D.B.

I'm booked on a transatlantic crossing later this month, and while I have sailed on Cunard several times, I have never embarked from Southampton.  Do any of you have recommendations for a private car service to get from Central London to Southampton?

From my understanding, the trip by car is approximately 2 hours.  Normally, I would consider taking a train, or a shared bus/van option, but my husband and I will likely have considerable luggage, and a private car would be more convenient for us. (This sailing is just one part of a longer trip.)

I'm sure this question has likely been asked before, but any current advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

6 hours ago, escrick said:

My husband and I will take our first Cunard Cruise next year.  After reading all the complaints, most of which are valid, I have decided that I must lower my expectations for the next cruise.  We continue to deal with a pandemic.  Businesses including cruise lines are dealing with chronic staff shortages.  I hope I can be patient with crew and staff.  After all, I have no idea what they are facing in their own lives.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I would advise you not to be overly concerned about these comments. Boards like these can often become an “echo chamber” of negativity, and in my opinion, people are much more motivated to post critical comments rather than positive ones. And a lot can change before your sailing next year.
 

There is some validity to the narrative here, but everyone has their own unique experiences. It’s good to be informed, but take anything you read online with the proverbial “grain of salt.”  (And for the record, that includes the few comments I have posted here!)

Just off this sailing as well. I haven’t been aboard the Queen Mary 2 in a while (for obvious reasons), but have been on several trips with Cunard over the years, and am definitely a fan of the Cunard experience. I have no major complaints—I had a perfectly nice time onboard.

I had been warned about the chaotic embarkation by posters here. It took me a little over an hour to get through the terminal and board the ship. I was expecting worse, so this was a bit of a relief.

The most uncomfortable part of the embarkation was the line outside, as it was very warm that day, but the line moved relatively quickly. I made sure that I had ALL required documents printed and accessible—that alone made a huge difference. In my opinion, most of the problems and delays I witnessed were with people scrolling through their phones to find emailed docs, or those that arrived with little in hand, expecting staffers to deal with the paperwork.

Overall, I only had very minor complaints. Yes, the exterior spaces are in desperate need of maintenance and renovation. However, for the most part, the interior was as beautiful as ever. But that said, there are a few areas that are looking a bit dated and could use a refresh, most notably the Grills Lounge.

The service I received was fine. Obviously, there are some Covid-related staffing issues, so things run a bit more slowly and perhaps awkwardly, and new staffers are inexperienced. But this is true of literally all cruise lines right now. Further, the inevitable “supply chain issues” persist—some items are simply not available. But again, this is not unique to Cunard, but is true everywhere.

Frankly, many of the passenger “complaints” I heard related to service issues were so minor as to be laughable. I witnessed one older man throw a fit in the pub when a server didn’t arrive to take his drink order fast enough, and he was forced to walk literally 4 feet away to place an order at the bar. However, I’m sure there were some legitimate service issues, but again, I didn’t experience any.
 

I was concerned about the number of passengers not wearing masks, including many very elderly people. I witnessed a shop employee advise a passenger to wear a mask as he entered the small, crowded shop. He put one on, but later when exiting, he ripped it off and threw it at the young employee’s feet. (I tried to be as careful as I could—I tested when I got home, and it was thankfully negative, at least so far!)

Overall, a good trip. I guess my concerns about the Queen Mary and Cunard in general are more “higher level” issues about the direction and future of the line, but that is a discussion for another time!

I was on this sailing as well.

As soon as CD Jerry went missing on day 2, I assumed there was likely Covid onboard. (Which now seems to be the correct assumption.) Between a likely outbreak combined with rough seas, it wasn’t surprising that most of the stage shows were cancelled. But I was surprised there wasn’t a better “plan B” in place.

And, btw, there were several Haven Restaurant waitstaff missing by the last night of the cruise. Staff from other venues, still in their outfits from the other restaurants, filled in.

Not sure how I feel about the apparent secrecy of it all — it seems irresponsible.

However, I must say that despite the challenges and poor weather, I had a nice time onboard.

I've had perfectly fine disembarkations at both the Brooklyn cruise terminal and Cape Liberty terminal in New Jersey. But the combination of NCL and the Manhattan cruise port is always a disaster.

Sure, there are a lot of things out of any cruise line's control here -- most significantly, large ships vs. the cruise port's small size -- but with years of experience, one would think that NCL would have figured out a reasonable, mostly painless disembarkation process for this port. But apparently that has never happened.

Ideally, they need to assign passengers specific disembarkation times (right now it's a choose what you want free-for-all that few abide by anyway); provide an adequate onboard waiting area, even if that means keeping a dining room open longer than they would prefer; and have more onboard staff on hand to direct (read: enforce) a more orderly process.

Just disembarked the Escape today as well, and had a similar experience as described by the o.p. After enduring an endlessly long line onboard, we made it off the ship in about an hour. We got through the baggage hall and customs in probably 10 minutes -- surprisingly no backup in customs today.

IMHO, really poor organization onboard, but we've sailed the Breakaway multiple times, and it was always the same on that ship as well. NCL really needs to rethink their NYC disembarkation procedures. Sure, sometimes it's NY authority's fault, but the process onboard is equally bad.

