WillH

16 hours ago, majortom10 said:

 

 

Like lindylooellalouise previously said many of the Literary cruisers were loud and pushy bordering on rude and cannot believe how much a TA can change compared to the sailing a week before from Southampton to New York due to the theme and people onboard.

Majortom, we couldn't agree more having been on the same B2B TA.  We saw so much rude behaviour to staff from some of these guests which is not acceptable.  It was obvious by the way they behaved that the majority were not the normal clientele, as many strutted around with their "special lanyards". Maybe it was only a small proportion of these guests behaving like this, but they certainly made their presence known. We have just moved a 2021 voyage and one factor was that we found after booking that one TA sector was the Literary Festival. Never again!

14 hours ago, Bell Boy said:

Yes ! experienced a Cunard 'Vancouver /UK flight'  earlier this year. Personally would never opt to do this again. 

One disembarks the QE at around '8.30am', finally embark the tour bus at 10am ( after collecting luggage and waiting around for transfer bus to arrive ) A three  hour tour of the city , then dropped off at Vancouver airport at 1pm !  to sit around until 7.pm ( BA) check-in . Regardless if you have first or business travel. 

Our experience was exactly the same at Vancouver.  There was utter chaos when we disembarked.  Queues in the teminal waiting for the various coaches were all mixed up.  People jumped queues and on our coach which was supposed to be for late flights, some people with an early flight had got on.  The result was that the sightseeing trip was shortened and we had even longer to wait at the airport. 

I do wish that Cunard could get this right as this poor end to a great voyage leaves a bad lasting memory.  I certainly wouldn't repeat this and would stay in a hotel overnight.  Cunard does it much better when disembarking in New York and hopefully arrangements will be better in 2020 at Vancouver.

Looking at Sydney cruise ship schedules, Queen Elizabeth will be making regular calls at Sydney right through to March 2021. If QE then has another Alaska season in 2021, we may not see her back in the UK until much later in 2021 or even 2022.

I would really recommend the visit to Vigur Island. The island is beautiful and the family who live on the island are very welcoming. We had great weather when we visited and it is now one of favourite Cunard shore excursions. There is not a lot in the town, so I think that an excursion is well worth it here.

Many thanks Adammara. We are just back from QV and interestingly the first QG a la carte menu we had was identical to the one you posted from QE. Over the voyage there were 4 different a la carte menus. I also recognised some of the dishes on the daily menus that you posted from QE. I guess there is standardisation across the fleet in terms of menus.

Just had an email from Cunard. For the November QV Caribbean voyage St Maarten is replaced with Martinique. The order of other ports is slightly changed with St Kitts first and then Martinique.

According to the email I had today, the 5% discount applies until 30th November.

Hattie - Many thanks. Will

Hi. I understand that when booking in the UK there is a past passenger discount of 5% on the new 2019 voyages. Does anyone know how long this discount is in place for ?. Unusually I haven't had any communications from Cunard about the new 2019 voyages so wonder if this information was included in anything you received from Cunard.

Many thanks. Will

Hi just noticed that the UK online brochure has a page mentioning the May and June 2019 Alaska voyages and inviting you to register your interest to receive details of itineraries and prices when they are available. The UK brochure give the link to register interest as http://www.cunard.com/alaska but this doesn't work as it should be http://www.cunard.co.uk/alaska

I've not looked at all of them but so far, pretty much although June '19 isn't showing any results for QE so far.

QE certainly has some very interesting itineraries.

I downloaded the online brochure on the UK website covering March 2018 to December 2019 and for QE there are no June 2019 voyages as Victoria2 and babs135 noted. The Cruise Calendar listing for QE at the back of the brochure shows Q915 (Tokyo to Vancouver on 4 May) and then Q919F/G/H (SFO to the Fort Lauderdale/New York/Southampton on 3 Jul). There are no Vancouver departures - either the 10 day Alaska voyages or the voyage back to Southampton embarking in Vancouver. So maybe these voyages aren't being sold (at the moment) in the UK ?

Thanks everyone for the updates. Let us hope that at the end we get a world class Cunard website !

Will

Hi

Not sure if it is just the UK website affected, but there doesn't seem to be any link now to login to my World Club Account. The World Club link at the top of the Cunard Home Page just goes to a page with info on the benefits and gives email/phone contact details. Am I missing something ?

I wanted to check that my marketing preferences were still correct as I seem to have stopped receiving any communications from Cunard - eg no info about upcoming 2019 voyages which are pre-released this week. I have read the very helpful info on the 2019 post here but thought that Cunard would be promoting this.

Many Thanks

Will

Bav, we were in 7041 on Queen Victoria last year for a couple of months and had plenty of sun on the balcony. I can't say that I noticed any particular overhang. Looking on the deckplan, I guess there is a slight overhang from Deck 9 in 7063 so could have an affect. Personally I would avoid the rooms close to the corner balcony rooms as these balconies directly overlook.

Hope this helps. Will

From the information online that I saw, QE is making extensive Australia/New Zealand calls in 2019 which seem to be set up for selling as short sectors/round trips rather than a single voyage. I think I saw 5 separate calls at Melbourne and 4 at Sydney with 2 round trips from Australia to New Zealand before heading off to Asia and then Alaska.

