bluemarble

It's typical for the 2-night voyages between Southampton and Hamburg to have the evening of the sea day be designated "Gala Optional" with no theme. That's because the next day is disembarkation day for many of the passengers. The daily programmes I have from QM2 word it this way. "Smart Attire is acceptable for guests who are finally disembarking tomorrow if preferred."

After adjusting for duplicate questions in each of the FAQs, here are my counts of the number of different questions in each FAQ. US FAQ: 268 different questions UK FAQ: 403 different questions Australia FAQ: 602 different questions This does not attempt to account for similar but differently-worded questions. For example, both the Australia and UK FAQs contain these pairs of questions which are essentially asking the same thing. "Can I take my bicycle on a cruise?" "Can I take my bicycle on board?" and "Can I take my own furniture or bedding on board?" "Can I take my own mattress or furniture on board?" There is at least one question on the Australia FAQ which is obsolete. "Can I pre-register for the Summer 2020 programme?" However, many of the questions unique to the Australia FAQ would be useful on the other FAQs such as these questions just to mention a few. "Are flights included in the cost of my cruise?" "Are coat hangers provided in the wardrobes?" "Are newspapers available during my cruise?" "Can I cancel or change my booking?" "Do I have to wear the suggested attire for the theme nights?" "How can I make a booking?" "How many Gala Evenings will there be?" "How much are the drinks on board?" "When do boarding passes become available?" Then there's this popular question only asked on the Australia FAQ. "How much should I pay for tips?" However, tipping is also discussed in these questions which are not unique to the Australia FAQ. "What type of service will I receive and how is it rewarded?" "Can I send a gift to a member of crew?"

If by any chance you figured I just might take up the challenge to compare the contents of the three Cunard FAQs, you would have been correct. It was largely a manual process to copy the questions from each of the three FAQs and then compile them as side-by-side columns in an Excel spreadsheet sorted on the text of the questions. Total effort, about 5-6 hours. Because of the manual nature of the process, I'm expecting there will be a few glitches here and there. There are duplicate questions in each of the FAQs which I have left in the spreadsheet to assist with evaluating the amount of duplication in each FAQ. Here's my Cunard FAQ Comparison spreadsheet as an attachment. Cunard FAQ Comparison.xlsx

For the record concerning where QE will be positioned for her Caribbean season, several media reports have mentioned she will be sailing out of Florida as we might expect. I share others' questions about how that might impact QM2's usual Caribbean schedule sailing out of New York in the future.

Unfortunately your voyage V406C is one of the few occasions when Cunard are not adhering to their stated policy "At least twice on each seven-night voyage we’ll host a Gala Evening." They have scheduled several intervals of 7 to 8 nights between gala evenings during the full 2024 QV World Voyage and that's OK since they don't schedule two gala evenings every seven days on longer voyages. But when your segment of that 2024 World Voyage from Auckland to Sydney is being sold as a separate 8-night voyage, they really should schedule two gala evenings on your voyage. Just as an aside, when I saw some of those gaps between gala evenings on the 2024 QV World Voyage, I wondered if they were reducing the number of gala evenings overall on the full World Voyage. I needn't have been concerned. Here is a comparison of the full 2023 and 2024 QV World Voyages, both starting and ending in Hamburg. 2023 QV World Voyage Number of nights: 105 Number of gala evenings: 24 Gala evenings per week: 1.60 2024 QV World Voyage Number of nights: 111 Number of gala evenings: 25 Gala evenings per week: 1.58

Good shots! Looks like my suggestion to rotate your phone did the trick to get these photos right side up when unloaded to Cruise Critic. Is that correct?

They're back up on the US and UK sites as well. Naturally all three sites have some differing content in their FAQs to cover country-specific topics. But I've noticed in the past the UK FAQ is significantly larger than the US FAQ. And now I see the Australia FAQ beats both of those handily. US FAQ: 268 questions UK FAQ: 408 questions Aistralia FAQ: 639 questions

This reply from @frankp01 on the "QM2 plug sockets" thread may help. Edit to add: I haven't actually tried this myself. I just use an extension cord for my CPAP. Note the socket for the bedside lamp is somewhere behind the bed. I've never tracked down precisely where it is. It doesn't sound like it's all that difficult to get access to that socket though.

