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Taking everyone's (passengers and crewmembers) passports ashore for the Durban Immigration authorities so we can all be cleared out of South Africa for Mauritius on the Queen Mary 2 voyage from Cape Town to Sydney in January 2014. You can't see in the photo but there was about a 1 meter gap of the ramp over open water between the ship and the dock with plenty of room for it all to go terribly wrong! We all got our passports returned later in the day.

These photos aren't great but they might give you some idea of how close the stack gets to the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.

We've never had a problem showing up whenever it is convenient for us and we have no special status with Cunard. The worst that can happen is a longer wait in the queue for check in but I think there is a separate queue for a passenger using a wheelchair. We normally plan for traffic or delays and arrive at check in well ahead of our assigned time and have never had a problem. Much less stress that way. As the previous replay stated, show up when you like.

You might find a fair amount of info by using Google and entering- qm2 cabin 8126

I haven't found just one place to go for that information but if you ahve some time you can do this-

Look at deck plans for the ship you want. Here is an example for QM2: http://www.cunard.com/cruise-ships/queen-mary-2/deck-plans/

Then you can choose cabin numbers either randomly or by size or location on the ship. Make a list of the cabins you are curious about and then Google the ship and cabin number. i.e. QM2 cabin 10006 or QM2 cabin 5009. Sometimes you will see a trip report from someone who stayed in that cabin and sometimes you will find more generic information but there are numerous bits of information about any cabin I have ever searched for this way and some of that information has been very helpful.