bluemarble

2022

Our Cunard Christmas ecard arrived a few hours ago. It's the same image as above but cropped top and bottom to make it square. I'll post our complete e-card (including the additional marketing) on my tally of Cunard Christmas e-cards called "Cunard Christmas ecard images from years past."

Following @sogne's lead, here's a Christmas tree photo I can contribute from a port we've already seen.

To find the vintage group, look for "vintage transatlantic crossings". Note this isn't specifically a dance group.

Correct. That's the view from the "SingReef Downtown Singapore Coastal View" webcam. It's showing QE there the morning of October 30, 2022. Apparently the AXA Tower is/was considered to be the tallest "cylindrical" building in the world.

Good. I was hoping the "My Cunard" functionality would work for you if you needed to check on a future booking. In the past I've found that functionality is able to recognize which country the booking reference number is for and automatically directs you to the correct site for that booking when you log in.

Yeah, that's the "My Account" functionality which no longer works for the US as far as I know. If you manage to stumble onto a link that tries to take you there on the US Cunard website, it just tells you the following. "Unfortunately, My Account Login and Registration are currently undergoing maintenance repairs. Please know our teams are working hard to get My Account Login and Registration up and running again. If you have questions regarding your Cunard World Club account or loyalty status, please call Customer Service at (800) 728-6273." It has been that way for over a year now. It seems clear their teams are not working particularly hard to get "My Account" working again in the US.

Are you trying to "Log in to My Account" from "Manage my booking"? That functionality does use email addresses, but that does not apply to the US. We don't have the "My Account" functionality in the US. Or I should say we don't have it any more.

The only way I know to get to the US Cunard website while onboard is to use a VPN that makes it look like you are located in the US. I haven't dug into the details of the onboard wifi, but it is presumably making it look like you are accessing the internet from the UK (or some other location that directs you to the UK Cunard website). If you don't have VPN software installed on the device you are using, I imagine it could be a challenge to download and install one using the ship's wifi. I'm not sure I'm following the part about it not recognizing your email. I wasn't aware of functionality on the US Cunard website that uses email addresses other than to sign up for Cunard's special offers email mailing list.

Hint: The building in the center of this image blocking a large portion of the view is claimed to be the tallest building of its shape in the world. It is the 16th tallest building in this city overall. It is currently being demolished to be replaced by what will become the tallest building in this city.

Here's a capture in my collection from a rather peculiar webcam showing a Cunard ship gleaming in the morning sun to the right of center. This is a port we've seen before. I'm figuring this could be a challenge but I've been surprised about that before.

Unfortunately the bridge webcam images on the Cunard website have not been working for quite a few months now. The live video feeds from the bridge cameras are still being shown onboard the ships on the in-cabin TVs. But the periodic updates from those cameras to the Cunard website haven't been happening. I see now they aren't even trying to display those bridge webcam images on the "See ship details" pages for each of the ships on the Cunard website any more. As long as they were displaying those broken webcam images on the Cunard website, I was holding out hope someone would fix the issue. But now, sad to say, it may be time to unstick this thread and let it fade away, @Host Hattie. 😞

Cunard posted a video on their facebook page today of the large Christmas tree being decorated on QM2 this year as their "fifth day of Christmas" gift. The first six seconds of the video show a rapid time lapse of what the process of setting up the tree in the Grand Lobby looked like on November 28th. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1114670642537110

Some of you may remember contributor @Cruachan who went my the moniker "Jimmy Three-Breakfasts". Sadly he is no longer with us but I have no doubt he would heartily agree.

I think we are going to need another hint for this one. You've provided some intriguing clues but they aren't clicking with me, I'm afraid. And naturally the image itself isn't too much help (even using google image search 😉).

That's a tool I use from time to time if I can't figure it out otherwise. But if it provides more than just a general hint at the location, requiring no further research to verify, I'll take a pass on identifying that image. Lately I've mostly been using it to determine how challenging my own contributions of ports we've already seen are likely to be.

Well done, @Yaldi. Those are both webcam captures from the Puerto de Santander website showing QV's maiden call there on October 27, 2022. That website has multiple webcams with three of them providing views of QV's departure that day. I posted a capture from one of them at the time on the "Queen Victoria current location" thread and have been saving the other two for later use here. Here are the uncropped images for reference.

Oh, sorry, I see now you are from Melbourne and your posting history indicates you are booked on a 2-night cruise in January. So you are posting about the Melbourne-Sydney cruise January 5-7, 2023 (and of course aren't using US date order). As you no doubt noticed, I previously had January 6, 2023 for QE marked down as a Smart Attire evening. I don't recall where I got that information or how old it might be. I will go ahead and switch that date to Gala Evening now per your report here. Cunard do often schedule a Gala Evening for the sea day between Melbourne and Sydney to accommodate those on the short 2-night itineraries. But they also tend to schedule those Gala Evenings without themes. Case in point is the cruise from Sydney to Melbourne departing later today. There is a Gala Evening scheduled tomorrow, the sea day before Melbourne, but it also doesn't have a theme listed.

Here's a follow-up image for today. This is a different webcam capture from the same afternoon showing a partial view of the Cunard ship as it was just getting underway from the same port. Again I have cropped some of the full webcam image to prevent google image search from recognizing it immediately. Mostly what I've cropped out are a few more cranes off to the right and more of the bridge structure similar to what's shown in this view.

Lower berth capacity is essentially not counting the extra capacity of cabins with third and fourth berths (where those are often configured as upper berths). I don't know for sure if it counts extra berths such as sofa beds that aren't physically "upper" berths, but I suspect it does not. In general it seems to be a pretty good way to measure how full a ship is since it's difficult for a ship to sail with all its extra berths occupied. Cruise lines strive to sail at greater than 100% capacity, meaning more than the lower berth capacity. As an aside, it's interesting to note QM2's lower berth capacity increased from 2,620 to 2,695 after the 2016 remastering. But I don't think her maximum passenger capacity changed by much. The remastering added quite a few new double occupancy cabins on deck 13 but quite a few of the previous four berth cabins were also reclassified to only allow double occupancy after the remastering.

Gala evenings don't always have themes. It sounds like your voyage might have a non-themed gala evening scheduled for June 1, 2023. Are you on the QE voyage from Yokohama to Vancouver from May 24 to June 8, 2023? Please let me know which other evenings are scheduled as gala evenings on your voyage and what the themes are going to be on those evenings. Thanks.for your help to fill in the schedule.

Not sure what's typical for this time of year. It's certainly better than last year around this time when I was reporting less than 60% of capacity for QM2 and QE with QV not yet back in service. I suppose there are still some cabins being held back for possible isolation use on QV although I don't know that for sure. If so, that 87% figure for QV today does sound pretty good to me.

Here are the numbers for QV's departure today on her Atlantic Coast Adventure cruise to Spain, Gibraltar and Portugal. QV - December 11, 2022: 1820 pax; 963 crew; pax/crew: 1.89 That's ≈87% of her 2081 lower berth passenger capacity.

Let's try this one. This is a webcam capture showing a distant view of a Cunard ship departing a port we've already seen. I've cropped the webcam banner for obvious reasons, but I've also cropped a portion of the remaining image so that it's not instantly recognizable to a google image search.

On recent QM2 voyages (including our Caribbean cruise in November), the starboard side of deck 5 forward of the B lifts was closed off for possible isolation purposes. I figure that section would account for a reduction of about 100 in the available lower berth capacity.