WantedOnVoyage

Yes, I noted they still say "atlas" on the website but I haven't seen one since 2019. One wonders just where all this "stuff" went anyway?? The Atlas was more illuminating that the instructions on how to work the coffee machine that's for sure... At least they still have rain panchos at the stair landings to hand out.

Nope.... not since the great "let's chuck out all the little niceties and use Covid as an excuse". Sewing kit, shoe cleaner, atlas (which we always used) and.. umbrellas. All gone. You might ask... I think our steward found a 10 year old shoe polisher for me that was dried out and one could only thank him for the effort. Not sure if what happened to the umbrellas fullstop. But no.. have not seen one in a PG cabin in four cruises now.

Easiest dress code I have ever experienced on a voyage was First Class in Costa Line's EUGENIO C., Rio to Genoa: it was formal dress every single night at sea (10 days across I recall) and for gentlemen, it was almost a "uniform" and what man doesn't like that? For the ladies, it was a challenge and I swear most managed to wear something different and distinctive every single night. The mountains of luggage that came off in Barcelona and Genoa showed how that was accomplished.

Well if anyone... in the English speaking world thinks a "polo" shirt is a "dress shirt" by any definition.. they would be wrong. It is not. Never has been. Everyone has the right to fudge, to obscure but to not to twist the English (be it British or American) language into a pretzel of his or her own making.

And just as selfishly I hope to see them still aboard QV in... 12 days time!

Sure is.... my favourite meal of the whole voyage since it's... well the first one. Thirteen days until ours... not that I am counting or anticipating.

It is curious that "pomposity" is a quality oft ascribed to those wishing to dress "over" the minimum (and it is, too) dress code while it is no less pompous to insist, as some do, that "it's my holiday" and I can dress as I darn please. It may be your holiday but you are sharing with it, in close confines, with others.... a ship is a community. Always has been. I am not sure, too, how one dressed for work has anything to do with the unique environment of a Cunarder... the only ships in the world that even aspire something to anything above "chinos" and "polos". If the dress code is so onerous, why there are 99.7 percent of the rest of cruise ships to sail on.

I would avoid QM2 Q1s for the nonstop noise of the canned "music" played around the pool and open deck during the day just below your "private" balcony. If you can hear this up on the Grills Deck if the wind is right (and you can), it must be very noticeable on the suite balconies. I would find it unbearable. I cannot imagine why this is even necessary with the myriad ways of listening, privately, to one's own music if needed. But to spend a Q1 per diem forced to listen to this... no way.

You do? Where did you read that? I do not believe her hull is any different from any of the other Pinnacle-class ships. That's a major, significant structural alteration of plates and framing too and for what reason would this be done? She is a cruise ship in design, purpose and profile not a liner by any definition of the word. And nothing wrong with that, either. But a liner is a lady as Kipling wrote and QA is no liner and I'll leave it others to determine if she's a lady.

Amen.... honestly, you'd think they were digging a ditch at dinner or after dinner. The only time that was acceptable was in CANBERRA's notorious Stadium "Theatre" which was originally, as the name suggests, a semi enclosed sports deck that they roofed over to be the first "theatre at sea" and had...well... no effective air conditioning. The performers were soaked in 20 mins and every chair back was draped with a dinner jacket. Why it was another CANBERRA tradition. But come on people.... learn some manners. Jackets belong on your back, not the chair's. And if you're working up a sweat eating dinner, you might think about that, too.

We have cruised extensively in the "R"s including the original R7 (Renaissance/Oceania) and I love them. My wife doesn't... the BAC-111 size "bathrooms" of 90 percent of the cabins not high on her list and yes, as a sensitive sailor, she can discern they are not anything like any of the big Cunarders or even CARONIA in anything like a sea. And off the coast of Libya on the R7, she was really feeling the swell. So were many others. I suspect it's an easier transition to go from Oceania/Azamara "R"s up to Cunard Grills than the other way around. Was for us and... we have not gone back.

To be clear... a dark suit has always been acceptable and suitable for Cunard on formal nights. Sure has since I started sailing with them... in 1977. More common in Tourist Class but not uncommon in First Class, either. To me, the big downgrade of the dress code is "Smart Attire" and regardless of what the code now states, I personally cannot even imagine going to dinner in a fine restaurant... ashore or afloat... wearing a "polo shirt". If you don't think Cunard is fine dining... you are wasting your time and money and their efforts. The "polo shirt" is, as the very name implies, an item of sports attire and most do not look like Steve McQueen in "The Thomas Crown Affair" wearing one, either. So... don't. Or at least wear a jacket over it. And to end on a pompous note.... a dress code is not for "men" but for.... "gentlemen" (and ladies) and therein lies the distinction. What one might is not always what one should.

Well I went to university for a term in The Bronx, and up there we'd put it rather differently than you delicate Brooklyn boys...

The drinks menu is what I recall from our September QV Med/Aegean cruise... there's precisely one gin martini and one vodka one under $12. I did find the bar staff sufficiently fed up with these duelling drinks packages that one could, at the onset, say "I want this and I have a $12 limit" and they got on with it. Not the sort of thing I like having to do as a premium passenger but shipboard staff can play the game better than the shoreside penny counters I find. It is amusing though how the shipboard staff just roll their eyes if you mention shoreside "management"... Cunard ships are so much better run and organised than the supposed people managing any of it... from Southampton or California. Or indeed, "working from home" in wherever. They've been that way since my first dealings with Cunard, dating to 1977. So it's worthy of the "Cunard Heritage Trail".

Well it appears you got it... QUEEN POSTUREPEDIC! At least it will discourage those armchair nappers in the Commodore and Chart Room in the afternoon... the ones with the same book for the whole three weeks and never make it past page 21. Ditto no steamer chairs. It seems a mite austere and severe to me, but I always aced cabin inspection on my ship... even sharing a cabin with three 16 year old cadets.