bluemarble

I haven't figured out the location yet. I'll start by attempting to identify the ship. This looks like one of the Hurtigruten ships. The best match appears to be MS Otto Sverdrup, formerly known as MS Finnmarken until 2020.

Very good, @alc13! That means I didn't need to post this webcam image of your departure showing a VERY distant view of your ship which I've circled in red.

That sounds like what I might expect. Perhaps normal boarding times but with an extended all aboard time since she won't be leaving until the next morning. Do let us know if you hear anything further from Cunard.

The word on other social media is that QM2 is arriving Southampton early and departing late because "...there are technical stuff that needs to be done...". I know, that's not all that helpful, but that's what is being said elsewhere for whatever that might be worth.

I don't know if the boarding time has been delayed any. Have you been told that? QM2 is actually going to be arriving early into Southampton Saturday evening but not departing until Monday morning. We've been discussing QM2's altered schedule on this thread.

It will be interesting to see what effect if any QM2's delayed departure from Southampton until the morning of April 24th will have on her arrival in New York on April 30th. She certainly is capable of making up the time (about 16 hours) for an ontime arrival in New York if they let her. We are scheduled to board QM2 in New York on April 30th so will be keeping an eye on the situstion with particular interest.

Since the restart of operations, jackets are indeed no longer required for gentlemen on the Smart Attire evenings. I have some concerns about what may be happening to the Gala Evening dress code. As I mentioned in another thread, the "What to pack" page on the Cunard website for both the UK and Australia was recently changed to read as follows. "At least twice on each seven-night voyage we’ll host a Gala Evening, where we do ask that you observe an elevated dress code." Note the word "black-tie" in the previous wording has been changed to "elevated". And then there is this new wording. "Formal suits are only required on board a Transatlantic cruise on Gala Evenings ..." I look forward to finding out in a few weeks what is specified for the dress code once on board QM2 for both a transatlantic crossing and a cruise to Norway.

Sorry, I don't have a better picture of the Boardwalk Cafe table setup. You can find better images elsewhere online using a google image search for QM2 Boardwalk Cafe. But I can offer this photo showing some of the deck area where the tables are set up when the Boardwalk Cafe is in use. This shot was taken with my back near the Boardwalk Cafe entrance. This does show some of the tables used for the Boardwalk Cafe stacked up in their stowed position when not in use.

FYI, I'm not sure how I managed to list Sally Gunnell OBE for voyage V310 (Southampton-Hamburg). I'm not finding any speakers for voyage V310 now. She is only mentioned for the no-longer-valid/already-sailed voyage Q313. I now figure the current list on the "Guest speakers on board page" represents 16 different voyages (of which two have already sailed). By the way, I figured there are 177 remaining voyages for 2023 by adding the 163 voyages which appear on the voyage search results plus 14 additional voyages that appear when I request "sold out" voyages. I realize now that's an over-estimate for our purposes here since it counts some voyages more than once. For example, that counts both segments of a round trip crossing as well as the round trip crossing itself. So, I should probably retract my statement concerning what percentage of the remaining 2023 voyages are represented on that speakers list. That percentage will be higher if I were to come up with a more accurate count of the number of remaining 2023 voyages for our purpose here. But then if I were to remove the two already-sailed voyages, which is a reasonable thing to do, that reduces the list of voyages with speakers mentioned to 14. That in turn reduces the percentage of remaining 2023 voyages with speakers mentioned. OK, once again I've well and truly over-analyzed this situation. 🤣

My pleasure. This is the kind of project I enjoy doing, both for my own curiosity and to help contribute to discussions such as this. I had started this project once before but apparently got distracted the first time around. I had almost completed that list of speakers this time when I saw your reply, so I added that timely reference to you just before submitting my reply.

Yeah, that happens when the 'view voyages' link provides an invalid or already-sailed voyage number. That happens now for Sally Gunnell OBE where the 'view voyages' link supplies voyage number Q313. I'm not sure that was ever a valid voyage number, but it it was, it would have referred to some portion of the recently completed Singapore-Yokohama voyage. Last year's page was riddled with links like that providing voyage numbers that were invalid or had already sailed.

This is Cunard's page which I previously described as follows. "About all Cunard publishes on their website is a "Guest speakers on board" page which provides only a very limited list of speakers. That list is mostly the speakers for special event cruises such as the Literature Festival at Sea and some of the QE Alaska voyages." I took on the task of documenting which voyages are represented on that "Guest speakers on board" page. Here is the master list of the 17 voyages for the 29 speakers currently listed on that page, sorted by voyage number (here you are @techteach). M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Yvonne Battle-Felton M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Antony Beevor M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Luigi Bonomi M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Clare Chambers M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Alex Clark M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Artemis Cooper M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Daniel Finkelstein M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Alan Johnson M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Clare Mackintosh M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Val McDermid M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Greg Mosse M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Kate Mosse M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Andrew Hunter Murray M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Jamie Susskind M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Alan Titchmarsh M335 - Literature Festival at Sea - Lynda La Plante CBE Q313 - Singapore-Tokyo (Sailed) - Sally Gunnell OBE Q315 - Beatles and Beyond (Sailed) - The Bootleg Beatles Q320 - Alaska - Joseph Frey Q321 - Alaska - Jill Heinerth Q322 - Alaska - John Geiger Q323 - Alaska - Philip Gray Q323 - Alaska - George Kourounis Q324 - Alaska - Philip Gray Q325 - Alaska - Lynn Moorman Q326B - Alaska - Mensun Bound Q329 - Eastbound Transatlantic Crossing - Philip Gray Q331 - Western Mediterranean Sherree - Valentine-Daines V310 - Southampton-Hamburg - Sally Gunnell OBE V312 - Canary Islands - Yuvi V318 - Iceland and British Isles - Sherree Valentine-Daines V324 - Western Mediterranean - Pip McGarry V327 - Central Mediterranean - John Waterhouse Now 17 voyages (two of which have recently sailed) represents about 10% of the remaining 177 voyages for 2023. And with only one speaker listed for most of these voyages, that makes this list even more incomplete. I wonder if this list is limited to the designated "celebrity" speakers for these voyages. Anyway, while better than nothing, I think you'll agree this list falls well short of the master lists of guest speakers Cunard used to provide.

