space oddity

One thing to keep in mind is that there's a huge variation of itineraries booked by people here, some of which are much trickier than others. We all also value our time differently. I personally book direct, but I could easily imagine someone with similar travel needs choosing to book via a TA; I probably would, too, if I were booking many equivalent trips per year (rather than one or two), or if I didn't sort-of-enjoy the logistical challenges of it. To take a concrete example, we like to book a family trip involving a flight over to the US, a few weeks visiting family there, and the QM2 back. There are children in our group, and we need multiple connecting rooms. None of these things are handled gracefully (if at all) by the Cunard website, at least in the UK: you can only book one room at a time, and the website won't tell you how many available slots there are in each child age-bracket. (Cunard tightly controls the number of kids they have on board in each age group.) If you try to book a room and the kid-slots are sold out, you get a really unhelpful error message about "this room not being able to accommodate" the guests involved, or something equivalent. You can't make one booking contingent on another, meaning that if you try to book one room with a 6-year-old and can't book the next because (say) someone else has grabbed the last "child slot," or grabbed the connecting room you were hoping to snag next, you're in a bit of trouble. (Something like this scenario has happened to us.) Etc, etc. On the flights, Cunard's airfares are usually quite good (for us in the UK), but again you can't book (or even request) anything complicated online. We personally are very flexible about which East-coast city we fly into; we are obliged to drive around a bunch anyway, so there are a half-dozen places that would be basically equivalent for us, so we're generally happy to fly to whichever one is cheaper or more convenient; we are similarly flexible (plus or minus a few days) on our departure day. The upshot of all this is that to book this kind of trip direct I absolutely have to call, and I'm usually on the phone with Cunard for well over an hour. If I had a really good travel agent and/or hated doing this, I would be happy to pay them some nominal fee to deal with it all for me. As a totally separate issue, I agree in principle that agents -- or some level of support above and beyond that provided via the standard telephone line or website -- can be especially helpful when things go wrong. I'm reminded of the times when I used to fly a lot: the very _best_ service I ever got was probably when I was uber-elite on various airlines, who then tended to be proactive about re-scheduling me (or "protecting" me on a backup flight) when things started to go wrong. But if you didn't have access to that level of support, heaven help you during a snowstorm in Chicago, when your flight's been cancelled, there are suddenly 200 people wanting to go on the same full flight later that night, and the line at customer service is a mile long. Agents fill that niche a little bit: nowadays, on the rarer occasions when I travel for work, I have to book through a TA, but they then tend to be a good "single point of contact" when anything goes wrong (without my having to spend an hour on hold -- they'll just call me back when it's sorted). I don't think that motivation for using a TA comes up quite so often for cruises just because a) very few people get on a ship as often as the most frequent fliers get on a plane (e.g., every week) b) the number of "problems" is usually pretty small (compare the number of cruise cancellations in a typical year to the number of flight cancellations), and c) the Cunard phone agents are still way, way better (imho) than the equivalent at a non-elite airline phone desk. Bottom line: to each their own! 🙂

Yes, there's a small railing beside much of the bed. (It doesn't go the whole length, so you can prop the ladder up on the side if you want.) From memory, the railings weren't especially high -- a few inches -- but they were high enough that we felt comfortable putting our (<10-year-old) children in them on a previous trip. A 13-year-old will be absolutely fine.

Hmm, interesting. FWIW, in the UK -- as a previous poster noted -- the transatlantic fares have stopped including a flight to/from New York, but they do still offer it as an add-on when you book. (The per-person cruise-only fares are cheaper than what we used to be offered, but the total price including a flight is probably slightly higher, at least for the things we book.) Right now it's still showing ~£420 per person for flights LHR-New York for next summer, and £500ish for flights to Manchester (for example). It sounds like I'm preaching to the choir, but we've mostly had really positive experiences with the flights booked through Cunard. In particular, in the past even when booking Economy they haven't booked into the absolute cheapest fare buckets -- meaning it's been possible for us to upgrade on our own dime, earn miles, etc. The fares for premium economy and business are often pretty reasonable, too. The one caveat is that sometimes flights to cities _other_ than New York have been crazily more expensive. As one example, I think last year -- when asking about flying to Washington, DC instead of the included JFK flight -- they quoted us something like an extra £1K per person! No real idea why, but I assumed it had to do with markets where they have pre-paid for a certain number of seats vs others where they are just quoting you the current market price. Also fwiw, we've found one-way trips to be a really great use of miles (in terms of "value per mile") -- on many airlines, a one-way is exactly half the miles of a return/round-trip, whereas the cash pricing can be wildly different. (We are actually skipping the "cunard air" option for our own transatlantic next summer, partly because we are combining with lots of other travel -- and planning to use miles/vouchers for our outbound legs.) Good luck!

