wolfie789

We took a 20-month-old on the QE in August for a five-night cruise and meant to write up a full review but never got round to it. We were in QG and were rather nervous having been in the Grills six or so times as a couple without kids and having seen how few children were typically in the Grills specifically or on the ship more generally for some sailings.

We worried a lot about the night nursery but needn't have in general. The first curveball happened on the first night - with no warning we were informed it would not run, so having got our little one's bedtime perfectly aligned with the night nursery time, we ended up having her with us at dinner. From then on, it worked pretty well. We were very lucky in that no other parents made use of the night nursery during our trip. This meant we were able to carry her in her pyjamas from our cabin and settle her there. I honestly don't know how it would have worked otherwise.

Other aspects of the trip worked really well for us. The restaurant staff could not do enough to look after our daughter and spoilt her rotten. Room service, which we hadn't made much use of before, is suddenly a God-send when you have a toddler requiring snacks at all hours of the day.

I agree entirely than Cunard could do a lot more to improve their communication in this area. While we know they are not a family-centred line, they do accept toddlers on board and it is nerve-racking for parents to have so little information.

16 minutes ago, WestonOne said:

It was a long time ago I started this, but to let those know who were interested.  I did order the shirred eggs for breakfast.  After I had spelled the name for him, my waiter went to the kitchen and came back to let me know they could make them, but warned me they would be a very long time.  So I said that was fine, I would have something else that day, but would like to order it for the next day.  I also offered to phone ahead about half an hour before breakfast to let them start preparations, but they did not take me up on the offer.

The next day it still took around 20-25 minutes to prepare, but the maitre d' brought it personally and asked if I would like caviar on top, as that is apparently the classic recipe.  All the wait staff were very interested as apparently it has not been a standard on the menu since the QE2 (they told me!) so none of the wait staff had encountered the dish before.  The chefs might, or they might have had to consult their books!

Great to hear about this. It sounds like a silly thing to say but I am always grateful for those who are keeping the QG off-menu tradition alive!

My advice would be that asking politely will do no harm at all. Like others, our off-menu requests have always been at lunch and dinner (by off-menu I mean something entirely different to what is offered, rather than tweaks to it) but that surely doesn't rule out breakfast. Part of the fun of QG is off-menu ordering so within reason one shouldn't feel bad about making use of the facility.

The dumbing down is definitely real. We are in our early 30s, started cruising with Cunard ten years ago, and are always at the smarter end of the dress-code. Such a shame that the elegance and formality of Cunard isn't seen as a selling point any more. There are *so* many other lines we could go to if what we wanted was a casual experience in the evening.

I don’t want to misrepresent others’ views here but I think few would disagree that standards of dress are becoming more informal in general and many of us have experienced that formality also varies from country to country. That isn’t the issue for us. Rather, it is whether Cunard will lose part of what makes it special by lowering the standard of the dress-code. 

Some are clearly of the view, and probably the management at Cunard too, that lowering the standards of dress in the evenings will make Cunard more attractive to a sufficiently large body of customers that this will offset those who decide to forego their trip because the special ambience onboard is lost. Time will tell who is right.

46 minutes ago, Dermotsgirl said:

I was originally booked on the QV sailing to Venice on 1st October, but moved it ages ago to the British Isles sailing next May.

 

I think think is a sailing that has a reasonable chance of going, so I will have to, at some point,  refresh my cruise wardrobe. To be honest, I haven’t got much enthusiasm about it. 
 

I’ve been going on cruises for 20 years, and have always avoided Cunard, in part because of some of the extreme dress code threads. For a newcomer to Cunard, some of the things that are said are a real turn off.  I’ve been told that, for ex-Southampton cruises at least, people more or less dress like they do on P&O. As a veteran of P&O, that’s how I will dress, so I hope I don’t scare the horses too much. 
 

Fortunately, I’m not a skirt type of person as I much prefer trousers when wearing separates, but I’m very curious to know why ‘skirts’ are regarded with such horror on Cunard. 

I think people can get animated on here because Cunard is really the only line left retaining many of the traditions of cruising, including dressing up in the evening. A small minority of the customers can spoil the ambience onboard which is a real shame, but the vast majority do not.

Having cruised with both P&O and Cunard, they definitely are different. On formal evenings the proportion of men wearing proper dinner jackets as opposed to dark suits is much higher and ditto women wearing ball gowns or cocktail dresses, relative to smart separates. Both are permitted within the dress code, though, and I would hope nobody would criticise anybody at the more casual end who was still within what the dress code permits. Informal evenings have also historically been quite different to P&O in that women are generally a bit smarter and men wear jackets, with around 30% wearing ties too. It was very different when I was on P&O five or so years ago. Of course, if Cunard permanently change the dress code for informal evenings the difference between the two lines might reduce considerably. Time will tell.

