WantedOnVoyage

Really... there surely was none, at least listed, when we were in PG in May. They start on this tack, especially in the Grills, and we will be taking our custom elsewhere. Forking over $25,000 and then being charged $19.95 for something "extra" in the same dining room. Forget it.

Good grief... don't give them even the hint!!! Too many lines are "upcharged" to distraction already!!

Well as a Grill passenger (who doesn't even like lobster!), I can say that some of the cutbacks like no canapes in "Tourist" and greatly increased drink prices has managed to kill off a lot of the buzz and bustle of venues like the Commodore Club (at least on QV). Hopefully, it will show in the bar receipts which is all that matters nowadays. The ying and yang of product and custom always prevails in the end...

Trust me.... I have been sailing in ocean liners for half a century (starting with SS FRANCE in August 1974) and worked briefly aboard one and the basic complaints you have articulated would make any steward or maitre d' cringe. Give them a chance to make it better and they will. Honest. I have sailed with Cunard since 1977 and it's not perfect and when it's not... tell them and they will do their best to make it so.

It seems odd to me to share what sound like valid complaints and quite specific ones with anyone in the world with access to this site. Yet not address them with the people tasked with providing you, as a Cunard passenger, let alone one in Queen's Grill with better. You might start breakfast in the Grill tomorrow with a chat with the maitre d' and see what that gets you.

Or... not be bothered with any of it. Ashore or afloat. There really is life "without 'phone'". Honest.

No. There is only one Grills Drink Package for North American bookings only,

If you are in Queen's Grill, you can special order "at will"... Princess Grill, nope. But Indian dishes (my favourite!) were possible in PG occasionally (in May) if you asked nicely, including kedgeree for breakfast. It helps that the maitre d' was Indian, too! But special orders remain really a perk for QG. The U.S. Grills Drinks "Package" remains resolutely at $12 limit but in May, at least, before the price increases, the bar staff throughout the ship could ring up most basic cocktails to fall within that limit. Now... not sure how it will work. But it's important to tell them you're on the U.S. Grills package NOT the regular sold on board one.. most are pretty adept at gaming the system in your favour but it's going to harder still with the increase drink prices.

Cunard is being BYT'd to perdition methinks....!

Same for us... we gave up on the Commodore Club on QV this May with only about three visits over 25 days and much preferred the Chart Room and Gin Fizz which had better service (and bar tenders), especially the Gin bar. And liked the string music which you can enjoy in both venues. The Commodore Club seems to have lost its atmosphere, possibly due to the change in the quality of the live music, and the slow bar service.

Luxury, even comfort, is defined by the little things.... gestures and treats... easy to delete by the penny counters but eventually you whittle away and remove what made the product or experience special in the first place. Right now, steamship lines seem confident everyone cannot wait to buy their product, regardless of its quality, so canapes are the thin edge of a wedge. We the customer, in the end, validate these decisions by our custom. Or not.

"Bread upon the waters" has always been the reason "free" (and salty) nibbles and "free" canapes etc are offered (or were): to induce more drinking. With the new (and downright bizarre and expensive) drinks menu introduced the day we disembarked and these cutbacks of nibble inducements, Carnival have obviously hired a contrarian manager of such things. I would love to see the results of the daily bar takings for say the month of July and compare with the previous year. The bar tenders we spoke to when they showed us the new list, just shook their heads and shrugged. At least in the Grills Lounge menu, they decided to leave out.... the martini, too. I am sure that made sense to somebody.

They are... gone. We were on QV for 25 days last month and can confirm they have been discountinued throughout the fleet except in the Grills Lounge. Although the nibbles that remain (crisps, peanuts and olives) in all the other bars and lounge are, curiously, far better than the Grills Lounge. Not sure where they source them, but they have the most miserable, dried out little olives in the world up there and have been using the same carton of crisps since the beginning of year. But the hot canapes are "done gone".

So here's hoping East London sensabilities will prevail in supplying coffee makers "en suite" that do not require the "exploded diagram" of flatpack furniture and actually can be worked by the average husband.

Well that is good news. British Airways have been featuring this brand for two years or more and at least in Business Class last flight I had the best cup of coffee aloft in 46 years of air travel.

On QV last month, self disembarkation at Civitavecchia began, I believe, at 7:00 a.m. so you should have no problems meeting at 8:00 a.m. pick-up. We were alongside at 5:20 a.m. (!).