I'm late to this discussion (sorry I missed it!), but thought I'd chime in in case it is helpful. Our first trip on QM2, pre-Covid, was with our then-toddler and his somewhat-older sister. We absolutely loved it. (Of course we liked it even better, a few years later, when the toddler was old enough to go to the kids' club!) You will have a great time. A few random thoughts/tips: For dinner, we had been assigned a table quite close to the aft exit of the Brittania restaurant (upper deck), early sitting; I don't know whether this was foresight on someone's part, or (maybe more likely) just because we booked quite late and were new to Cunard. Anyway, it turned out to be perfect for us. We had a 4-top, so it wouldn't bother anyone else if we chose not to show up on a given evening. We took both kids to dinner most evenings, but between courses, if the younger one was being at all rambunctious, we could quietly take him outside the restaurant to avoid disturbing anyone else. We did bring little books, coloring, etc., for the kids to play with during dinner. I would definitely not have wanted the late sitting with the kids -- it finishes quite late. Our older daughter really loved the kids' club, so a few times we fed her early (at the Chef's Galley, which at the time opened early, 5ish, for a kid-friendly menu with pizzas, burgers, pasta, etc) and dropped her off at the club before coming to dinner with the toddler. The night nursery was a godsend for us, too. After he'd had dinner, we would put the little one to sleep in the nursery; the staff give you a pager in case there are any issues, but ours slept like a rock. Then my wife and I would go out for drinks, a show, whatever -- basically we had a babysitter, included, every night! Magical. On a couple of occasions we fed the little one and put him to bed a bit early, then went for an adults-only dinner (at the later sitting, or at a pop-up). We generally did room service breakfast (for all of us) and a buffet lunch, though we also dined in the main restaurant for those meals (and/or had pub lunch at the Golden Lion) a few times. Misc. other stuff: I'd echo the advice about bringing a small foldable stroller. It was great for going around the promenade deck with the little one. As mentioned, the pools are unfortunately off-limits if your little one is still in a nappy. My wife and I sometimes took turns to have "adult time" alone during the day; i.e., one of us would entertain the little one (or sit in the room while he napped) while the other went out to explore the ship, go to a talk, have a drink, etc. One thing I was really struck by, on that first trip, was just how welcoming everyone was to the children -- from staff to other passengers. They were little celebrities by the end of the trip! It also felt like the staff really kicked up their service a notch when we walked in with the kids. E.g., one day at lunch (in Brittania) I remember a waiter noticed that our daughter had been eating the strawberries off my wife's salad; he came back a few minutes later, unprompted, with a bowl of cut-up strawberries for her, arranged beautifully. Also, we got to know a few of the other parents reasonably well; you do tend to see each other a lot (particularly if you are pushing a toddler around the deck at the same time!). On that crossing I think there was only one other family with an under-2 child, and there are typically <50 or so children on board of all ages. Bottom line, I hope you have a great time! Enjoy.

In reading comments here, I'm always struck by the fact that many of us have different preferences -- which is great! To each their own. As for me, I absolutely love QM2 and wouldn't wish to cross the open ocean in anything else. While we're on the topic of design and the "quirks" of the ship, I just thought I'd echo the idea (mentioned already) that all these design choices are linked, sometimes in not-too-obvious (to me, at least!) ways. Like many of you, I've seen Stephen Payne (chief architect for the ship) speak onboard, and a super-quick summary of one of his talks on this subject (to the extent I can still remember it, much later) would go something like: -- If you want to continue doing a regular transatlantic service throughout much of the year, in line with Cunard tradition, you need a proper liner. Different hull, different design characteristics, crazy amounts of power. A transatlantic liner can't just divert to a different port every time there's a bad storm. Payne showed (e.g.) a neat set of simulations they'd done during design, taking 20 years of wave data across the North Atlantic and estimating how the new ship would have done -- if you want to arrive on time in NY and Southampton every time, and also be safe in the crazy wave conditions sometimes found on that route, a normal cruise ship isn't going to cut it. (At least, that was his argument.) -- A liner is significantly more expensive to build -- he quoted something like 40% more -- given the amount of steel used in the hull + other design features. -- Cunard said "okay, but the new ship needs to give us a similar return on investment to a bog-standard cruise ship." -- That dictated a few things: for example, the ship is a lot bigger than QE2 partly because of economies of scale; the per-cabin cost usually goes down (within limits) if you're making a bigger ship. It also meant he wanted as many balcony cabins as possible, because those command a price premium. -- You can't put balcony cabins on a liner crossing the N. Atlantic on deck 2. They need to be higher up. This is part of why they chose to put the common areas of the ship -- restaurants, theatres, all that stuff, down in the low decks. Etc, etc, too many interesting tidbits like this to relay -- you should see his talk someday if you can! Another one I enjoyed was about the design of deck 7 -- which was partly dictated by the idea that in the very unlikely event of a disaster in the N Atlantic, you would like the passengers to be in a sheltered place (i.e., not on the open deck) but as close to the lifeboats as possible. And as others have mentioned, they put the Brittania restaurant around the point of least motion on the ship. (All the above just my recollections of a talk by someone else, so caveat lector!)