Sorry, but I'm not clear what you mean by "logging in" before you eventually find the page where you enter your booking number, name and birthday. Those in the UK have a "log in" function but not those of us here in the US unless you've found something I haven't on the Cunard US website. Or perhaps do you mean logging in to your account on your travel agent website first? I do agree there are more steps than are really necessary on the Cunard US website to access your booking. Here are the steps starting from the Cunard US home page. 1) Click "Account" 2) Click "My Cunard" 3) Scroll down and Click "Visit My Cunard" 4) Enter your booking reference, first name, last name, date of birth and click "Login" However, you can bypass steps 1) through 3) by going directly to "my.cunard.com" in your browser. I bookmark that page to get there quicker. Hope this helps.

The specific arrival and departure times are listed on various travel agent/cruise booking websites. Those include Cunard's own partner websites for Spain, Austria and Switzerland. And if you are adventurous enough to dig into the page source code in your browser on the Cunard website itself, it's even possible to find the arrival and departure times listed there as well. Here is what I am seeing for your November 13-16, 2023 QM2 itinerary, crossed-checked using three different sources. It's showing a typical 6:30 AM early morning scheduled arrival time back at Southampton on November 19 which ought to bring you alongside by 7:00AM as @exlondoner has indicated if there are no delays. Nov 16: Southampton - Depart 5:00 PM Nov 18: Zeebrugge - Arrive 8:00 AM, Depart 5:00 PM Nov 19: Southampton - Arrive 6:30 AM Edit to add: QM2 occasionally does 2-night itineraries from Southampton to Zeebrugge and back. I've been on one of those with a scheduled arrival time of 6:30 AM back at Southampton.

I know it sounds counterintuitive but you absolutely can do better booking through some travel agents/cruise booking websites than booking directly through Cunard. There are even sites where you can enter the specifics of the cruise and cabin category you are interested in and receive competing bids from travel agents who choose to extend offers to you. Travel agents/cruise booking websites may not always offer a lower fare than Cunard. Sometimes the benefits they offer are additional onboard credit over what Cunard is offering or cash back after the cruise for example. The cruise booking website I use does routinely offer at least 5% off the fare available by booking directly with Cunard. That's not to say I unconditionally recommend using a discount travel agent/cruise booking website. It depends a lot on your comfort level turning over control of your booking to a third party you probably won't know much about and who might end up not being as responsive as you'd like when things go wrong or you need to change your booking.

Thank you for that contribution. In the past I was able to fill in most of the QM2 crossing schedules because they kept to a set pattern with very few exceptions. For 2024 they are keeping me guessing by mixing things up quite a bit. So far the pattern is the first gala evening on crossings in ether direction is going to be either Black and White or Red and Gold and the second is going to be either Roaring Twenties or Masquerade. On QM2 at least, they are breaking the long-standing pattern that the first gala/formal evening on any voyage departing Southampton across the fleet was almost always Black and White for the theme.

That's correct, I did not attempt to inventory Christmas trees in the Q1 and Q2 suites. To quote you more accurately, that's where your reply to my inventory of 32 Christmas trees on the "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas (on QM2)" thread suggested I might look for additional trees "in the spirit of enquiry". I did not attempt to inventory trees in the crew areas either for obvious reasons.

There are small signs at the base of the stairwells on deck 8 of QM2 stating something along the lines of "Grills guests only". Sorry I don't know the precise wording. I'm not certain about signage at the top of the stairways on deck 12. I don't get there very often. It's been my assumption that the grills terrace is not to be used by Britannia guests even if they are just passing through between decks 8 and 12. Whether anyone actually cares about that is another matter. I see there are past posts on this forum where it's stated there is no issue with guests passing through the grills terrace on their way between decks 8 and 12. On the other hand, I may just be imagining it but I seem to recall a post about a grills guest on one voyage who took it upon himself to confront those he saw simply passing through the grills terrace on their way between decks 8 and 12. If my memory is accurate about such a post, perhaps he was just acting on what he perceived to be the policy, not the actual policy. On the subject of being a grills interloper, I just remembered another occasion where I have transgressed into grills territory temporarily. Some of you may remember my inventory of Christmas trees on QM2 last year. That necessitated my entering the grills restaurants, the grills lounge and the concierge lounge just far enough when no one was using them to take photos of the Christmas trees near their entrances. Hopefully that was allowed "in the spirit of enquiry" as @exlondoner put it at the time. 😉