(Off topic, but for those who were on this sailing, does anyone know what happened to cruise director Zac? He disappeared and was replaced without explanation halfway through the cruise.)

Just got off of the Anthem on 11/11 as well. As with others, we received a noro outbreak warning letter in our cabin midweek. And the staff was on high alert during the last two days or so. Luckily, no one in my party became ill, although early in the week I saw evidence around the ship that people were becoming sick.

We talked with one staff member about it. He said that the staff has different noro alert levels -- they reached level 1 by Tuesday, and it progressed very quickly to level 3 by Thursday morning. And as noted above, it seems likely that it spread so fast due to the large number of children onboard on break from NJ schools. But I would say that the Anthem crew handled it reasonably well.

An update: I'm on the November 4th sailing on the Anthem. As with others, my Disney bus excursion was cancelled. Yesterday one of my traveling companions noticed that the Disney bus trip magically reappeared as an option on the RC website.

It took multiple emails and two phone calls to get everything worked out, but we are now supposedly re-booked for the Disney bus.

I'm not a novice cruiser, but I have only sailed Royal Caribbean once before. I have to say that this whole fiasco of cancelled then revived excursions, especially so close the the sailing date, leaves me with a very poor impression of RC's customer service. And overall, this cruise on the Anthem has been the single most difficult cruise booking/planning experience I have ever had.

Thanks everyone for the advice and concern -- this is admittedly not an ideal plan -- thanks, Royal Caribbean! I've taken the Disney bus excursion from the Breakaway multiple times without a hitch, hopefully this roundabout adventure from the Anthem will work out. When it's all over, I promise to report back whether this ends successfully or is a complete disaster!

Completely understand about lost time with this plan, but as I stated above, this was a compromise option. We have all of our park tickets, so we will not need to wait in a ticket line. And hopefully traffic will not be too bad on a random Monday afternoon.

Our group is all adults going to Epcot primarily for the Food & Wine Festival. And frankly, five or so hours in a theme park will likely be more than enough for us -- I don't anticipate any problems having to leave Epcot early in order to meet the bus.

Completely agree that this bus/Uber plan is not particularly efficient. But it wasn't my choice alone to make -- a few of my traveling companions are (overly) concerned about booking private transportation. They fear something going wrong, and they strongly prefer that our transport to Orlando be booked through RC. This was a compromise choice that was acceptable to the group. But at least our park tickets will not go to waste.

I think we've decided to book the "bus only" excursion to Sea World, then take an Uber to Disney from there. I believe the two parks are reasonably close to each other. Of course the price of the Sea World excursion is (slightly) higher than the cancelled Disney excursion, plus of course the additional cost of the Uber.

I really don't understand why Royal Caribbean would simply cancel these Disney excursions, apparently across multiple sailings. Certainly Disney is THE major attraction of the Orlando area, and has to be one of the more popular excursion options for Port Canaveral. Even if they had some issue with a third party charter vendor, RC is a big company -- certainly they have the means to line up a replacement charter service. It seems like they're just asking for a lot of disappointed customers.

I am on the November 4th sailing on the Anthem, and today I received the cancellation notice for the Disney bus service as well. The reason given in the cancellation email was "not enough time in port." But as far as I can tell, the ship's itinerary for that day has not changed.

I am extremely disappointed -- this excursion has been booked since May, and I purchased park tickets this week. I imagine that Disney excursions have to be one of the more popular options at Port Canaveral. Seems like an awfully odd choice to cancel 3 weeks out from the sailing?

(BTW, I called the customer service number listed in the email -- they had absolutely no info to add beyond the cancellation, and offered nothing in terms of rebooking for a different excursion.)

Anyone have any further info or reliable ways to get to Disney and back? My travel companions are wary, as they don't want to be left behind should something go wrong with a rental car or other private transportation.

:mad::mad::mad:

My partner and I sailed on the Allure for the first time this past October. We had a very nice trip, but it was the first cruise where we didn't really meet any other gay guys. We normally sail on Cunard or Celebrity, where FOD meetings are common and well attended, so we expected that this trip might be very different, and to a certain extent, it was.

As noted elsewhere in this thread, FOD meetings are not listed in the Allure's daily newsletter. I don't really take offense to this, as the Allure is gigantic, and I'm sure it would be nearly impossible for the ship's staff to accommodate all meeting announcements for every single special interest group. (Most other interest group meetings are not listed in the newsletter either.)

On our particular sailing, someone did post a proposed FOD meeting on the guest services message board, but the actual written post was confusing -- I believe the poster was not an English speaker -- so no one really showed up. Through the week, it was our general impression that perhaps a handful of gay singles and/or couples were on the ship, but they were few and far between. There was little-to-no interaction with each other, as the ship is so large that randomly running into other gays is unlikely to occur.

As I said, this was our first sailing on the Allure, so I don't know if our experience is the norm. We had a good time, and under the right circumstances would probably book on the Allure again -- but this time we would know going in that the ship is largely geared towards families and (straight) newlyweds, and that there may not be any specifically gay social activity onboard.