Underwatr

I've never seen FCDs available to US passengers on Cunard. Future bookings for a specific itinerary, yes (and I believe those were transferable to a different itinerary). I have bought FCDs on Princess and Holland America. If Cunard makes/made them available to US passengers it is/was a well-kept secret. I'd be happy to see whether Americans are still privileged when I'm on QM2 in Novermber if you'd like.

I haven't done it recently but every year when the schedules were released I used to do a spreadhseet of the eastbounds vs westbounds and the intervals between them to figure out the opportunities for an itinerary like you're hoping to find. The easiest way to do it is when they do a "Grand" voyage which is a pair of transatlantics bookending 5-7 days somewhere like Scandinavia. In 2019 we booked two crossings between New York and Hamburg separated by five days. The other option is to find crossings as close together as you want or need. Go eastbound on one and westbound however many weeks later. The ship doesn't always go back and forth without some activity on one end or the other so while you might find a westbound 14 to 16 days after the eastbound it will be more likely that you'll be able to board for the return home around three weeks +/- after you disembark in Southampton (or in some cases Hamburg). It's just a matter of studying the schedules and figuring out the intervals between crossings vs. how long you'd like to spend.

Is the private car $60 per person? I've only seen the large buses (with luggage underneath).

Since both have been mentioned, I'll add that the $60 transfer is on a bus, not a car service. In case it matters. A taxi will be on the order of $50-60 for the two of you. You can get a quote for a car service at dial7 dot com.

In My Cunard, go to Your Calendar. At the bottom of the page you'll see "View Your Existing Orders." Click there and (for the excursion you want to cancel?) click on "Details" and next to the excursion description there's a link that says "Cancel."

I was booked on the November Caribbean roundtrip out of New York in 2022. We had to cancel at the last minute and Cunard Care issued a full reimbursement (a travel protection / insurance payout isn't really a "refund" per se since it coms from different money) within a day of our initial document submission.

It used to be (well, the language that said "we really don't mean to enforce it but we have it in case there's a problem and we need to enforce something" used to be in the FAQs) but I don't think it's there any more. I saved the (US, not that it matters in a practical sense) booking terms from a cruise I had booked last year and in that document is this statement: "Guests agree not to bring alcoholic beverages of any kind on board for consumption except one bottle of wine or champagne per person of drinking age (no larger than 750 mL) per Voyage only in his/her carry-on luggage." You and I know this stipulation is horse hockey, but there it is in the contract. That's why people ask about it time and time again and assurances from passengers with a couple of dozen voyages under their belt don't gain much traction.

I skimmed over the OP and didn't notice that this was happening this week. A canal transit is always a great trip but this one will also be very warm! Hopefully the ship will be able to make the transit on schedule. I believe passenger vessels can reserve a transit time and have priority, while cargo ships must queue. Capacity is down due to low rainfall in the area of Gatun Lake.

GF sent her expedited renewal in on July 17 (she lost track of time and I had just made final payment for a Nov-Dec cruise) and the State Dept's guidance was that we should get it with a bit of time to spare. She got it back in about four weeks. Now we're planning an October trip to Quebec City, most because we can.

Strictly speaking, impossible is merely an extreme case of more difficult. 🫤

In the US many private/employee and some Medicare supplement policies (as opposed to basic original Medicare) provide reimbursement for emergency care received outside the US subject to limitations (typically 80% reimbursement, & the Medicare supplements have a $50,000 lifetime cap on non-US emergency care). From experience I know that having such coverage is a factor in travel insurance reimbursement since the travel insurance coverage is typically secondary and they won't reimburse until the primary carrier has ruled on the claim. But the emergency care for the incident is just the beginning of the expenses that are incurred so travel insurance is a major consideration.

I looked up how they recycle the water in a given lock. Essentially they store the water drained from the top of the lock when lowering the ship, and put it back into the middle of the lock when refilling it. Ditto for upper middle slice to the lower middle slice, and for the middle slice to the lower slice. About 60% of the working volume of the lock is stored and reused, all without any pumps.

You can provide a different credit card for excursion pre-booking than you plan to provide at embarkation. Perhaps you can spend an evening with your friend helping her book excursions you plan to do together and provide your credit card and she pays you cash or a check or whatever. Given a choice I'd stick my card number into a Cunard web form rather than having a cruise port employee swipe it at embarkation. The risk of a skim is much higher there then on the website (and the info ends up in the same database anyway).

