fantasy51

Kohl57, if you know what you are doing then calls to Cunard in the UK are free. There is a website here which is 'saynoto0870'. You put in the high-priced number and it tells you the standard alternative, which is free with many phone packages.

In December on QE the price was $70 for a 45-minute lesson.

This really is a personal thing. What I like may not be to your liking. It's too long since I've cruised Princess for me to compare, but I cruise Celebrity in 2016. I have cruised Cunard many times and will be on QV in 3 weeks.

• Food on Cunard is better than on Celebrity.
  
• Entertainment on Cunard is better than on Celebrity. This applies to the shows and to the fact that you can dance in the Queen's Room in the evening or watch the dancers. On Celebrity we found nothing to do in the evening except sit in a bar.
  
• The rooms on Celebrity are quieter than on Cunard. Somehow their doors keep out the corridor noise.
  
• I love the coffee shop on Celebrity and wish that Cunard had something as good.
  
• I found the staff on Cunard to be friendlier and more genuine than on Celebrity.
  
• I am not much of a drinker but I enjoyed the 'free' drinks package on Celebrity. You don't get anything like that on Cunard.
  
• I seem to meet more people on Cunard, and make friends more easily, than I did on Celebrity. This could be because I go dancing in the Queen's Room at night and so you get talking to other dancers.
  
• I love the sense of occasion on Cunard when we dress up for the evening.
  
• As regards QM2, it is an experience to travel on her. She has her eccentricities but she is a genuine ocean liner and must be experienced at least once.
  

Personal opinion. After your cruise, please let us know which suits you most.

How much will you spend?

1. The daily service charge.

2. If you have a 'cheap' fare, then you will pay for shuttle buses.

3. Do you like having a professional photograph as a memory?

4. There's really nothing else you have to spend money on. I have been on cruises where I spent very little more than the service charge. BTW, the cruise lines hate people like me! I have also been on cruises where I had company and did a lot more and spent a lot more. If your budget can stand it, it is certainly more fun if you are not worrying too much about money but I have never felt a lack of enjoyment through not spending it. Evening entertainment is free, so I hope you can manage to enjoy that around the little one's bedtime.

It's also the same for port excursions. I generally budget £20 per day and come home with change! Thereagain, I do quite a bit of research. I recently met up in London with the American couple who I met six years ago while waiting for a public bus in Helsinki. We thoroughly enjoyed our time together that day on bus and tram, and then in Warnemunde on train.

You will not be out of place if you don't get a mask.

The masks are not worn at dinner or round the ship. They are only worn in the ballroom. A few people keep their masks on all night but most don't. Many people don't bother with masks. If you have one, you are invited to parade around the ballroom wearing your mask, at about 10pm. It will add to the enjoyment of those without a mask, to see those who have made the effort. Do you want to be a 'watcher' or a 'watched'? Do you enjoy joining in?

Masks are on sale at the ballroom entrance for those who wish to buy one. I think they are around $20. You can buy some wonderful creations on the internet with very little effort. If you have a few hours spare and a good craft shop nearby, it is simple and fun to make your own, and to have one matching your outfit.

How do you plan to trek across London? You may find that the easiest way is to take a shuttle bus from Heathrow Airport to Gatwick Airport and then take the train from Gatwick. When I did it some years ago, I think the cost of the coach was £20.

Alternatively, depending where you are going on the South Coast, check to see if there are convenient coaches at Heathrow to take you there.

I agree completely with all you have said Pepperrn.

As for the diamond pin, I've lost mine! I used to 'wear' my pins on my handbag strap. None of the others ever fell off but the diamond one did (or was pinched - that's just occurred to me ;);) - such a valuable commodity).

Is this American? Nothing showing on the UK website. In fact, I haven't seen any special offers for quite a while. They used to have a section with their cheapest prices but that's been missing the last few times I looked.

Here's a thread I started earlier this year with some excellent suggestions of what to do in Southampton and how to get there.

https://boards.cruisecritic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2585012

Even if you are in the ballroom you may decide not to wear a mask. At around 10pm there is a parade in the ballroom and those with masks are encouraged to put them on and parade around the ballroom floor. Most people don't wear the masks for the rest of the night.

On my first Cunard cruise, a transatlantic, my friends and I turned up to dinner with masks and quickly discovered our mistake! It was a pity as we had made our own masks to match our clothes.

Now that I am at Diamond level I get a free lunch at the Verandah on each cruise. I have been twice and have skipped it a couple of times if I didn't have any friends also lunching. I found the best part of the lunch was the company. I was not impressed by the food. That, of course, is an individual thing. The menu was just not to my personal taste.

With your sensitivity to noise, it sounds like Celebrity is a better fit for you than Cunard. We are usually up and running by 7:00am, so outside noise has never been even a slight problem for us.

Thanks Bob. I'm not actually complaining, I am simply wondering and answering your observations. I will stick with Cunard. I take a sleeping tablet each night to get me through.

I thought that fittings and fixtures would be relatively similar from one ship to another, and I wonder what it is about the doors, seals, etc. that work well on one ship and less well on another. I know I was on one ship where the ship's carpenter thought the door seal needed replacing. Is it as simple as that? Do they need better quality seals around the doors? I don't think it's a sign of the age of the ships, because I've been travelling Cunard for some time.

Having said all that, Cunard is still miles quieter than the one MSC voyage I was talked into taking! The stewards didn't ever learn not to knock on my door at 8am. If I put out a sign, they claimed that the kids had turned it over or removed it. The one time I decided to ignore the knock and the open door and not force my eyes open, the male steward returned 5 minutes later with a female steward. Perhaps he wanted to check if I was still alive.

Yes, if you sleep that late, there is going to be noise.

