ballroom-cruisers

Cunard stopped doing the paper questionnaires a couple of years ago. Whether you get a post-voyage emailed link to a questionnaire depends on the settings on your Cunard account. If you don't get the survey, then login in to your account and make sure the settings include sending you notifications - or phone Cunard and ask them to change those settings for you.

D&N, it's possible to dance a Viennese Waltz and a Slow Foxtrot on a 4mx4m dance floor, and we did that a week ago on a land based hotel break, but it is so much nicer to be able to move freely across a floor the size of the Queen's Room floor when not too many others are on there at the same time! You can't easily get the sensation of flight on a swing dance when you can't move much!

A bit like tiptoe carefully across a minefield.

Depends on who and how it happens!

Humour warning! A few years ago at a land-based holiday we were seated at a table for six with the same kind of person. We requested a table move, and next evening were happy with our new table mates. Next thing we knew was that the people who led us to change tables had raised a formal complaint about us leaving their table, and said that us doing so was extremely rude and inconsiderate! Would never happen on a Cunard cruise of course!

If you simply don't respond, or initiate talk about a totally different and less controversial topic, or talk to another person instead, then there is a limit to how much a person can continue on with a monologue (for most people anyway!). Occasionally on such (rare) occasions, I have simply smiled and said nothing - that is not a response normally expected to that controversial kind of initiation to a dinner table discussion, so the ongoing situation can be eased. Either way defusing that rare situation can be done with tact, careful response - but it is a (small) risk) for any table with more than two (assuming the table for two is two people who normally get on well!).

Just like you found a source of cheaper clothes for yourself, there are shops, at least in the UK, where you can get men's jackets at low cost too. The last evening jacket I bought, which I have used at formal functions, and looks smart and nice and quiet lightweight making it ideal when dancing so as not to get too hot, only cost me £15. Of course it is also possible to find shops where similar jackets cost twenty times that price! Maybe where you live only the latter kind of men's clothes shops are available.

I have no doubt Cunard will be looking to balance their books and continue to operate with profit as any business must do. Nevertheless, currently they may well be able to ignore the traditional Cunarder's desire to keep some things sacred, such as the dress code and the ballroom dancing, by attracting in a new and different kind of passenger. But tougher times are coming over the next couple of years in many countries, and those who are now flocking in for the cheap deals, may be less in number in a year or two as belts become necessarily tightened for quite a lot of people. So it might just be the case that there will be a time that Cunard may wish they had not alienated their loyal traditional customers, and would like to lure them back. By then it may be too late though. No doubt we will see how things have changed, and what cruises are like in a couple of years, and no doubt passengers will be discussing such things on this forum then too. We are planning cruises next year, and we will make our own judgement about whether they continue to give us the pleasure of a holiday we are happy to pay for, or not. There are friends, who do not frequent this forum, and who do not express public opinion, and who don't bother with feedback questionnaires after a voyage, and who have decided not to book next year, and see what reports they hear from friends in private after coming back from their voyages in the coming year. Of course it would be lovely if everyone can continue to enjoy the sea life, the good meals, the entertainment and come back feeling it was purely fabulous. It is the people on board, as well as the facilities, and the activities available, that make a voyage. If the people and activities change, then so does how a holiday feels, and we all have to make our own decisions. There may be less choice in the coming years for cruise lines, and for voyages, and it is not certain that as many will be making the decision to book cruises in a few years compared to now. Tough decisions for the managers for sure, but passengers will vote with their feet irrespective of threads on this forum. Time will tell how the cruise industry changes into the future.

So a couple will spend several thousand US dollars on a cruise, and the lady will undoubtedly spend a good bit of cash on lovely new dresses, but the man does not want to spend around $40 or %50 on a jacket to be part of the nice smart dressed community on board! It doesn't add up.

Having cultural dress customs that are from other parts of the world does not mean people should abandon the nice smart dress codes that have been customary on Cunard voyages. After all if someone came from a tribal area where feathered headgear and spears was normal, coming on a Cunard voyage dressed in that style would not fit with the way most people dress up for the evening on board ship. If you lose the customary dress code on the Cunard voyages, then you will also lose what makes Cunard special and what many Cunarders are attracted to and enjoy about being specifically on Cunard cruises.

The only time I have been aware of any issue with the internal air temperature on board is when staying an extended period and overnight in places such as northern Norway in winter, when the gangway doors remain open - and the outside air comes into the ship for an extended period. In this example it can get quite cold in areas near where the exit door is open to the outside. However most of the time it is not an issue and certainly not an 'excuse' to dilute the dress code. Anyone who wishes to not adhere to the dress code does so for other reasons.

The ship is air conditioned even in hot countries - so the temperature on board is pleasant and allows dressing up irrespective of whether you are in Iceland or Australia. So no reason to dilute the formal attire as far as I can see.