QV looks like the traditional World Voyage , so no ships visiting South America in 2019.

The caveat is that the info I saw online may not be final information, as we haven't seen anything directly from Cunard yet.

It depends what grade of accommodation you are in, generally bottled water has to be purchased.

Hattie

Many thanks for the clarification. The free water was in Britannia Club accommodation. I wasn't expecting it as I thought that free bottled water was only provided in Grills, so just assumed that with the kettles in QM2 rooms, this was now standard.

On our recent voyage on QM2, we were provided with bottled water, free of charge, for use in the kettle. The room steward, gave us new bottles every day. Not sure if this is across the fleet.

You choose, either, the Captain's or Commodore's package and can select any wine from the menu given to you by the Sommelier when you dine - We've found that the wines do vary from the examples shown in the VP, but not by much and the quality is the same. We've gone for the Commodore's because my missus likes a glass of port with her cheese, and there is a bottle of that in the list and if there's a couple of evenings where she doesn't fancy wine, there always an option of getting Champagne for the table instead.

Rakkor - Many thanks for clarifying that. Very helpful.

Based on this thread, very tempted to purchase a wine package for our Christmas voyage. A quick question, when you pre-purchase a package before the voyage, do you have to state which of the wines from either the Captain's or Commodore's Selection that you want in your package at the time of purchase ?

Many thanks

I do not think that there is any OBC for using future cruise deposits on World Cruises. We used ours as part of our deposit but were told that there would not be any OBC applied. I would love to hear that I am wrong. :)

I agree that this is the case. If you do book a whole world voyage or liner voyage (2 or more sectors of a world voyage) whilst on board you will receive a 3% discount on the price rather than any extra OBC which you would receive on other types of voyages.

Will

Afraid not. He confirmed the Britannia Club will be where the Chart Room is now.

For those in the UK, the link below from the Cunard UK website shows the deck plans post the 2017 refit (together with the pre-refit plans). Obviously this could change, but the Chart Room becomes Britannia Club on the plans.

http://www.cunard.co.uk/Documents/2017-18-deck-plans/QV-deck-plans-2017-18.pdf

Will

I think you've hit it on the head, it's the UK website.

Thankyou

I think this problem has been around since the booking process on the UK website changed some years ago. I have never been able to search for a specific stateroom since then. The only solution has been to talk to my Personal Cruise Specialist / Voyage Sales at Cunard (or a travel agent I assume), who can check specific staterooms or give a list of available rooms in a particular category (more than the maximum of 8 you can see on the UK website).

I'm afraid not , only on QE at the moment.

According to one or two senior crew members, who were with the ship in dry dock,

everything was in place to have wall mounted ones at the last refit, but the wrong fittings were delivered to Hamburg and time ran out. :( The intention was to install them from time to time when the ship is at her home port.

I think they may have one or two of them already installed in a few of the top suites. :confused:

 

Edited to add: they may have them in the 'new' single cabins ?

Bell Boy

With QV based in the Med for half the year and therefore not in Southampton very often, it sounds as though fitting the new TVs may take some time (years ?)

Will

Just noticed that the post refit deck plans are on the Cunard UK website (look in the section "Our Ships" and then select QM2). They look the same as the versions posted here previously. It looks as though the only changes shown on the plans are the new rooms with no obvious changes shown elsewhere on the ship. I guess they won't release a complete new set of deck plans showing all changes until after the actual refit next year.

Will

Not any more! I faxed ( how old fashioned) a statement of my shares in a nominee account last week and just asked for a confirmation email - nothing!

 

I emailed just asking if they could confirm they had received the fax - nothing!

 

The telephone number is a fax line.

 

Not sure what to do next!

Gill

After I faxed through my brokerage statement to confirm my shareholding a couple of weeks ago, I received an updated invoice via email after a day or so showing the onboard credit that was given. I booked directly with Cunard otherwise I suspect the email would have gone to the travel agent.

If you booked directly might be worth ringing the normal Cunard number and asking for a copy of the invoice for your voyage to check that the OBC has been applied. If booked through an agent ask them to check.

If notice that your signature shows November as your next cruise. I presume that you are applying after final payment as I don't think that they will process a request until then.

Good luck.

Will

I was just applying for shareholder benefits (UK based) and noticed that the FAQs now state

Proof of ownership of Carnival Corporation or Carnival plc shares (for example, photocopy of shareholder proxy card, shares certificate or a current brokerage or nominee statement). (if your shares are held within a nominee account you can also provide a letter or ask your bank/broker to email shareholderbenefits@carnivalukgroup.com (no attachments of any kind including screen shots or images within the body of the email, can be sent to this email address for legal compliance)direct quoting your name, number of Carnival shares held and a current date). For your own security it is most important that any brokerage account/client numbers are blocked out together with any information not relating to Carnival shares before sending this information.

Please be aware that any emails we receive with an email attachment will be deleted. Regrettably we are also unable to respond to these emails. If you wish to apply for your Shareholder benefit via email, you will need to confirm your booking reference and quote your share certificate number together with your full name and address the shares are registered too.

I have always previously emailed with a PDF attachment of my brokerage statement so ended up having to fax through. Is this a recent change in the UK ? This seems to be the same process as the US now.

Will