bluemarble

No, they do not. Coach transfers to/from Heathrow, Gatwick, St Pancras or Victoria Coach Station are available add-ons for an additional charge of $90 per person.

Oh yes indeed, they still advertise transatlantic crossings to/from London for the US market. I suppose they figure London resonates better than Southampton for potential customers over here. This is from a recent email.

Oh yes, there was this one as well, originally posted by @Dranuc2016. This was for what was to be Queen Anne's inaugural westbound crossing in January 2024 to Fort Lauderdale via the Azores and Port Canaveral. This photo is even more obviously New York rather than any of the calls on that itinerary.

Before the shutdown, all QM2 crossings had three gala evenings (as @D&N has mentioned). The gala evenings were on days 2, 4 and 6 with the evening of day 4 having no theme. Since the resumption of service, the evening of day 4 is no longer a gala evening. When I examine the dress code schedules for 2019 and what was planned for 2020, it's a bit hit-or-miss concerning the number of gala evenings on 14-night voyages. Some of them did indeed have only three gala evenings while others had four scheduled.

Unfortunately there are other examples like this. First of all, here is the full Lofoten Islands photo for voyage M325 to the Norwegian Fjords. The URL for that photo contains "Olden.jpg". Now Olden is on the itinerary for M325, but of course this isn't a photo of Olden. Take a look at voyage M315, Norwegian Fjords. It uses this photo. The URL for this photo contains "Stavanger.jpg". Stavanger is on the itinerary for voyage M315. However this is actually a photo of Alesund which is not on the itinerary. So Cunard is being sloppy with how they identify some of their photos. Apparently someone thought that photo for M325 was Olden and that photo for M315 was Stavanger. The example I believe @Host Hattie may be remembering was for a transatlantic crossing on Queen Anne from Fort Lauderdale to Southampton in February 2024. That voyage has been canceled, but it had been using this photo of Central Park in New York.

That has been the new normal since the restart of operations in 2021. That corresponds to when Cunard cut back on the number of Gala Evenings from three to two per crossing on QM2. Cunard does state the following on their "What to pack" page. "At least twice on each seven-night voyage we’ll host a Gala Evening" However, that does not necessarily mean they will host four Gala Evenings on a voyage of fourteen nights. They will host two Gala Evenings each week of a fourteen-night voyage if it is also sold as individual seven-night voyages. But if it is only sold as a fourteen night voyage, they typically only schedule three Gala Evenings now. There was one case shortly after QM2 resumed operations where a 28-night Caribbean cruise in Jan-Feb 2022 had only four Gala Evenings scheduled during that entire cruise. Quoting from my "Dress Code and Theme Schedules for 2021-22" thread: "Now here's a final update on the number of gala evenings per week for each ship for 2021-22. QM2: 1.87 Gala Evenings per week QE: 1.68 Gala Evenings per week QV: 1.75 Gala Evenings per week"

OK, I'll officially identify this one as Fukuoka, Japan. One more port we can now move from the "unseen" to "seen" ports list. Thanks for posting @alc13!

I have read elsewhere they will indeed be having the Black and White theme as advertised instead of the Roaring Twenties theme and the calendar in the cruise personaliser (My Cunard) has now been corrected accordingly.

I figured this one would have been identified by now. I imagine @sfred knows. For those who would like some hints, the light blue sign at the far left says "Hakata". And the wording on the top of the roof ends in "uoka". Combine that with the apparent ethnicity of the drummers and I think you'll be able to identify this one.

The comped dinner in the steakhouse from your travel agent won't show up anywhere within your booking in My Cunard. If you'd like confirmation of that, ask your travel agent to provide you with a "Booking Confirmation (Guest Copy)" from Cunard that lists it.

I don't have clarification, but I have a theory. That Roaring Twenties theme (on May 5th) is probably just a hold-over from the schedule for the eastbound crossing originally scheduled during the dates of this new Coronation Celebration cruise. May 5th would have been the second gala evening for that crossing and the second gala evenings of eastbound crossings are always Roaring Twenties. I suspect no one has updated the dress code and theme schedule from that eastbound crossing to what will actually happen on this new Coronation Celebration cruise. My hunch is May 3rd might be the mentioned Black & White gala since it's typical for Cunard to schedule a Black & White gala on the first sea day after departing Southampton. I'm not sure if they would plan May 6th, coronation day itself, as a gala evening since that's the evening prior to disembarkation. Of course they certainly might make an exception given the importance of the day.

OK, I'll take this one now. This is a view of the cruise terminal at Kanazawa, Japan. Another port we can now move from the "unseen" to the "seen" ports list.

