Former Goalie

+1

though I think that it is worth noting that the "public areas" which are above 12006 and 12008 are the Massage Rooms and their adjacent lobby/waiting room which are unlikely to generate any noisy foot traffic.

Thanks for the replies. Agree that the public areas above 12006 and 12008 are not likely to have much foot traffic, moving of chairs and tables, etc. I would think the port cabins would be less likely to experience noise issues than starboard cabins, which are under the workout room. And, I have heard some people say there is some noise in the suites on deck 11 aft from the public area with chairs, tables and more foot traffic, above.

These are the only 2 cabins remaining in this category for the cruise we're interested in. I normally don't like booking cabins below public areas, because of noise. Anyone who has stayed in either of these cabins who would be able to comment on whether they are noisy, that would be appreciated.

Thanks for the response, MCC. Our agent deals only with about four cruise lines - I asked her if she works with Cunard, and she said "no." So ... I am now going to look for an agent who does.

 

I wonder if just going with an online agency that comes up with google is okay? Otherwise I don't see any.

That's odd that the TA doesn't have a relationship with Cunard. As another poster said, Cunard verges on the luxury status, which can mean a big commission for the TA. I would suggest seeking out several online agencies, and price shop. You will almost assuredly get a better price and/or more amenities than booking direct with Cunard

Does anyone have relatively current currency exchange rates USD to GBP on Cunard ships? I've read rates are not the best on the ship. Exchange rates in the USA aren't all that great, either.

Think of an aeroplane where they have First Class (Queens Grill), Business Class (Princess Grill), Premium Economy (Britannia Club), Economy (Britannia).

 

The Grills passengers have a separate lounge and use of a Concierge. That's it.

And a separate dining area, Princess Grill and Queen's Grill each have dedicated dining areas.

That's certainly been one of my questions in the process. If I book the cruise via a travel agent, Cunard will speak to me directly about add-on airfare?

My experience is that yes, Cunard will speak directly to you about the air portion, and send any air add ons to the fare to your TA. I booked air portion back in the fall, I checked pricing a little over a week ago, pricing had gone down a little over 100 USD pp, so I had Cunard Air adjust the price. It was a bit complicated, as it was a case of cancel, then rebook. The old booking ceased to exist, and a new booking was created, with a new confirmation number. The Cunard agent then needed to select the seats we wanted, again. And, we will need to fill out the immigration info for BA, again. I'll check for price drops once again just before making final payment, if there is any worthwhile price drop, I'll cancel and rebook through Cunard. FYI, I believe the air is refundable until 45 days out, if booked through Cunard.

Yes, I perhaps wasn't clear, I was asking my TA if I could have a few days beyond THEIR payment date, which was two weeks before Cunard's date, to which they agreed to extend by a week. Payment would then still have been with Cunard by their required date - had we been able to continue with the cruise.

Our cruise agency (one of the large online ones) sends out auto reminders stating payment due a few days before the actual cut off date. It's a CYA thing, last day to pay in our instance is 91 days out per Cunard policy. If you do not pay the remaining balance by that date, it's a case of you snooze, you lose. You lose your hold on that stateroom, and it opens up for anyone to book.

Thank you for the clarification!

 

It was my misunderstanding. I thought the 20% that you mentioned was in addition to the published fare, i.e. 120%

 

Thank you for explaining. Last year, we redeemed miles, and this year we're doing a RT, so we're not booking transatlantic air, BUT I certainly will ask our TA to talk to Cunard for trips in the future.

 

- Mark

Just FYI, and maybe your TA works differently than ours (we use a TA at one of the big discount cruise sellers), we had to book the air portion ourselves, calling Cunard directly. Air fare has been "non-commissionable" for many years now.

For the past decade or more, we've not investigated cruise line air when booking a cruise (on any line). But hearing that Cunard air had good deals caught my eye, so I was curious about specifics.

 

Are you saying that Cunard's price was over 20% higher than the published fare ...and this is a bargain?

Ok, here is the quote I'm taking directly from BA booking engine. I'm factoring USD = 1.25 GBP, which would yield a price on May travel LHR to PHL of 9,429 USD A SEAT! The Cunard Air price for the same seat about one week ago (price fluctuates with currency) was 2,121 USD. That's 22.5% the cost BA direct, or a savings of 77.5%.