I did that itinerary (with some differences in ports of call, no doubt) on QV in 2011. You'll enjoy it, and I'm sure you'll fall in love with QE.

As someone mentioned, the benefits are slightly different for US and UK bookings. A UK/AUS/NZ veteran booked on a US fare earns the US-defined benefit from my interpretation of the two pages. https://www.cunard.com/en-gb/military https://www.cunard.com/en-us/military It's not necessary to provide your veteran status at time of booking - at least for a US booking the only way to provide the required documentation is in a separate transaction after the cruise is booked.

Yes. For Princess, the shareholder benefit is no longer combinable with military/veteran benefits.

Rather than assume that you know this, I'll add that if you're a military veteran, retired, or active duty (US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand) you're eligible for onboard credit in an amount equal to what you earn as a Carnival shareholder ($50, $100, $250 depending on the cruise length). Unlike the shareholder credit, once Cunard knows of your veteran status it becomes associated with your Cunard World Club (frequent passenger) number and will automatically show up on future bookings. You can earn both benefits in a given cruise.

One thing I've noticed on HA (Amsterdam and later Eurodam) was dance floors in every lounge with suitable music in each one at some time throughout the day. On QM2 if you're intending to dance it's pretty much the Queens Room. QM2 shows movies in Illuminations which is about as good a movie theatre as I've been to on land (with the exception of the heated recliners that I now see at many land-based theatres). Great sound, 3D projection capability.

That's really funny to me because on QM2, Deck 5 is in no way close to the water. Here's a little test. Go to your preferred Deck 11 (or 13, or 10 if you have the pocketbook), stand at your lovely glass-front balcony railing, and look down. Do you see the hull cutting through the water? Can you hear the bow wave? No - you might as well fly. I've traveled above Deck 7 and below, but give me a sheltered balcony on Deck 5 forward any day.

In BklynBoy8's photo, it's the narrow part close to the stateroom wall that can be folded back. You can just make out the round chrome latch port that the tool fits into. There are some exceptions - where the ship has firebreaks and self-closing doors (normally held open magnetically) in the passageways, those fire breaks extend out to the walls between staterooms and they don't have doors that can be opened. You can see these on the deck plan, such as the wider spaces between 6086 and 6088 and between 6083 and 6085 in the excerpt below.

It's not summer in the US until the solstice on June 21

- Lunch in the Golden Lion (they close at 2:30 so you need to have an early enough embarkation and/or the embarkation team not enforce a later time) - Run to Britannia with the table assignment and check out the location. Saves time trying to find it or waiting to be escorted there later. - Anyone notice that QM2 has a characteristic smell? It hits me on the gangway. Feels relaxing.

The same price will be available onboard. Cunard World Club members at the Gold level (third voyage) and above are given credit toward the purchase of an internet package but the CWC benefits page points out that we can't use those credits toward a package bought prior to boarding. It then promises that the same pricing will be available onboard as prior to boarding.

I'm not affected by this particular incident but like many US residents I "plan for the worst" by buying comprehensive trip insurance, typically shopping for policies on InsureMyTrip. I do carefully read the detail of the policies before purchasing and try to anticipate what likely events would or would not be covered by a given policy Out of curiosity I looked back over my travel insurance policies over the past few years to see how well I would have been covered for this unusual event had I arrived in Southampton only to discover that I needed to find my own way back to New York. One policy, sold by CSA, would appear to have covered me. Its Trip Interruption paragraphs say it would cover "Common Carrier delays and/or cancellations resulting from adverse weather, mechanical breakdown of the aircraft, ship, boat or motor coach that you were scheduled to travel on, or organized labor strikes that affect public transportation;." Other policies, such as that sold by Nationwide, would only cover the travel supplier's Bankruptcy or Default, the latter defined as "a material failure or inability to provide contracted services due to financial insolvency." I'd say you can try to make plans for the worst, but the worst might entail outcomes you didn't expect you'd have to plan for.

The cruise options presented to me included Caribbean (mostly out of Jamaica, I said that from San Juan would be better for US residents), Hawaii from San Francisco (from LA is easier to add the PVSA stop), and south Pacific between Singapore and Sydney. I don't recall an Alaska itinerary.