Perhaps other ballroom dancers will comment separately about that. It is not often you see large numbers of people in the library in general, so perhaps there could be concerts arranged there too to bring up the numbers enjoying that room and get utilisation up?

On that QV cruise how many evenings were there when a non-ballroom musical group or Duo were playing sets? How many evenings were music or other sessions arranged in the Queen's Room where chairs were placed over perhaps half the dance floor to deal with the extra crowds coming in to listen? Certainly that happened on QM2 on two voyages this summer.

I suspect you have just hit the nail on the proverbial head. Yes, there may well be a new breed of passengers who may well also want to disco in the Queen's Room all evening if their kids are not too little, and buy a never-ending stream of expensive drinks, and make the managers happy that the space is being used at maximum, and make sure that the cost-centre of the ballroom is finally making money. Revenues will pour in and Cunard will become extremely profitable. It won't matter what they wear if they are pouring money into the coffers. Equally they may be encouraged to go and play the tables in the Casino at the end of the evening, instead of the hardy few who you see at the slot machines late at night. If so then the pleasures of the Cunard cruise that make it the reason we go with this line will have vanished, so we won't then book to join them.

Interesting comparison between Cunard and Celebrity. We too are long standing Cunarders, but there has been a gradual erosion of the things we like on Cunard ships - the erosion of the ballroom dancing in the Queens Room, which is key for our choice of voyages since without ballroom dancing in the evenings we are now looking at land based ballroom holidays increasingly over time, the Queen's Room orchestra is not generally as good at playing quality music for ballroom and Latin dancing at the level (tempo and vocalist quality) it should be - on some voyages the past year or two it has still been very good, but on others it is less than acceptably mediocre. The increasing number of evenings with party nights, or musical non-dancing sessions with seats placed on half of the dance floor area, when they could just as easily be in the theatre instead, all makes for less of what we like on a voyage. But there are other things that are changing too, including changes to the dining to move away from the kind of fixed dining we enjoy most, with less emphasis on fine dining as used to be the case. Only a few years ago re rarely saw anyone behaving inconsiderately, but now people increasingly abuse the fixed dining - and when nobody should arrive more than a quarter of an hour into the early sitting, we have seen people amble in over half an hour late, and act as if it is acceptable. It is very inconsiderate to the dining staff, as their management of the meal depends on a known time plan to deliver all the dishes at optimum. On Gala nights there never used to be anyone who would arrive inappropriately dressed to dinner or any of the evening's public events and areas of the ship, but now more people do so, and it shows disrespect to both the ship's management as well as to the other passengers who love the atmosphere where everyone is doing their best to dress to give the uniformity of standards. For us there is not enough (or any really) ballroom dancing on other lines for us to still enjoy cruises away from Cunard, but already we are booking land based ballroom dancing holidays and that will likely increase in the future. We will continue to enjoy Cunard voyages provided the things we enjoy are not reduced below the level where we would feel that the cruises are no longer value for money in terms of fully enjoying those holidays. I feel that some Cunarders are already abandoning Cunard, and it would seem from your comparison that you are exploring other options too. The nature of discussion on the Cunard forum is changing too in the past year and a lot of posts are from regular posters. I will continue to follow to see how the discussions change in the coming year or two.

All passengers have already gone through security checking during check-in in Southampton, and that would include security checks such as no fly lists and known wanted criminals. The US immigration system clearly does not trust that is thorough enough and needs to do it again in NYC. That is despite strong intel and security links between the UK and US.

Any westbound TA heading to NYC will require you to be processed through US immigration, so you get that to enjoy irrespective of whether it is a B2B or travelling on to other destinations in America or flying back. Of course American citizens have a rather easier time returning home and being welcomed back compared to all others who are 'aliens'! Eastbound TA of course for 'aliens' means flying in to the US and going through immigration at the arrival airport, and then going through departure immigration and check-in for the TA. So whichever way you choose to do a TA as an 'alien' means you get to enjoy being processed through the system,. whether or not you add in extra days holiday on land.

