Underwatr

I don't know whether you should see it during booking (or if anything else on the Cunard website works as intended) but you are able to change your seating request in Manage My Booking, both seating and table size.

How is it in a mimosa (which is the only way I could enjoy Pol)?

Yes, but there's a charge for the coffee at Sir Samuel's.

Someone somewhere (if not here than on the socials) just recently posted about an overzealous agent in Fremantle enforcing the one bottle rule, apparently until they were corrected by a Cunard employee.

The response above mine offered info re: QM2 that I sought to clarify. No idea. I was last on in Jan 2020. I'll know more on Sunday.

I think if you've requested fixed you'll get fixed (most of Britannia seating is on Deck 2 which is fixed). If you find otherwise, discuss with the maitre d'.

I used to roll a soft sided case with 10-12 bottles of red wine aboard in Brooklyn.

My guess (having never been anywhere near Fremantle) is that they were enforcing the rule applicable to most lines, which is one bottle of wine per adult and no hard liquor. Hopefully better training and reminders from Cunard will fix it.

On QM2 there's a free coffee/tea station downstairs from the entrance to the Illuminations theatre/planetarium. It's where the daily planetarium tickets are distributed.

QM2's teak is much less slippery than QV and QE's material when wet.

It has been discussed here that QM2 dining recently changed, I think at end of October. We have the option to request fixed second seating on our Nov 2- - Dec 3 Caribbean trip. Our options are fixed first, fixed second or open (roughly during second service). Sounds like Open is being accommodated on Deck 3 and Fixed on Deck 2.

Yes. But only one at most is required. ^If more than 270 days (calculated from the last day of the cruise) have passed since the full completion of a vaccination course, a booster vaccine will also be needed and must be administered a minimum of seven days prior to travel.

Not to get into the weeds on drug interactions, but the NIH recommended interval is during and for 2-3 days after taking Paxlovid (for those medications that they recommend stopping). It's better to take the Paxlovid when it's time and not delay it because of when you last took a statin.

I think on the evening before it happens (Tuesday night in my hypothetical) but its absence Monday night might not make you realize that it's not happening that night if you've understood the published info incorrectly.

Good to know. I wasn't sure it would be possible to get a prescription for it "just in case." I had a mild case in May (fever broke within 12 hours of me testing positive) but still rebounded after having taken Paxlovid, so don't be surprised if that happens. I'd expect it to recur 10-14 days after your first positive test.

Typically for me it has been the announcement in the Daily Programme essentially saying "Clocks will be set ahead one hour tomorrow morning" and you forget that if your'e reading Tuesday's edition before going to bed Monday night, they're talking about changing the clocks early on Wednesday.

It would also be free in the US (at least for the time being). COVID has been the US's initial toe-dip into fully socialized medicine but now that the urgency is dying down so is the appetite for government to foot the bill. Ah, well. It was nice when the doctor said "we recommend this treatment" to be able to consider the treatment without immediately also considering the out-of-pocket cost. Only a few more months and I become eligible for Medicare, which can also be structured (with supplemental insurance) to be essentially zero out-of-pocket, at least for the services which Medicare covers.

Just don't walk on a wet deck on QV (and I assume QE) in leather soled shoes. Slippery.

For Sunday's embarkation we booked video observed sessions with Azova for the day before. You provide your own test (Azova can supply a test for a price but then you need to deal with the uncertainty and cost of shipping the test to you), and you schedule the test indicating which brand of test you're using (the schedule allows selecting a time as close a 5 minutes into the future). At the scheduled time you log in via phone or PC (with a webcam), they verify your ID, observe the test and its result and email you the certification of the medically observed test. There is some necessary uploading of an image of your ID so it's best to shedule a little further ahead of time. It appears that tests can be booked for residents of US, UK, or EU.

The single cabins are interesting in that they're unique, but IMO the 75% supplement for single occupancy of a double balcony cabin is the better deal (and may actually cost less money).

Seems to be a larger ratio of open to fixed on QV than on QM2 (based on allocation to upper vs lower deck) which could explain why QV is having trouble seating everyone 2nd/fixed who want it. We're planning for fixed second seating on QM2 next week and I'm encouraged to see that they're using the lower deck for fixed dining. As far as dealing with queues, can't one book a certain seating time with open seating in advance (or even request a standing reservation for a certain time on all nights)?

I was in the Royal Court Theatre on QM2 a couple of years ago when a woman a couple of rows ahead of me apparently died (later confirmed). The problem was that the entertainers couldn't see anything in the audience and continued singing and dancing for what felt like a long time.

If you can manage your own bags off the ship in one go you can get early disembarkation and be off before any "regular" time. I've never had a need to request an earlier time so I don't know how that works.

By class (Queens then Princess then Britannia, higher decks first). CWC Diamonds have an early disembarkation benefit and booked transfers are typically early. Self-disembarkation is permitted about 15 minutes before the first scheduled disembarking. As an example, here's the disembarkation schedule from a trip I took a few years ago. Finding your bags and then clearing immigration will take additional time, depending on your citizenship and how distinctive your bags are.

In my experience passengers on the airport shuttles are among the first to disembark (they're given distinct bag tags) so it would be unusual for Immigration (not Customs) to be that backed up that early.