bluemarble

I'll jump in to help with this one. There's a post stating QA will be named on April 19th in Southampton and her sea trials are rumored to start February 2nd. I see a possible issue with that date for the naming ceremony though. Recent tradition has been for the naming ceremonies to be no more than a few days before the maiden voyages. QM2's naming ceremony was four days before her maiden voyage. QV's and QE's naming ceremonies were both the day before their maiden voyages. It would be a departure to have QA's naming ceremony a full fourteen days before her maiden voyage on May 3rd. Let's just say I'm skeptical.

I suspect you are not alone with that opinion. Just to clarify, the standard Grill Suites Offer in the US includes a drinks package (for drinks up to $12) and pre-payment of the Hotel and Dining Service Charge ($16.50 per person per day for Grill Suites). It does not include a WiFi package.

In addition to using My Voyage for dinner reservations, I have used it to book planetarium shows. That feature worked well and I think it's a welcome replacement for the old system of queuing for tickets at the ConneXions desk. Actually, I should say it worked well as long as My Voyage was functioning. There was one day on our most recent voyage where the system was down for several hours. And there were other cases when I simply had connectivity issues. Hopefully the recent wi-fi system upgrades have resolved those connectivity issues.

I hear you. Our booking on the cancelled April 30 crossing was the first of three consecutive bookings on QM2 (eastbound crossing, Norway, westbound crossing). We ended up flying to England to salvage the Norway and westbound crossings). So yes, the options about taking earlier or later crossings were irrelevant to our situation. But I played along and chose the options that would have been the most appealing to me without regard to the other circumstances. Generally for me the most important of the options presented was to have a refundable deposit. I always picked a refundable option over non-refundable one. And when both options presented were non-refundable I made sure to select "No" when asked if would have booked the option I selected. I do hope those of you in the UK will eventually be able to choose fares with refundable deposits as we enjoy in the US. Perhaps this survey is a step in that direction.

I may have missed the teeny-tiny print naming the survey company. But I can tell you the URL for the portion of the survey asking general questions such as demographics indicates the survey company is Borderless Access ("survey.borderlessaccess.com"). The URL for the portion of the survey presenting different cruise options to pick from changes to "eu.surveyme.online".

Yes, Cunard didn't announce QE's 2024 Alaska itineraries until early March 2023 whereas they announced the Summer itineraries for the other ships in late November 2022. You would think though that would still have given them plenty of time to work out the dress code and theme schedules for QE prior to late October 2023 when they stated posting the schedules on My Cunard. Plus, I'm pretty sure Cunard announced QE's 2024 Japan itineraries in November 2022, so I can't come up with a good reason why we don't yet have at least the dress code and theme schedules for those Japan itineraries.

Here's one other nuance about the survey I didn't mention in my previous reply. The alternatives I was given for the "Refund" option were "Non refundable" or "Fully refundable up to 90 days before sailing". In the US, refundable deposits are currently refundable only up to 120 days before sailing (for sailings of 30 days or less). I don't know if they were intentionally proposing a loosening to that policy for the US. More likely I figure they meant the 90 day cutoff for those in the UK. If they were to offer refundable deposits in the UK, that would be in line with the 90 day final payment date in the UK rather than the 120 day final payment date here in the US. My guess is they were being a tad sloppy if they stated "90 days" in the survey wording for both the US and the UK.

Similar experience here. I received the survey a short time ago for the 7-night April 30th transatlantic crossing from New York which of course Cunard cancelled. Here are a few of the oddities I noticed in that survey. 1) They reminded me of the amount of on-board spending money that was included with my booking, but they listed that amount with the £ symbol rather than the $ symbol. 2) They also asked me "What was the main reason for cancelling that cruise?" even though they were the ones who cancelled it. 3) They presented me with several alternatives which included money for shore excursions, but of course there isn't any opportunity to take shore excursions during a transatlantic crossing, so those alternatives had no appeal for me. 4) They presented me with several alternatives which included a wi-fi package, but as a diamond member of the Cunard World Club I already receive sufficient internet credit to cover a wi-fi package for a 7-night crossing, so those alternatives also had no appeal for me.

Interesting. Were the "different items" they asked about things such as pre-paid hotel and dining service charge, alternative dining meals, spa credit, photography credit, other? Just trying to think what other items they might be considering offering in more inclusive bundles.

Currently on the US website, Cunard is offering the following New York hotels as pre- and post-cruise add-ons for 2024 voyages. Hilton Midtown Marriott Marquis The Knickerbocker Marriott Brooklyn Bridge I think this is the first time I've seen a Brooklyn hotel listed.

Sorry, I'm afraid what you've found there is an itinerary from one of those sites I was cautioning about earlier when I said "There are sites out there that purport to show itineraries for future years but in actuality are rehashing itineraries from previous years." That's actually a portion of QM2's 2006 itinerary. That site is listing it as if it were a 2026 itinerary when it is actually an itinerary from 2006, 20 years earlier. Edit to add: I think you'll find that same site is also listing 2027 itineraries for QM2 which are actually rehashes of her 2007 itineraries, 2028 itineraries which are actually from 2008, 2029 itineraries which are actually from 2009, etc.

I first learned that the 2023 dress code and theme schedules were posted in My Cunard on November 24, 2022. That included most if not all all of the QE dress code and theme schedules for 2023. It definitely included the QE Alaska cruises. It is odd that Cunard have apparently not released any of the QE dress code and theme schedules beyond the end of the Australia/New Zealand season in March 2024. I have not heard from anyone yet about the schedules for QE's repositioning cruise from Sydney to Japan on March 10, 2024 or any later cruises on QE. I have also not heard anything yet about the dress code and theme schedules for QA. Not sure what the holdup is for the QE and QA schedules. They've released the entire 2024 dress code and theme schedules for both QM2 and QV as well as some of the 2025 schedules.