Time to amend these counts to take into account the two crossings recently canceled. The 2023 crossings count drops from 18 to 16. QM2 Crossings Per Year 2004 = 15 2005 = 26 2006 = 20 2007 = 23 2008 = 24 2009 = 23 2010 = 21 2011 = 21 2012 = 20 2013 = 18 2014 = 18 2015 = 22 2016 = 21 2017 = 24 2018 = 24 2019 = 24 2020 = 1 2021 = 1 2022 = 26 2023 = 16 2024 = 20 Total QM2 crossings through 2024 = 408. If Cunard's counts agree with mine, the westbound crossing departing Southampton on August 16, 2024 now should be QM2's 400th transatlantic crossing. Sorry to those who were anticipating the July 21, 2024 crossing might be the one for that milestone.

Plus, I'd be concerned if we in the US booked this through the UK office we might end up booking under the UK terms and conditions. Among other things that would require £2 million of medical insurance cover. At least that's something to clarify for anyone from the US who might want to try to book that Coronation Celebration Voyage.

One of our former frequent contributors from the UK, capnpugwash, called it "Thanksgiving".

I'm easily convinced to add another port to our list. Since we've counted a few other ports like this with multiple terminals in different sections of the city, it would appear this also ought to qualify as multiple ports for the purposes of our game. For the sake of brevity, I'd suggest listing them as follows. Busan (Cruise Terminal), Korea Busan (Passenger Terminal), Korea

This one is Busan, South Korea. QE's port of call on April 23.

The Southampton VTS website has been updated to show QM2 scheduled to depart April 27 at a time TBA. It still shows her destination as New York which of course is not correct. But that updated departure date from April 24 to April 27 is an interesting development.

At this point I think I can count us as lucky ones in this whole situation. We were booked on the full 26-night round trip voyage New York-Southampton-Norway and back (April 30-May 26). But I booked the voyage as three separate segments (eastbound, Norway, westbound). So now, assuming QM2 will resume service on May 7th with the cruise to Norway, we still have two of the three segments we can salvage. I had booked our flights to/from New York using frequent flier miles which I was able to cancel and have my miles reinstated. We are now booked on a flight to London next week instead. Much as we would have loved to celebrate the King's coronation on board QM2, the opportunity we now have to join in some of the celebrating in the UK ought to be even more special. So, in the spirit of making lemonade from lemons, we are now looking forward to an abbreviated 19-night QM2 voyage starting from Southampton instead of New York. That said, I do feel for all those who have been deeply impacted by this situation and the massive disruptions to plans these cancelations have caused.

This doesn't provide much detail but I'll transcribe an excerpt from a video interview I found with Matt Gleaves, Cunard's VP, Commercial - North America and Australasia. One of the questions he was asked was about Cunard's plans for the King's coronation. Here is his response. "We've been linked to royalty for a number of years, so you know we'll make sure we celebrate [the King's coronation] really well. We'll keep some of the plans top secret for now, but there will be various different people on board who have experienced the Royal Family that will be talking to our guests. We'll obviously do some signature pieces with our dining and our beverage option on board the ships. So yeah we'll absolutely be marking the occasion and making a celebration." You've mentioned QV specifically, but I'll add that one of the Insights Guest Lecturers on QM2 will be the curator of the Guards Museum in London. He will be tailoring one of his talks to the King's coronation.

Since we've started a new page and it's been several pages since I last posted our ports lists, here are updated versions including the addition of Yatsushiro to the seen ports list. I think we're now up to 617 entries in our seen ports list. I've added a few more ports to the unseen list for ports recently visited on QE's itineraries. Where in the World 2023-04-22.txt Cunard ports not seen yet 2023-04-22.txt

Just a reminder we have relaxed the original rules quite a bit. Your photos don't actually have to show the ship any more. Any photo you may have taken ashore yesterday showing a feature of the city we might be able to figure out will do fine. Or a photo taken from the ship showing any of the port will do fine as well.

QM2 returns to Southampton this evening to complete her 2023 world voyage for those who started in Southampton. She's returning early with reports there is a technical issue with one of her engines which needs to be worked on while she's in port. As of this posting, she isn't scheduled to depart Southampton until the morning of Monday, April 24th. This is a capture from the Netley Cam stream on the Solent Ships YouTube Channel.

It's always good to see new names joining our game. Welcome to @alc13 and @Sue-B! Although we haven't officially identified your current "by request" photo yet @alc13, it's clear several of us have figured it out. I'd also like to make a request for a photo of the port you visited yesterday since that's a new Cunard port we haven't seen yet. There are going to be several other ports on your current itinerary we haven't seen yet, so it would be great if you could contribute photos of those ports as well when the time comes. Thanks so much for adding to our seen Cunard ports list!

Well, that certainly helps concentrate the search! I can stop looking at ports in Norway and the Hebrides and Orkneys now. There aren't many ports in Wales on our seen ports list. But even better, there is only one port in Wales on the current itineraries for Hurtigruten in general and Otto Sverdrup in particular. From there it took a bit of searching but I eventually found a match for the coastline in this photo at Fishguard, Wales.