If you're a cocktail fan, I strongly recommend the cocktail tasting in the Commodore Club on QM2, if it's offered on your voyage. For me, it was a highlight of a recent (Aug/Sep) crossing. Basically you get to taste all 7 of the "signature" Commodore cocktails -- thankfully they make smaller versions of each one for you, otherwise it'd be a looooong afternoon! -- while they talk about them, explain how they're made, etc. (At least when I did it, they also made one full-size version of each cocktail to show the presentation -- and gave these away to us at the end, too.) They also gave us a little pamphlet with all the recipes in it. Anyway, ask the day you board if they are doing this; it fills up (I only got in because someone else had cancelled). I think it was about 45 USD per person. As for your Q: among the signature cocktails, my favourite was probably the "Yorkshire pacesetter," but it's not for everyone. (The main ingredients are Martell Cordon Bleu XO cognac, King's ginger liqueur, Black Treacle syrup, served on the rocks like an Old Fashioned.) The ginger and the treacle are both really unusual twists that lifted the drink. But all the signatures are interesting, and the presentations of some of them are impressive (domes full of smoke, blow-torches, that sort of thing). Among the more standard cocktails, my go-tos are an Aviation or a Corpse Reviver #2, though be warned that in the CC by default they make their Aviation with a little more Creme de Violette than I like. Happy drinking!

We disembarked yesterday in Southampton, so I thought I'd provide a brief update on the current status of the kids club. The bottom line is that it was almost back to the pre-pandemic level, and our kids had a great time. For us, the existence of the club/zone really makes the crossing possible -- much as I love our children, the idea of entertaining them 24/7 for 7 days on a boat fills me with dread -- so I was really happy to see this. All parts of the kids club (including the Teen part, I believe) were open 10-12, 2-5, and 6-11. The night nursery was also now open (though we weren't using it) --- the staff told me it had only very recently re-opened. We registered our kids as soon as possible upon embarkation and they went every day, though not to every session. One of the staff members told me there were around 65 kids (<18) onboard, with most of those (50+) in the two older age groups. Another interesting bit of info was that the number of kids they can actually accommodate can depend on whether or not there is a 2-year-old using the club; the required staffing ratios are different for 2-year-olds than for older children, so this cascades through to the numbers they can fit in the other age groups. One minor tidbit that might be helpful to someone: at least on our crossing, they no longer offered the 5-6 pm Chef's Galley/kids menu service, so the mealtimes were a bit awkward for people on the 6 pm dinner seating. On our last crossing, we (and other families) sometimes liked to feed our kids early, then drop them off at the Club before heading to an adults-only dinner; now, with all the dinner options (apart from room service) opening at 6 pm, that's a bit trickier. This time, we were actually on the late sitting -- you could start sometime between 7:45 and 8:30, and were given a different table/companions every night -- so this wasn't a big deal for us, but it bugged some of the other parents. Hope that's helpful!

Many thanks for the detailed reply! That's very helpful. We did one crossing with the kids a few years ago (pre-Covid) and they absolutely loved it -- at the time the registration for the kids club was onboard as you mention, too, but they could pretty much stay all day except mealtimes. There was also a "night nursery," which was a godsend for our youngest (who was too little for the kids club at the time). Fingers crossed that we are able to get spaces for them this time around, too! I'll let you all know how it goes once we're back in the UK.

Apologies for hijacking, but may I ask whether/how you were able to book your daughter into the kids club sessions in advance of departure? (We are taking our two children on an Eastbound transatlantic on Aug 28, and are really hoping the kids club is up and running more-or-less normally. The Cunard webpages say that "Our numbers will be limited so we recommend registering on My Cunard before your voyage to avoid disappointment," and also "You can register your child from 15 days before sailing" ... but we're now under 15 days till sailing and I've still not found a way to register them for any kids club sessions in advance.) In any case, I'll chime back in after our crossing and let you know how the clubs are currently running!