Sequence dance sessions of around half an hour are sometimes organised by the dance pros, either during the breaks between orchestra sets in the evening, or during dedicated sequence sessions earlier in the day, and on some voyages an hour of sequence around 5pm has been in the daily schedule, again hosted by the dance pros. They do need to be dedicated to sequence only since a ring of couples spread around the perimeter of the dance floor doing exactly the same figures repeated during the three minutes or so of the music means no other dance can be done at the same time. Also because everyone is doing the exact same steps simultaneously it means the host needs to call a countdown to the 'start' time as the music intro begins or it will descend into chaos. There are around 15 or so most popular sequence dances - such as rumba one, square tango, balmoral blues, Catherine Waltz, White City Waltz, Cindy Swing, Saunter Together, Tango Serida, Mambo Magic, Sally Anne Cha Cha and a few others. Many of the thousands of other sequence dances are done by regional groups within the UK, but many are simply not known to a lot of sequence dances - so the only way there is a chance most people will know the dance called is to announce one of the more popular ones. On the other hand if there are a lot of sequence dancers then it is near impossible to dance them with nice actions as too many couples are packed together with too little space to move properly. Also one thing to be aware of is that the rumba and cha cha sequence dances, which were originally written to be danced correctly on the '2' beat, are often danced on the '1' beat, which means the movements do not match the music correctly, so if you try to dance on the '2' then couples nearby may be moving at odds with couples moving properly. Also passengers from countries other than the UK, and possibly Australia, will often be excluded from sequence dance sessions since most countries do International Ballroom and Latin, or the American equivalents such as Smooth and Rhythm, and do not know the steps for the sequence dances. Occasionally people try to get groups onto the dance floor to do a sequence dance during normal ballroom or Latin music, and this generates a conflict since sequence dances are not really compatible with more usual patterns of the freestyle ballroom and Latin dances. So the optimal situation is to have managed sequence sets in between the usual ballroom and Latin sets. One other point, is that quite often people get used to doing a particular sequence dance to a specific piece of music - so if the host calls a sequence dance to an unfamiliar piece of music then some couples take exception to that although in principle of course a waltz of any kind should be possible to any good piece of waltz music, or similarly a foxtrot or a rumba.

The one time we did get off in NYC and 'endured' the immigration processing, once 'cleared', fingerprinted, photographed, and dead pan immigration officer had stamped the passport, finally wishing us 'Have a nice day in New York', getting the ferry across to central NYC to meet my brother and his wife for lunch worked nicely. At least we did have something pleasant to do before having to be processed back onto the ship in the afternoon and the evening departure passing under the Verrazzano Narrows bridge during dinner glimpsed from well away from the MDR windows.

Having experienced the zeroing (!) of the ship in NYC some years ago, the tedious immigration processing, and the need to queue to get back on board, we decided never again to do a TA - which is a shame really, as the TA itself was fabulous. I just cannot see what the need is to get people off the ship and back on, when someone does not even want to step a foot on American soil for a back to back (or part of an onward voyage after NYC) where there is never any intention to be on US land. Seems quite bizarre and I am not aware of anywhere else that has anything remotely similar when a ship arrives with passengers who are only there in transit for an onwards voyage.

The Cunard web site has advice about dress at https://www.cunard.com/en-gb/the-cunard-experience/what-to-pack and there is advice about Smart Attire, Gala nights as well as those areas of the ship where you can wear more casual clothes in the section "Evenings on Board".

Those who eat and drink vast amounts, and use every included service will doubt sing its praises, but as you say, for those who don't they are paying for services and consumables not used themselves. Of course most who buy all inclusive services don't appreciate, that the business model relies exactly on the varying consumption by those who benefit to the maximum, plus those who pay but don't use anything, such that there remains a profit for the company involved. The same applies whether it is an all-inclusive holiday on land, or the 'all-you-can-eat' carvery deal at a restaurant.

The recent news that Royal Caribbean has signed a contract to to implement SpaceX's Starlink, and getting the new electronics and antennas installed in all their ships has already started, with the plan that all their ships will be fully kitted out to benefit with fully functional fast internet for all passengers by spring of next year. Trials have apparently been highly successful with rave reviews by passengers who tried it out, and if all goes well then passengers could be looking at download speeds of at least 100Mbps, which is faster than most people have on their internet at home! I wonder if Cunard might be considering a corresponding upgrade, even though it would cost Cunard between $5k and $10k per month to pay for this kind of service..... perhaps the Royal Caribbean initiative might lead to other lines needing to install a corresponding internet system to remain competitive? I also saw a blog post by a passenger who bought a short cruise on Freedom of the Seas which is the ship Royal Caribbean installed the new equipment on, specifically in order to test the new internet! The blog post on the Royal Caribbean blog site had quite a few details, and the passenger reported that on deck 5 using the Voom Surf & Stream internet package, that they bought specifically to test the available speeds, they got a download speed of 77.03 Mbps and upload speed of 15.72 Mbps, with a latency of 38ms. That is excellent, even if we had that at home! Even from inside their stateroom they achieved a download speed of 19.9 Mbps and upload speed of 5.42 Mbps. I suspect most people would be delighted with that performance when connecting a phone, tablet or laptop on board! The same blog post also said that they were still able to stream video even using the more basic internet package with slower speeds than those quoted!

What a delightful thread. It is so nice to see a simple positive message end with a lovely outcome.