Here's a link to a QV bar menu. It's apparently from August 2022 since the document name is "qv_main_bar_menu_aug_2022a.pdf". It shouldn't be too far off I would think. https://www.cunard.com/content/dam/cunard/my-voyage/pdfs/qv/qv_main_bar_menu_aug_2022a.pdf

Yeah, that's an old version of the Cunard World Club Benefits page which can still be found on the Cunard US website at https://www.cunard.com/en-us/the-cunard-experience/world-club-benefits. The updated Cunard World Club page, similar to what @Splice the mainbrace has indicated, is found on the Cunard US website at https://www.cunard.com/en-us/cunard-world-club. I'm not sure if there is still a link to that old page within the Cunard US website itself. I found it via a google search. When I do a google search for Cunard World Club Benefits (the title of the old page), that old page is the first search result I receive and the new page is the second result. When I just search for Cunard World Club (the title of the new page), that gives me the new page as the first search result and the old page as the second result.

You are correct about how the new Internet plans work along with the Cunard World Club Internet credits you receive now. For the Essential Plan, you either pay $24 for 24 hours of usage from the time of purchase, or you pay $18 per day for all the remaining days of your voyage at the time of purchase. If you don't need to use the Internet every day, your best bet might be to purchase individual 24-hour segments as you go for $24 each. Assuming you are a couple and you are both Platinum, your two $80 Internet credits will allow each of you to purchase three separate 24-hour packages as you go. That will cover a total of six days without having to pay extra for Internet access. They do give each Cunard World Club member separate Internet credits based on their individual Cunard World Club status. Each member has to purchase the plans separately in order to use their credits though. You couldn't purchase a full-voyage plan at $18 per day and expect your combined Internet credits to pay for $160 of that plan. Only one $80 credit would be applied in that case for whichever one of you purchased the full-voyage plan. If your Internet credits do not refresh each segment (as @TheOldBear has just indicated), then that's basically it. You'd get a combined total of six days for free. Naturally, if they ever decide to address that issue and refresh your credits each segment, that would give you quite a bit more benefit.

Same here. I've seen no mention of dinner in the Golden Lion in any of my QM2 daily programmes. The standard hours listed for "Pub Lunch" are 12:00pm-2:30pm. On the days when the clocks are moved ahead at noon on eastbound crossings, those hours were adjusted to 11:30am-2:30pm. Recently on embarkation day the hours were listed as 1:00pm-4:00pm. No other hours listed for meal service in the Golden Lion on QM2.

To see what the obstructed views look like, see this thread which is a sticky at the top of this board. They only show the portside cabins, so for the view from starboard cabin 5125, check the cabin opposite from it on the port side. That is cabin 5130. The view from 5125 will be the mirror image of the view shown for cabin 5130.

I think I've tracked down the identify of the other cruise ship in this image (to the right of center). That's probably Emerald Princess. She was on a British Isles cruise from Southampton with a call at St Peter Port scheduled for August 2, 2022. And that profile is a pretty good match to Emerald Princess.

Booking reference number perhaps, if you have them? I have a spreadsheet with just the ship and the start and end dates as input where I calculate the nights from the dates and total the number of cruises and nights. I may go back now and add cruise number, cabin and booking reference number if I can find all that information. Thanks for the suggestion.

I didn't record the other ships in the image at the time. That certainly does look like the Commodore Clipper.

That's correct. That image is from the Victoria Marina webcam found on Nest's webcam page for the Island of Guernsey (at "www.nest.gg"). It shows QV's call at St Peter Port last year on August 2, 2022.

Here's another webcam image from my archives showing a Cunard ship at a port we've seen before. There's more detail here than some of my more obscure webcam captures of beach scenes, so hopefully this one is identifiable without too much difficulty. No port cranes to work with this time though. 🙂

I have been neglecting my duties and hadn't been looking for a webcam image at this port! It's not a webcam I was familiar with until now. Looks like this may have been close to a real-time posting. This is Naha, Okinawa where QE departed about seven hours ago.

Ah, thanks for that clarification. I guess I never noticed Queen Mary 2 was written on the back of the Teddy Gilet bear for sale on QM2 (or more likely I just forgot). I'm not a collector myself. Just like to keep track of all the bears that have been on offer over the years.

Right. That's the generic Cunard bear known as the "Teddy Gilet". Over the years there have been other Cunard bears on offer including some that have the ship name written on them. And then there is the series of annual Cunard bears that have been for sale on board the ships. The 2022 bear was "Arthur". I'm waiting to hear if anyone has spotted a 2023 annual bear yet.