Cunard used to offer a sail / fly package but apparently not now. The problem now is to get a return air ticket that is affordable -- or do I have to buy a RT ticket and throw away the return portion? Any advice. I'll be flying London-NY.

We are sailing east bound QM2, spending some time in London, then flying back to Philly. We are flying biz class. I couldn't believe it when the Cunard Air quote was just a little over 20% the price quoted on the British Airways web site. Made the return air almost a bargain. By all means, call Cunard, they will gladly quote you a price, and I think you will find it not only competitive, but a relative bargain.

Just received a 'save a date' for a big birthday bash in Chicago in the beginning of December. The date of the party is six days before the QM2's eastbound crossing back to the UK so we would have our return home sorted :D

 

We would want to fly out at least a couple of days before the event so my question is; Can we book the crossing with a flight (no hotels) that is 8-10 days before embarking on the QM2?

We booked LHR-PHL six days after arrival in Southampton. Booked biz class on British Airways west bound through Cunard. Was very pleasantly surprised to get this fare at 1/4 what BA was asking.

Like some others on this thread, I am a firm believer in using the automatic gratuity system. I recognise that a lot of behind-the-scenes people contribute to the enjoyment of my holiday and I want them to be rewarded.

 

Hopefully when we give extra to our room steward, he passes some on to the rest of his team, knowing that he would not have received the tip without their backup.

I always participate in the auto-grat, on almost every cruise I/we have been on. The first ones we went on, it wasn't an option, we received the little envelopes to tip each department individually at cruise end.

This will be our first Cunard cruise, and the gratuities are "complimentary" as part of last fall's 3 for all promotion. Provided we receive the excellent service so typical of cruise line staff, we will tip extra to selected staff (room stewards, room service, dining room staff, maitre d', etc.). Just personal preference, but these hard working people are deserving of extra, given all they do to ensure an exceptional vacation.

The autogratuity takes care of that problem. If an individual crew member gives you exceptional service, or handles several special requests, you can tip that person in addition to the autogratuity.

I'd like some feed back about Queens Grill tipping, as well. Auto-grat would cover the stateroom attendants (as I understand it the auto grat is also dispersed to other staff ship wide). This is my personal choice; I always give our hard working stateroom attendants extra at cruise's end. I've never had an attendant who was "just average", in which case there would be no extra gratuity.

I would think the Butler in a Q5 would not participate in the pool of tips to the degree that he/she would be compensated properly. Thus, I will probably give that individual $75-$100 for the week, depending on the services we've asked him/her to do.

Hello :)

 

First of all, many thanks to everyone on the board who has offered helpful advise prior to our trip. It was greatly appreciated.

 

A little background.... we are a family of 3 (6yr old boy) and recently returned to Scotland, arriving to the UK in style on the QM2.

 

We booked a Queens Grill suite (Q5) as it was only fractionally more than booking 2 x Club Balconies. We were also luck enough to benefit from the 'free unlimited drinks' promotion.

 

Communications prior to boarding were all efficient, especially with the Food & Beverage department re: my son's allergies. We organised the White Star Lugagge Service to collect one of our bags and this was well worth the price. White Star were excellent, but DHL (who collected the bag in NZ) did not fill me with confidence.

 

 

Having spent an enjoyable (but very hot!) 3 nights in New York, we transferred to Red Hook with plenty of time to spare an no issues. It appeared relatively quiet (11am) and it did not take long to fill out the paper work and be seated in the lounge.

 

By the time it came to board, I was positively giddy with excitement. Such a wonderful feeling when you board for the first time. It didn't take long to find our room and first impressions were good. On closer inspection, the previous occupant's toilet bag had been left in the bathroom cabinet. Not good.

We had a wonderful surprise of a bottle of champagne from our dear friends in NZ, in addition to the two bottle left by Cunard.

As our bags were still to arrive, we went for a wee wander around the ship. On or return our butler came to introduce himself. I gave him the bag I found in the bathroom and also mentioned that we were still awaiting our bag from White Star. He assured us not to worry.