There are shorts and shorts. Surely that cannot be an obtuse concept? Gym, track, running, hiking, golf, resort wear... the list is as boundless as the occcasion. On Mediterranean cruises (after "turning the corner"), in the Grills, I will get by with "deck" shorts for breakfast but always change for lunch into long linen shorts and a button-down short-sleeve shirt. And change again to go back on deck. And Merchant Navy shorts.... I could not fit into mine anymore even I wanted to,but those awful white polyester short shorts of the 1980s-90s. Yuck! The knee socks did not save the look, either. Happily, Cunard have never had "tropical" rig like P&O and BI or "Red Sea Rig" for evenings, either.

Actually... no. It not the custom to fly the ensign at sea except on Sundays.Only in port or leaving port.

Well... I think you'll find Miami is at the end of any corporate "tree" diagram for Carnival... anything. The design process of QM2 was, shall we say, Miami centric. Because in the end, the cheque machine resides therein. If you pay in dollars for that $14 (!) martini... Cunard is Yankee owned, just is. But yes... Cunard at sea is nominally British. British Merchant Navy customs prevail right down to flying the Red Ensign on Sundays and I can cringe at "Hamilton" on the stern and being able to still even fly it... but... Cunarders are British in custom and still very much in clientele, certainly ex UK. America has not had a proper ocean liner since forever. Capt. Hoyt of QV was a cadet with the long vanished Delta Line btw to South America. He's been steeped in the finer points of Merchant Navy customs by now. On the other side of the coin, and I shall refrain from identifying them, are customers from countries that resolutely resist tipping. I have heard more than a few encounters at the pursers' office asking that the auto tips be removed from the onboard account and the accents are, shall we say, not British or American. And leave it at that. When in Rome.... as they say. Now that is filled with Americans...!

I remember when children never ever ordered their own meals in a restaurant!! That was simply not done. Certainly not in my family. But yes, tipping for good service rendered is quite different from a bribe... usually following a unsuccessful "do you know who I am" tirade. Happily in 50 years of sea travel, I've not seen more than a handful of such people and happily precisely one such person on a Cunarder. I did like that this individual flew from Barcelona in coach on the same plane as I did (in Business) and Lufthansa apparently did not know "who she was" and declined to upgrade her! Germans can say NO quite effectively, too.

I still remember my mother explaining who and how much to tip when I sailed on my first crossings, alone, at age 16 on FRANCE and RAFFAELLO... it was $1 a day each for the cabin and table steward and $3 for the crossing to the deck steward. That was a LOT of money back in 1974 and put a real crimp in my newspaper route funded travel budget. But like a young gentleman, I did my duty and tipped "properly". But tipping has always been part of ship travel although Americans do it best and most often and why the happiest stewards and bellboys were on the New York run!

Given the number of crew changes Cunard are going through, including mid voyage and certainly on our recent Southampton-Med one on QV, tipping at the onset might get you that coveted table but don't count on retaining the same stewards, maitre d' or wine steward if you're aboard for a week or more. We lost our excellent table steward to promotion after the first week (off to become room service supervisor) and he was replaced, to our delight, by our steward from the last cruise who came over from Queen's Grill. And sadly we lost our wonderful wine steward (also a familar face from a previous cruise) in Istanbul and his replacement, well shall we say, made us appreciate him all the more by comparison. Fortunately, the superbly attentive maitre d's in PG stayed on throughout.

On our recent QUEEN VICTORIA cruise we found, to our horror, we had been assigned to a table of six (having always checked our preference for a table for two) at embarkation lunch (Princess Grill). We were, instead, seated at what must be the best table in the room... all the way aft, looking over the stern and the sea. And wound up keeping it for the whole cruise. We did not "bribe" nor "induce" or demand or pester but relied on the professionalism of the staff to set things right. They did. But, yes, we did tip the Asst. Maitre d' for his superb attention to my wife's gluten free diet and, yes, for getting me the odd Indian curry lunch and even kedgeree for breakfast. One should never have to bribe and always be induced to tip when the service is "beyond the call". We find it almost always is, at least in PG and especially on QUEEN VICTORIA. Now... we just have to get "that" table again!

Well... no. If they report individual annual passenger carryings per line per year, you'd have a very good idea of which of them was performing better than the others. So if Cunard's bookings for May are up 30% where did they come from??? If they came from P&O or Princess, as a Carnival shareholder (which thankfully I am not) I would not be impressed. If they came from MSC or RCCL, that would be quite something. Or indeed from first time cruise passengers. And if QA winds up giving QM2, QE and QV a bump for whatever reasons, now that would be instructive, too. QA already induced us book a one-way fly-cruise in QV when we would have much rather sailed roundtrip from Southampton. It worked pretty well and we might try and take QV on another Med fly cruise before the season ends.

A light grey suit is to me, old fogey that I am, a city suit for the day or cocktails afterwards. Or, egad! wear when flying. Not something to change into for dinner for a formal experience.