5 minutes ago, Windsurfboy said:

Let's all just be happy to be cruising again

I think we can be happy to be cruising again without ‘just’ being happy with whatever is offered. All of us cruise for different reasons, but many of us enjoy Cunard for the formality. It may be different for you but there are changes that would make us far less excited to return to cruising. 

A real shame if this is how it looks. We book Cunard for a formal ambience, and not just on formal nights. People's observations of polo shirts etc. on the staycation voyages show quite clearly that not requiring a jacket is interpreted by many as a strong statement that informality is the order of the day.

The Princess Grill mini-suites are a notable step-up from Britannia and we really like having the extra space. 
 

Dining in the Grill is likely to be a real highlight - there is an excellent a la carte menu alongside the daily menu for dinner and for all meals you will have food prepared in the Grills galley. Experience varies a little in how much off-menu ordering is permitted these days in PG but my advice would be that if there is something particular you’d like for a meal, asking in advance will do no harm at all. On our past trips the staff in the Grills have bent over backwards to make us feel pampered. 
 

The afternoon tea offering in the Grills is a definite improvement on Britannia, even though we like that very much. 

10 hours ago, roscoe39 said:

Hi Wolfe,  just for your next sailing, room service in the PG suites includes the PG menu as well as the standard menu, you can order off the menus delivered to your suite each morning. Made for nice easy dining if you didn't want to dress up for the evening...

 

oooops sorry some one has already answered that!@!

Thank you!

2 hours ago, david,Mississauga said:

 

Has there been a change in the offering of PG room service from the PG menu? A few years ago we travelled in PG on the QE and were told we could have meals sent in. We never did because we liked the restaurant even more than the one on the QM2. Copies of the lunch and dinner menus were delivered to us every morning.

 

The Website still promises "In-suite dining from the Princess Grill menu."

 

https://www.cunard.com/en-us/the-cunard-experience/staterooms-and-suites/grills-experience

 

My bad if so - I may be confused but had it down as a QG perk. We only sailed PG once though so I am probably misremembering. 

We too are hoping to sail on the Canaries trip with our daughter who was born in March, so will be 9 months by December. 

(1) We booked over the phone and had the exact same issue having to 'upgrade' from a Q6. There seems no logical reason behind this but our really excellent TA escalated it to a supervisor and still got the same answer, so it's not an online glitch.

(3) It's standard room service unfortunately. 

You are quite right about some of the strong reactions on previous posts to travelling in QG with a young child. Having been a couple looking for a formal, civilised atmosphere onboard in the QG on our last 10 or so trips, we can relate to this. However, we're very careful on land to whisk our daughter away if she starts to cry and would do so without a moment's hesitation on board. 

9 hours ago, lissie said:

Queen Elizabeth - I was using the aft pool - no changing rooms that I recall - and I just had a look on the plan - nothing marked.  

As others have said, there are alternatives to the changing rooms, such as covering up on deck or in one of the public bathrooms. We would consider both of these preferable to walking through the ship in a towel, which we would never do on Cunard or any smart hotel for that matter. 

17 minutes ago, lissie said:

So how would you prefer prefer people to get back from the pool? Naked? 

We have never struggled to take a bag of clean clothes and change at the pool in the facilities provided. Just as in a smart hotel we would never think it acceptable to walk through the ship in a towel or a robe for that matter. 

1 hour ago, Victoria2 said:

In defence of special ordering, it's  never become a novelty of which I tire of.  I usually order off QG menu at least once a day, even if it's just a collection of salad ingredients for lunch. No tableside theatrics involved, just a personalised salad meal pre prepared in the galley.

Each to their own but I will never tire of, and will always appreciate the off menu ordering facility.

Completely the same for us - it is the main reason we book QG. The larger cabin and other perks are nice-to-haves, but it is the food and off-menu ordering in particular which are the main reason we pay the premium. 

2 hours ago, Craigrlewis said:

Can anyone please confirm if in PG is there the ability order anything you want off menu (other then what you can in Britannia ie chicken/steak etc) or is that restricted to QG?

i dined with two lots of separate people who have done PG and one said they ordered lobster/flambé deserts every night as “you can order anything within reason” BUT the other couple when discussing these things  said no in PG all you can order is a la cart/main menu or the standard Britannia off menu anything else ie lobster is met with a polite “sorry no” response.

 

The slightly annoying answer to your question is ‘it varies’. Technically off-menu ordering is only for QG, but our first time in the PG we were really looked after well, with flambé desserts most nights and A La Carte options from the QG menu on request. Talking to others, I think we got lucky on that particular trip through. 
 

QG is also set up so that you can request off-menu items for breakfast or lunch. We wouldn’t request this in PG though. 
 

My suggestion, for what it’s worth, would be to expect off-menu ordering to be restricted in PG but you may get a nice surprise! 