But not on Celebrity! I had to check my watch as I was not alerted to the time by the noise level outside. I think we slept until 11am one morning!

On the plus side of the light coming in under the door, I don't need a night light to find my way to the bathroom in the middle of the night :).

I have often seen light all around the sides of the doors as well - which of course means noise can come in.

I sleep late (health issues) and am disturbed by doors banging as early risers make their way around the ship. At times I have also had the steward park his trolley outside my room and so I hear all the clattering of the cleaning equipment.

A friend and I went on two Celebrity cruises in 2016. There were several things we noticed, as compared with Cunard.

1. There was nothing to do in the evenings except sit in a bar with music playing so loudly that you couldn't talk easily to each other. I'm used to the Queen's Room where there's something to watch, even if you don't feel like dancing. We were actually bored in the evenings.

2. We gave up on the Celebrity shows. We generally walked out of them after the first 10 minutes of each. We gave them a good try! On Cunard we went every night and only walked out once, and that was when a comedian had a second night and had obviously used all of his good stuff the first night!

3. I mostly travel alone and I would not feel comfortable doing that on Celebrity. On Cunard I know I will meet people in the ballroom and at the dinner table but I could not see any equivalent on Celebrity.

4. My friend is a foodie and felt that Cunard's food was better than Celebrity's.

5. The staff are much friendlier on Cunard. I always feel that their enjoyment and their friendliness is genuine. On Celebrity we often felt it was put on and there was almost a sneer behind the solicitous approach. (We had a strange incident. The waiter took the order of everyone at the table except my friend. The waiter turned his back and actually walked away and I politely called him back ('Excuse me ...') and pointed out the omission. He then turned it into a big deal (when it was something I would have forgotten about otherwise) by insisting he hadn't forgotten us and hadn't finished taking the order. From then on there was an over-solicitous approach but no genuine friendliness. We were made to feel we were difficult people.)

6. One thing I love about Celebrity, though, is that coffee shop! We had one of the 'free' drinks packages so I made full use of the coffee shop and the specialty coffees.

7. I also noticed that my rooms in Celebrity were far quieter than on Cunard ships. I think their doors have a tighter seal and keep out the noise better. On Cunard I can see light around the door, which also means that sound comes through.

Thanks Lanky Lad.

Thanks David and David for shopping suggestions. It sounds as though they need to look for a supermarket during their two days in Southampton, and definitely buy their full allowance duty free between Australia and the UK. That might be enough to get them to their first port.

Thanks Hamrag and Mal.

My sister and brother-in-law will be taking their first Cunard cruises this June. They will stay in Southampton for a couple of days before their first cruise, then a little out of the main Southampton area for two days before their second cruise.

I have told them they can take alcohol on board. The question is, where is a good place to buy it that is close to the port? My suggestion was to drop off their luggage (taken there by transfer) and then look for somewhere close to buy alcohol (if they have not been near a supermarket in their days in Southampton).

Is there a bottle shop within walking distance of the port?

Diane

I have never had a problem with a taxi driver just taking me to the station. It's how I often get home from a cruise - taxi to the station and then train to the Oxford area.

I pack my evening clothes on the bottom of my suitcase because I feel that when the suitcase is upright it makes no difference, and when it's slung into a hold it could be any way up. I always put a sheet of tissue paper between each of the items. I never feel the need to iron them.

My latest suitcase set was a 'clamshell' design (the type that opens in the centre with two equal halves for packing stuff. I have not really enjoyed using these. I don't think they are as versatile as the one large, deep suitcase.

Diane

You might find some more ideas or clarification in this thread that I started a few months ago.

Have fun planning.

Diane

https://boards.cruisecritic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2585012

In 2012 we were due to visit Rhodes but the sea was so rough that the pilot's boat could not even leave the harbour to come out to us. Lots of other activities were planned for the day. About a week later at a cocktail party one of my acquaintances spoke to the captain and told him she had almost forgiven him for skipping Rhodes. He pointed out that if he had managed to take us into the harbour, we would still be there! The captain has to look a bit further ahead than getting into port; he also has to get us out again.

Remember if there's a collision on the floor, it's the fault of both couples. There is a tendency to completely blame the more experienced dancer who seemed to zoom into a space that wasn't there. What has often happened in this case is that the experienced dancer has been assessing the line of dance of everyone around and has calculated where the spaces will be - but then the inexperienced dancer suddenly changes direction for no good reason and moves into that space. Hence, collision. The inexperienced dancer then is full of indignation, not realising that they have deviated from the line of dance. Mild collisions are inevitable and experienced dancers generally laugh them off and become friends with each other through them. Don't stress over them and don't hold grudges.

I am amazed when I hear stories of my great-nieces and -nephews on cruises. They seem to very quickly develop a responsible attitude. This was not on a Cunard cruise but another line, but I heard of the times that a group of 10-year-old boys would take themselves off to the main dining room for lunch and sit there with aplomb ordering from the menu and behaving themselves.

Your children should enjoy themselves and if they are well-brought-up they will be a joy to the other passengers.

For the first time my request for shareholder benefit did not go as planned. I phoned my share company and asked them to contact Cunard. This normally happens the same day. A few days later I contacted Cunard by email to see if things had gone through. They replied that they had not heard from my bank. Frustrating.

I waited another week or so and then copied my statement off the internet, blacked out relevant details and scanned it, sending it in an email to Cunard UK. I was not sure if that would be sufficient as the statement date was January, it was now March and the cruise was not until June. I could have sold the shares meanwhile for all they knew! Also, a couple of years ago Cunard would not accept attachments in emails. Anyway, a couple of days later I received an email back from Cunard to say that it had gone through and I had been given the benefit.