Happy New Year everyone! Just getting going this morning after watching the ball drop in Times Square, New York on TV as usual last night and then staying up another hour to see in the new year here in the US Central time zone. There's the Tournament of Roses parade to watch on TV shortly followed by several America football bowl games, also as usual. And it will be a turkey dinner for us today to celebrate the occasion. On a pratical note, @Host Hattie, it's probably time to unstick my "Dress Code and Theme Schedules for 2023" sticky.

Here's a reprise of QV at Funchal, Madeira for this year's New Year celebration. This is a capture from one of the webcams found at "www.madeira-web.com" showing QV at the lower right along with some of the fireworks display.

Sunset this evening during QM2's departure from Philipsburg, St Maarten a short time ago. This is a capture from PTZtv's "Port St Maarten Webcam" found at "www.portstmaartenwebcam.com".

Assuming yours is the 13-night cruise on QM2 from New York, that's definitely a departure from previous years which have had three gala evenings. I don't yet have the dress code and theme schedule for the 21 December 2024 QM2 cruise. Please let me know which dates are scheduled for your gala evenings and which one has the Red and Gold theme. I can guess your Red and Gold gala evening will be Christmas Day and your other gala evening (presumably without a theme) will be New Year's Eve. But please confirm those dates for me. Thanks for your help with this.

I was thinking of jumping in on this one earlier. Since you brought it up @D&N I'll jump in now. @tlc1972 might be looking at the "Our Lowest Fare" on the Cunard US website known elsewhere as their "Value Fare". That's similar to a Saver Fare on the Cunard UK website where you can't select a specific cabin. It's one of the conditions of that fare that it's guarantee only. In order to be able to select a specific cabin in the US, you need to pick a fare such as the current "Explore with More" promotion or the "Cunard Fare". Now if @tlc1972 is picking a fare that normally allows selecting a cabin but is running into the situation where Cunard is showing guarantee-only for the category they are looking at, then that's probably a case of low availability for that category on that particular sailing. Or sometimes on specific segments of world voyages, I've seen Cunard make that entire segment guarantee-only at least initially regardless of which fare you select.

Yes, some excellent contributions today to add locations to our "seen" list. Glad to see there's still interest in this thread. I wasn't totally convinced @sogne's latest photos were Hrisey even though the comments certainly pointed that way. I put those on the back burner while I worked on @Colin_Cameron's photos. I finally found a couple photos of Hrisey taken from a similar angle, one of which has identical snow patterns on the hills in the distance. You may gotten to that point before me. Anyway, I'm convinced now those are indeed photos of Hrisey.

Looks like it may not have taken long for the newly added cruise-by entry to our "unseen" list to be posted. I haven't found a match for the second photo. And I'd be more confident identifying the first photo if the clouds weren't obscuring what's in the distance. But I'm getting a good enough match to what we can see in that first photo to take a guess. I think the first photo is showing us Dusky Sound, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand.

Is this on QM2? I'd like to confirm that so I can update my master schedule to remove the Roaring Twenties Gala originally scheduled this evening if that's the case. And if so, please let me know if they do add another gala later to replace it.

Yes, Hrisey is listed as a "sail-by" or "cruise-by" call from Akureyri on several Cunard itineraries. For example, there are two such voyages listed on the 2020 itineraries (V019 and V022) and two on the 2021 itineraries (V117 and V120). There are three more listed that way in the 2024-2025 brochure (H417, H516 and H520 on Queen Anne).

Are you referring to QM2? Are you on board now? If that's the case, I'm not too surprised they'd change your port day in Castries to Smart Attire. Please let us know how the dress code schedule plays out for the remainder of your voyage.

Marvelous picture! Since this was taken at Norfolk, I'm afraid we'll have to count it as another view of the port of Norfolk which is already in our "seen" ports list. I appreciate the contribution nonetheless. Always good to see a new perspective on a port we've seen before.

Good point. Here are the previous posts on this thread regarding Fiordland National Park and Milford Sound. I think you will see a couple of familiar names who posted those earlier images and identified them. 😉 It's unfortunate that the Cruise Critic search function no longer indexes posts that are more than about a year old. I would like to include each of the individual sounds within Fiordland National Park in our "seen" ports list if we can identify the specific sounds. I think QE may have also visited Dusky Sound on the afternoon of Christmas Day after visiting Milford Sound in the morning. At least I think that's what I saw watching her track but I couldn't find any webcams at Dusky Sound. We should certainly remove Milford Sound from the "unseen" ports list now. My suggestion is to add Dusky Sound as another "unseen" Cruise-By Call and change the existing entry for Fiordland in our "seen" ports list to read as follows. "Milford Sound, Fiordland National Park, New Zealand" Then if we can identify or get future images of a Cunard ship in Doubtful Sound or Dusky Sound we can add those as separate entries in our "seen" ports list within Fiordland National Park. Here are my updated lists of our "seen" and "unseen" Cunard ports including those suggested changes. Where in the World 2023-12-28.txt Cunard ports not seen yet 2023-12-28.txt

QE is in New Plymouth, New Zealand today. I posted a similar image on the "Where in the World?" thread. Now that that's been identified, I'll post another image here. This is from the "Chimney North-East View" webcam found on the Primo website at "primo.nz/info/primo-webcams". As far as I know, this is the first time any Cunard ship has called at New Plymouth.