Our suite was perfect for the sailaway. Couldn't have asked for better views. Just a lovely experience. At this point our White Star bag had still not appeared and I was starting to get twitchy, so called for the butler. He looked shocked when I said it hadn't arrived and ran off to find out what had happened. He returned quite promptly, with the bag.... minus it's luggage tags! Such a relief to have it though.

 

Queen's Grill

On the whole, we had a lovely experience in the Queen's Grill, with some fabulous food. It was a bit disappointing to have to repeat my son's food allergies to everyone for the first couple of days, and we had an incident where a smoothies that was prepared for him was cross contaminated, which resulted in a fairly instant vomiting session in the restaurant!

We loved our two main waiters, who remembered my son's favourite food and drinks. The head waiter was also lovely, as was the (i think) assistant Maitre D. The only person I took a strong dislike to was the Maitre D himself. He rarely welcomed us and I swear I never saw the man smile once during the whole trip! So different from the other lovely staff. I also wasn't impressed in how he dealt with the vomiting episode.

The chefs went out of their way to make some lovely danishes for my son, which were greatly appreciated and unexpected.

We also warmed to the fabulous sommelier.

 

Room Service / Butler / Housekeeping

This is where we felt the 'White Star Service' was a let down. One of our first requests to the butler was for a travel adapter. We had one with us, but an extra would have been handy. We were told we'd have to purchase it from the shop. Really? That's a fairly basic request that even a 3 star hotel code cope with!

We had issues ordering room service, and to cut a long story short, it was because or butler wasn't available, who we'd made aware (as he wasn't) of my son's allergies. It resulted in me speaking to the concierge, who in turn spoke to the food and beverage manager, and I get the impression our butler was pretty peeved about this, as he main of point of saying we should always order food from him. That's fine if he's on duty, but he never seemed to be around in the afternoons.

We had issues with our spa bath, in that it was filthy! A man came to change the filters, which did improve it, but not to the extent we'd choose to use it. Really quite poor!

 

 

Staff in the Commodore Club were lovely and brought out the packet of chips so I could check if they were OK for my son.

We found staff in the pub quite surly, which was shame as we liked to go to the quizzes there. Speaking of which, we did remarkably well for our wee team of 4 (Cunard Virgins) against a team of 6 (sometimes 7) veteran Cunarders who had clearly heard a lot of the questions before. The couple we teamed up with were lovely and we had a great time quizzing with them.

 

The Planetarium was a big hit. No issues getting tickets from the concierge desk.

 

I loved the spa bath on the Grills deck, and my son enjoyed the spa bath by the kids pool. Neither deck ever seemed busy.

 

As I mentioned, we had the unlimited drinks package, which was great! The only issue being that the accounts department didn't have a note of it on our reservation. This led to being charged (despite assurances from the concierge) and then refunded on our credit card, so we obviously got stung with the exchange rate and fees! Not a huge amount, but quite irksome.

 

When it came to disembark, we had breakfast at 7am an on returning to our room the housekeeper was in stripping the beds, despite the fact we still had a few things to pack away! I thought this was very poor. They seriously couldn't have waited 30mins when we were due to meet in the Grills Lounge for priority disembarkation?

 

Overall we had a really lovely time and we'll definitely sail with Cunard again. I have my eye on an Iceland and the Fjords trip ;) I don't think they live up to the 'White Star Service' they heavily advertise. Our suite was worth it for the space and flexible dining alone, so we'd always go for that option, despite the 4* star service.

 

I've posted lots of photos on my social media account '3tickets2theworld' :D

 

If you have any questions or comments, type away :)

Great pictures, beautiful family! Thank you for adding to the anticipation of our crossing next year!

I got an amazing price for a business class return flight from the UK to the US - internal US flights tend to be fairly cheap to start with.

Ditto to that from UK to US, got first at a fraction of what the going rate was on various web sites.

If I wanted to Fly to NYC booking the flight myself with Virgin have a 5-6 night stay in NYC then cruise back on QM2 how do I go about booking and what does the Cunard price include?

Any advice would be appreciated?

Would prefer to book flight independently as have lots of air miles to use and always fly Virgin?

Thank you

I don't know if this will help you, I am from USA and just booked a transatlantic followed by a few days in London. My cruise fare did not include air return.

