cruiser1955

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My wife has booked the walk over Sydney Harbour Bridge and I am hoping to watch her from the ship, plus she will be going whale watching whilst we are at Lahaina and with any luck, I might be able to see these whales from our cabin??

John

QE visited Hawaii at the start of February this year and I didn't see any whales. However, when we retuned at the start of March there were loads. They even put on a display as we left port. I was only on deck 5,port, but had great views. Managed to get some on video as that had a longer lens than my DSLR which only had a 300mm.

You should get some great shots. Have a great trip.

When I took early retirement, I said I would not do a world cruise. Within 6 months I had booked one.

My longest had been around 35 days and I did wonder how I would cope with 92 days. Needn't have worried. The time went too quick. Only 10% of the passengers were on the full trip.

The problem now is deciding which worldie to do next. There are some wonderful itineraries, but you have to be careful and read the small print. A couple of ships list Easter Island in their itineraries, but when you look at the small print, they only cruise by. I did go on a cruise that did call at Easter Island (small ship) but we were only able to get ashore on one of the two days of the stop.

If doing a world cruise, you have to be prepared for some disappointments as to whether or not you will make it to all the scheduled ports. On this years cruise, we were due to call in to Christchurch New Zealand, but that was cancelled due to the earthquake.

I was on Queen Elizabeth, so dress code was roughly one third formal, one third semi-formal and a third smart casual. Cunard allocate part of one of the lounges (in this case the Garden Lounge) for exclusive use of those doing the full cruise for part of the day on sea days.

If you can and they are available, go for a balcony. Sometimes it was nice just to be able to get away and have some private space.

Biggest drawback was that the cruise was marketed as 6 segments, so it meant that for the first few days of each segment, the ship was on alert for noro and in one segment it went on for over a week.

Would I do another? Yes, but it will have to be on the right ship and the itinerary has to be interesting. Oh, and it has to depart Southampton - so much easier than flying.

John

I did the world on QE this year. Some of the excursions did sell out before we departed from the UK. Many of the prices also went up after the excursions became available to book. I booked most of mine in late September and when I went to finalise the last few in November, all the ones I was interested in had gone up by around 10%.

If you cancel any once you are on board, you will be charged a 10% cancellation fee but you can cancel up to 7 days before your cruise departure (not the excursion date!) without penalty.

One of the advantages of booking the ships excursions was that some order of the ports of call were changed with little warning and the ship automatically changed the excursion bookings.

There were some excursions available on board that were not available before sailing.

I was comparing the 2014 QV and 2015 QV. the 2015 voyage does not have enough days for someone to start and end their voyage in the US and get credit for a full World Voyage. If you board in Ft Lauderdale and finish in NY, it's only 82 days.

 

The one stop I liked was Port Canaveral as I only live about 30 mile form it and would love to finish my voyage there.

 

To me, the whole brochure seems more about segments than the full world voyages.

 

Don

Don,

You may find that Cunard will class FL-NY as a world cruise. I got the impression from on board sales that over 80 days was required. It may be worth checking with Cunard.

You are right I think about it being about sectors. The UK Cunard web site has over 120 options available across the 3 ships for 2015. On QE this year there were only 196 doing the whole voyage.

Thanks, Jon, for posting this. Interesting that all three are about a week less in length than the 2014 cruises. I wonder how far in advance they actually make the itinerary for each ship.

Hi Scrapnana. Talking to various cruise directors/forward sales staff on different UK based lines the info I've received has been 24-30 months for an outline itinerary and it is finalised about 20 months before departure. When I asked on this year's QE worldie there was no information available.

In 2015 all ships are due back into Southampton on the same day for Cunard's 175th celebrations.

Looking at the QV dates, I'm guessing that QV will be in for a refit before starting her 2015 world.

I had thought to join you on QE for part of the 2014 voyage, but have jumped lines to Celebrity as they have a good NZ/Aus itinerary. Hope you enjoy QE next year - there was a great crowd on the 2013 voyage.

I've extracted the itineraries into an XL file for those who may not be able to access the PDF file on the Cunard UK website. UK cruise only prices are included.

cunard world 2015.xls

Itineraries are published.

http://www.cunard.co.uk/documents/brochures/cunard_world_cruise_2015.pdf

File is around 30MB

Email from Cunard today:

Copied from the P&O website. They have all the bar menus/wine lists there.

"RASPBERRY CRÈME BRÛLÉE £5.25

Baileys, Chambord Black Raspberry Liqueur, caramel syrup, raspberries and cream shaken together. Ever since Baileys was invented in 1974 bartenders have been trying to mix it into cocktails – we think they have succeeded with this delicious addition."

Enjoy:D

I've had stern cabins on A, B & D deck and not found there to be an issue with noise or vibration. I have noticed it though at the very rear of the lower deck of the restaurant when there is rough weather.

I've had R238 and R242. Although shown as sheltered balconies I found there was enough sun for me. Being high up gave great views and these cabins are in a very quiet part of the ship. If you book via a travel agent, they usually have full access as to which cabins are available.

If you decide on a specific cabin remeber to get the booking marked as "not to accept an upgrade" as sometimes the upgrade may not be to your liking.