On 7/14/2020 at 11:10 PM, resistk said:

 

I think this affection for the dress code is more common in the 65+ age range, who may not be cruising in the near future?  Cunard is going to have a hard time filling its ships unless it changes with the times. 

I'm not sure there's much evidence to back this up. Me and my wife are in our early 30s, enjoy luxury cruising and book Cunard for the formality. We have lots of friends who enjoy dressing up to go out for dinner in London in our age bracket.

35 minutes ago, Solent Richard said:

 

Hi Navy Banker.

 

As you can probably see from my above post, I'm sure that guy isn't kidding.

 

 

Good to see a kindred spirit!

And yes Navy Banker, we do end up with a lot of cases for a two week trip. For us this is part of the fun of Cunard. We would never judge those who make a different choice though and want to keep their packing to a minimum. 
 

Sadly I’ve never been lucky in the casino. 

I am somewhat embarrassed to say that a 14 night cruise for us involves as much packing for me as Mrs W. I will typically take three of four dinner jackets, seven lounge suits and a few blazers. I have to have these clothes for work though, so it's not as if I'm buying especially, which would be a different matter. 

If I was pushed for space, as others have said, I would go for a dinner jacket and trousers, grey lounge suit and navy blazer. That would cover most of what you need. 

8 hours ago, LittleFish1976 said:

Personally, I loved the Grills' Lounge on QM2 and had afternoon tea there every day whilst enjoying the very pleasant musical accompaniment. A couple of times I also met friends there for a pre-dinner drink.

 

Yes, the atmosphere is quiet and gentle and, in my opinion, pleasant but maybe that says more about the need for quiet spaces of those of us who live busy lives in noisy cities.

 

I'm significantly younger and fitter than 'nearly dead', I hope, but when I do near that distant milestone I hope I find myself somewhere like the Grills' Lounge!

Completely agree. The ship is filled with more lively spaces and as a couple in our early thirties, we always enjoy and make use of the Grills lounges on the Queens. 

On 9/22/2019 at 7:52 PM, cpc3639 said:

I think if I was a newbie considering Cunard, all this talk of off menu orders would make me suspect that a class system not only exists but is pushed and tested to its limits when the menu is already so lovely. I do feel for the staff in Grills dining room. Why on earth would they even offer a very considered menu if they wanted passengers to order off menu?  I doubt you would see this is any high end restaurant ashore. 

As others have said, there is no "class system" in operation, simply a basic principle, operative in other domains, that the more you pay the more you get to choose. First class flights often work like this - as you are paying much more, you can often decide to eat when you like and on some Middle Eastern airlines you can even order "off menu" based on the ingredients they have on board. Cunard is the same.

We have sailed in Britannia, PG and QG. My last QG fortnight cruise cost us roughly eight times what our last cruise in Britannia cost. It is entirely unsurprising that for that amount of money, guests are looked after to a very high standard indeed. We are always mindful of pressure on the waiting staff and kitchen when making off-menu orders, but are also aware that the staff-to-guest ratio is very high in the Grills, with a number of chefs present just to fulfil off-menu orders.

It's also worth keeping in mind something else. Although many QG passengers are not wealthy, some do live a lifestyle where eating in very good restaurants may be quite common. Cunard, in particular in the Queen's Grill, in common with other luxury brands, then need a way of offering "wow factor" . Part of this is undoubtedly in the ingredients used, the standard of service and the ambience on board, but part of their offering at present is being able to have what you fancy. Long may it continue!

And worth adding that we find laundry can be sped up a little in QG - the Butler sometimes goes down to the laundry for us to get it back quicker if we've cut things too fine.

We have cruised in PG and QG on the QV and QG last November on the QE.

Relevantly to the discussion here, we did notice a difference between the two ships. We were really encouraged to order off menu on the QV, with the Head Waiter in PG coming up with new flambé desserts for us once we had exhausted the usual suspects and Beniamino Acler in QG preparing fabulous tableside pasta and suggesting a number of main courses I’d never tried before for the galley to prepare.

QG on the QE was good. The service and the menu were miles ahead of Britannia, but in truth not with as much wow factor as on QV. Requests for off menu items were accommodated without fail, but with a reserved politeness rather than warmth and enthusiasm. The Maitre D in the QG was also not much of a presence in the restaurant, whereas on QV Beniamino Acler somehow seemed to be watching every detail of what occurred at each table.

So overall, if you are a foodie there is absolutely a good argument to go for the Grills, but the experience can vary. Be confident in your ability to order off menu and they will accommodate without a doubt. We reckon that even an ‘off’ experience in the Grills is still extremely good by most standards.

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Relative to a supermarket or high street restaurant agreed. But relatively to a lot of five-star hotels Cunard is quite reasonable and as someone who works in the wine trade I'd say the middle and upper end of their wine list is quite good value and imaginatively sourced.

I think the new menu looks excellent - thanks for posting.

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