TheOldBear

In New York, the paperwork for the 'Real Id' and 'Enhanced Drivers License' are the same, except for the increased fee for the EDL. Both require either a current passport [DMV photocopies a page] or the same documents you would use to obtain a passport. Both are useful, as the standard NY license may longer be used to indicate citizenship or residency status.

The 'enhanced' id is supposed to have the same utility as a passport card for crossing land borders to Canada and Mexico.

Back in 2017, our table mates elected to dine in Britannia despite the 'upgrade fairy' giving them an on arrival upgrade from their usual inside to a Queen's Grill room. I think they had lunch a couple of time in QG.

I remember Steve Payne listing some differences between the QM2 and the original Queen Mary. One was, on QM2 smoking is only permitted in two spaces, on the Queen Mary smoking was forbidden in only two spaces.

The current 'gala' dress code only requires a dark suit and tie, but most men will be wearing 'black tie'. There is a lot more variety in women's formal wear. [and no idea as to how many different pairs of shoes would be needed. Some folks [particularly the ones fond of 'self disembarkation'] will use a single carryon size suitcase including their formal wear items [some dual purpose clothing items, like a dark jacket]. How large a volume would be your 'not needed on land tour' luggage be? [carryon size? steamer trunk?] There is no luggage storage available on board, or at the cruise terminal - but there are some luggage storage service options in Southampton [according to google anyway] - seems to be about 5 pounds per day for a 'medium' size bag - if space is available. The 'White Star' luggage service seems focused on home to ship or ship to home service - I wonder it can be used to forward a bag to your return crossing.

Photos not displaying - just some black rectangles 😞

For travel insurance - there _may_ be some protection about failure of common carrier [Amtrak]. Check the fine print.

There _may_ be excursions offered to the named city from the actual port, but they are not always a good value when cost and time are considered. One case I am familiar with is LeHavre [a port on the English Channel] is sometimes listed as a port visit for Paris. On a 12 hour shore excursion, you typically have less than three hours in Paris - the rest is on a bus to and from the city.

That's one reason Mrs Bear brings her 'rollator' so she always has a place to sit down. Back in 2017 she got a steroid shot into her knee, and the relief lasted a few weeks - ending with standing around the terminal for hours waiting to board. In 2019 [with a new knee] and again last year the rollator also made the transatlantic round trip.

You will find answers in a couple of places. First, your cruise line's forum - not much difference in travel times, but there may be differences in what is included in the shore excursion. Second, forum geography places France inside the Mediterranean forum, despite most initial questions being posted in the Western Europe forum.

Look for postings on this forum from 'John Bull' - there was one called 'Southampton on a Sunday' which listed several options in town and nearby - and not just for Sundays 😉 On our last Southampton visit, we had the 'sunday roast' at the Duke of Wellington pub. We also have stopped in at the Dancing Man for a nice lunch [and nice beer]. If you are interested in aircraft, you may want to visit the Solent Sky museum - we are planning on that for our next turnaround day [October 2024 - so it's long range planning].

In the US, vaccination status is tracked state by state. For New York, there is a 'wallet' app holding vaccination records as the 'official' way of displaying vaccination status. That app is being shut down this month as it now considered unnecessary - no one is interested in vaccination status.

Looking at marine traffic, position looks to be about 45 miles south of Newport, just south of the traffic separation lanes paralleling Long Island's south shore. Nearest land is 'Block Island'

For USA [en-us branch of the web site] this gets you a 404/not found error page

The usual saying is 'nothing to do, and not enough time to do it' There are many day time activities on the schedule. Last fall these included enrichment lectures, rehearsals for the passenger chorus, acting workshops with the Royal Shakespeare Company, dance lessons, trivia quizzes, watercolor lessons, wine tastings [extra cost], and likely other events that I did not notice.

