news from back home, and see what's happening on Cruise Critic. A $5 price point option would enable the World Club benefit to last much longer, similar to the way the old minute allotment could be stretched to last the entire voyage.

Here's an Excel if helpful as a starting point. The file I use has additional tabs for Qantas, hotels, etc. so that I can chase missing credits when (unfortunately often) needed. Cunard travel.xlsx

My understanding (from 2019, so perhaps it has changed) is that there is a Cunard shuttle but it is for in-transit passengers on port days, not for those that are embarking or disembarking. The shuttle went to the Nihon-Odori station, at the Oshanbashi cruise terminal. When we joined QE in Yokohama in 2019 for the voyage across to Alaska, we took the train from Shinjuku in Tokyo to Yokohama station, and a taxi to QE at Daikoku.

Correct! It was a live webcam of the Naha port area, taken yesterday 16 April during QE's port call. The previous contribution for this port came from @Essiesmom on 17 July 2021, post number 3592. That photo was of the Naha pier, taken from the decks of Star Princess. I was really hoping to find a webcam of QE's recent calls to Hualien Taiwan and Ishigaki Japan, which would have been unseen ports for the game, but I couldn't find any cameras that covered the shipping areas. Ishigaki had a real time camera of a traffic intersection in the centre city, in high definition 4K, and Hualien had several cameras covering nearby parks and walking trails, but nothing at the piers that I could find. It is rather addictive, isn't it? 🙂

Thanks for your recent photo, @NE John. My first thought was Messina also. Here is a webcam screenshot of an already-seen port. Our game's previous contribution for this port (which was not posted by me) was taken from a ship but did not feature a Cunard ship. Sorry for the tilted angle - that's the webcam, not the port. 🙂

QE is in Ishigaki, Japan today (15 April). Potentially another maiden call?

Hamburg is correct, well done! Mrs sfred took this during our QM2 departure from Hamburg, on 1 July 2015 at the start of the 175th anniversary crossing to NY. We too were awed by the number of cranes.