So, I searched several sites for the return air. FWIW far and away the best price was using Cunard's air program. I splurged and booked a premium class, and it was less than 25% of what British Airways quoted! To put it mildly, I was shocked at the price differential. The price for first class was almost reasonable booking using Cunard, and the res. agents were very helpful.

This is an interesting topic. We have cruised on 14 lines (more then 60 different vessels) and our favorite HAL ship is the Prinsendam (we have sailed on her for 200 days). But we have also been on our share of very large ships up to about 166,000 tons...but have not tried the Oasis Class.

 

While we love small ships (we have cruised on a 20 passenger boat) there is a lot to say about the large ships. We do enjoy the expanded entertainment options, larger selection of bars/cafes, etc. When RCI launched the Oasis, DW said "no way do I want to go on that ship." And because those monsters only do short cruises we have never tried one...although given the right circumstances we would give it a shot. Several HAL cruiser friends have all told us that they really enjoyed the Oasis/Allure vessels. Just think, a ship that actually has some night life after 9pm!

 

On the other hand, when it comes to HAL cruisers the reality is that many could not easily do those large ships because they simply do not want to walk that far (from one end to the other) :).

 

Hank

When traveling with young(ish) family, I must say the mega ship option is great. So much to do. On Allure and Oasis, loved walking the very long promenade deck. Never felt particularly crowded, maybe except for embarkation/disembarkation.

We also love HAL when it's just us two 60 somethings.

Whenever port charges were lowered before our cruise, our TA would get a notice from HAL indicating that our final payment would be lower. She sends us a copy of that letter.

If port charges are lowered once we are on the ship, we get shipboard credit.

Never have we gotten an unexpected shipboard credit like you described.

This was not a shipboard credit, this is a credit that hit my credit card account.

I opened up my CC transaction page today, I noticed a small ($40) credit hit that account. Have no idea the reason for the credit. We sailed HAL back in March, and will sail HAL late this year. Has anyone received a small, unexpected credit like this?

TIA.

OK, one of these days I will want to be checking out a "different" insurance. Up to this point, I have always used Travel Guard.

 

If you have used either, Insuremytrip, or Tripinsurancestore, (I have heard they are both good sights to go through), can you give me your opinion of either of these companies?

I have used trip insurance store many times, and I am a VERY satisfied client. I have had to file a claim once, I was paid back, after filling out some paper work.

I almost exclusively purchase Travel Insured Intl., the price has been favorable, plus I like the fact that you can "pay as you go" with policies I have purchased.

I read a mention in a different thread that room service isn't available the first day. I'm not sure if that is just during lunch service or truly not until the next morning. My question is if room service dinner would available the first night in Neptune Suites?

Was on Eurodam last month in a suite, we ordered room service from MDR the first night, no problem.

I had Travel Guard when I cruised to the Caribbean, and ran into a problem. They "finally" reimbursed me back, but did not pay for any taxes, or fees, only the cruise charge.

Most times, you will get taxes, fees, or both refunded by the cruise line. I don't know if that happened in your instance. If they were refunded by the cruise line, that would explain why you didn't get $$$ back from the insurance company.

We just got off the Eurodam on Sunday (14 day W-E Caribbean)' date=' and used Luggage Direct...the boarding passes worked extremely well, with no trouble in scanning. The tracking numbers for the tags were absolutely written on the top portion of the paper (above the boarding passes)...I would not have used the service if I couldn't have the bags tracked. The airline printed another boarding pass for us as we were getting on the plane....only because there was no stub for our seat assignment. We will use this service again, because it worked like a dream for us, and no dragging of bags! After a fantastic cruise, this service gives you a chance to skip, hop and jump your way home![/quote']

 

I'm glad the service worked for you. As I said, we are the exception, not the rule.

We would not use this service again, had a much different experience than you.

Is the $100 Beverage Card one per stateroom, or one per person?

Cindy

I believe it's per stateroom.

I had booked onboard last week. My TA was able to get all the Anniversary amenities added, the cruise fare remained the same. Our only change - we had $400 OBC as we had booked a suite on board the ship, that was reduced to a $200 OBC. However, we were given from HAL as a result of the sale: an additional $400 OBC, 2 $50 beverage cards, complimentary gratuities, and 200 complimentary internet minutes. My TA's company added $50 OBC and a Navigator wine package.

I can live with this, I figure the added amenities are worth about $650.