I _may_ have started the adults singing 😉 YT link

Check the phase of moon for your port day(s) - last November we had an almost full moon so you never really got dark adapted. Despite that, our first view of the aurora was visible through the bus's windshield. [Cunard arranged bus tour, with local guide] Does your sailing include an overnight stop [Tromso?] If so, I would consider booking an independent tour for the first night to assure that you will not miss the departure time. Many of the independent operators will supply warm clothing for use while on the tour [and camera tripods are available from some operators]. There seems to be a standard meeting place downtown by the 'Radisson Blue' hotel - that should be near the shuttle drop off. Some operators will drop you back by the pier after their tour. If you are considering an independent tour - check on your 'roll call' to see who else might be interested. See the website https://www.visittromso.no/seasons/autumn for the tourist board listing of activities and tour vendors. [Other cities in Norway have similar tourist websites in case you have a different port, like Alta]. The usual cool weather advice is to dress in layers, and have a warm hat. I had warm boots [Columbia 'Bugaboots' that had decent ice traction [might be an issue], tall wool socks, long ski underwear and ski pants. We brought a fairly good size duffel with our 'just in case' winter clothing - but only used some of of it. [Mrs Bear elected to stay on the QM2 and waited for Northern Lights sightings to be announced. The moonlight and other ambient light spoiled night vision despite the ship turning off topside lighting] For a daytime excursion, I took a trip to the Polara museum/aquarium and the Wilderness center to visit the sled dogs. The dogs were quite friendly - I only regret not retuning covered with more muddy puppy paw prints [several 5 month old pups in an enclosure for cuddling]

I will second [or third] the suggestion to look at Cunard for a transatlantic round trip itinerary. So far we have done three round trip crossings, with different numbers of days between Southampton 'turn around' days [12 days for this past autumn, 4 days for our 2024 booking]. We book these as complete round trip sailings, so we only need to embark and unpack once. With QM2 making frequent crossings [when she is not sailing a 'world cruise'] it is usually easy to arrange a pair of crossings with a land portion in-between of any desired duration [or paired with another line's 'repositioning cruise'] On our 2019 round trip, there were passengers on a 'Road Scholar' group booking with a 'D Day' focus - special lectures for the group on the eastbound crossing, Southampton disembarkation [with luggage storage], visits the D-Day sites in southeast England and Normandy while QM2 visited Hamburg then sailed to LeHavre in Normandy - then the Road Scholar group re-embarked in LeHavre for the westbound crossing back to Brooklyn.

Check your dates against the phase of moon as well - Cunard's November 2020 'Norway and Northern Lights' placed the Tromso stop norther lights expeditions with a rater full moon in the sky. You never really got dark adapted, so aurora were more visible in photos than to the eye.

This past October, boarding in Brooklyn, the paper boarding pass was required - it acquired stamps and stickers before the final scan entering the ship. I think folks arriving with just an electronic copy had a paper boarding pass printed out just after security.

Based on what I experienced last autumn, the system now 'knows' that you are on a multi segment booking - no fresh allocation of WC internet credit per segment.

That may be a good [bugsBunny]stragety[/bugsBunny] for shorter sailings - we typically book transatlantic round trips [and next year's sailing was just boosted from 19 to 21 days]. A nice 'feature' of the old minute by minute plan was that there was a fresh allocation of WC minutes for each segment of a cruise that was sold as a separate 'voyage' [e.g. Brooklyn - Southampton, Southampton - Hamburg, Hamburg - Southampton, Southampton - LeHavre - Brooklyn] back in 2019 yielded 4 'gold' tier minute allocations for each of us. We ended the round trip with unused minutes.

its just a sign in option - fee deducted first from WC internet credit and then charged to the onboard account. Last time, only my WC internet credit was applied - Mrs Bear's credit was not used - and could not be applied once the 'whole voyage' rate was applied.

If you buy a plan, the WC internet credit applied is only for one person - the other passenger's WC credit is not applied unless you sign up for two separate plans. The WC credit went quite a bit further on the older 'minute by minute' plan than the current 'any usage is the same charge as a full day' plan. Things are likely to have some changes before our October 2024 sailing, but with today's prices we will buy a day at a time until the both our WC internet credits are expended. We _might_ buy a plan for any remaining days.

And rarely [last time I saw this was 2017] the show times are flipped - the show for late seating Britannia was scheduled to start when early seating folks were heading to dinner.