A couple of very fine photos there. To separate the photos, use the enter key to insert a blank line between them. It probably works best to add several blank lines after the text of the message before inserting the pictures. Then move the cursor back up to where you want the first photo to appear and insert it there. Finally move the cursor back down after the blank lines you added and insert the second photo there. Hope that's a clear description of the process.

Just a note about rotate functions in general to correct issues such as were encountered here. Tools to process images taken while holding the phone "upside down" will probably correct the orientation when brought into the tool. Then if you rotate them, you will end up with images which truly are "upside down". I've been tricked by that behavior in the past. Just save the images after you've done any other adjustments such as resizing or cropping and I think you'll find they will be in the correct "right side up" orientation to upload to Cruise Critic.

I'm going with Cagliari for this one. I think this photo may be a view of the tree-lined boulevard Largo Carlo Felice in Cagliari.

I'll help. Here's your photo rotated to the correct orientation. The problem probably has to do with how you are holding your phone to take the picture. One orientation is considered right side up and the other is upside down. When you take a photo holding your phone upside down, orientation information is recorded in the image telling software to rotate it 180 degrees. Most software will honor that orientation setting in the image, but the process of uploading the image to Cruise Critic apparently ignores that information, resulting in an upside down image.

Are they adjusting the dates of any of your other cslls to allow for the extra day in Port Elizabeth?

Thanks for those contributions, @esrs. I already had the schedules for the two QM2 crossings but I didn't have the M421 Norway voyage so that was very helpful. I've been told the schedules haven't been released for Queen Anne yet so I haven't started a document for the "H" voyages where you've also reported "Nothing yet".

I have to come clean. I was an interloper for about one minute on the stairway leading up to the grills terrace during our last QM2 voyage. I've seen photos of this window posted several times on various social media and it finally dawned on me where it must be. So I took my chances and snuck halfway up the stairway to take my own photo of this view. Please don't turn me in! 🤣

Thanks for that. The 3-night QE cruise in 2024 with no gala evenings under discussion here is very similar: Melbourne-Burnie-Sydney. As I look back through my old dress code and theme schedules, I see it's standard practice for there to be no gala evenings on that 3-night itinerary.

Plusgrade is the company that manages the upgrade bidding process. When you receive the email from Cunard stating you are eligible to bid on any upgrade, the link they provide in that email takes you to "upgrade.plusgrade.com/offer/...". The Plusgrade website states they partner with Azamara, Celebrity, Costa, Cunard, MSC, Norwegian, P&O, P&O Australia, Princess, Royal Caribbean, Uniworld and Virgin as their cruise clients. They have many more clients in other industries especially airlines (they list 77 airline clients).

I can confirm the schedules. There was indeed a call to Saint Vincent, Cape Verde Islands scheduled for QE on April 30, 2017 during the last segment from Cape Town to Southampton on the 2017 QE world voyage. I also have a call there listed for QV on May 3, 2016. That was also during the last segment of the 2016 QV world voyage from Cape Town to Southampton. Those calls by QE and QV are the only scheduled calls to Cape Verde I have documented for the current Cunard fleet. Both are listed as maiden calls in the brochures. I have a couple calls to Cape Verde documented for QE2 during 2000 and 2001 and one call documented for Caronia during 2003. We've seen Cape Verde on our "Where in the World?" thread thanks to @Lanky Lad contributing this photo from his call there on QE2.

Getting back to the details of the gala evening for your 5-night Tasmania cruise (voyage Q409A). Am I correct that you only have one gala evening and it's on March 6th, the sea day between Sydney and Melbourne? If that's correct, those who have booked the 3-night Short Break cruise from Melbourne to Sydney on March 7th to March 10th (voyage Q410), the second part of your cruise, apparently have no gala evenings on their schedule.