megavfm

Thank you for the comparison janmcn. After trying Cunard and HAL, Celebrity has one of our future considerations and your review was very useful. If the bathrooms are as compact as Cunard's then I could live with that for a week or two.

Hi Carnevale

Unfortunately, we’re (well I'm not) not ballroom dancers so I didn’t seek out this particular activity onboard NA; other HAL experts might be able to assist with your enquiry though.

Hi Sir PMP

You’re quite correct, Paul Gauguin is more expensive. For our first cruise we were tossing up going on a megaship with all the bells & whistles or a smaller less frenetic ship and chose the latter. Yes, it did set a high benchmark and as you can tell our subsequent few cruises have been on ships that a relatively a bit more modest in cost. Would love to try a Regent, Silverseas or Crystal cruise sometime when our budget expands!

Hi erewhon

Yes, we certainly did register our disapointment about HAL's balcony smoking policy in our post-cruise survey. Not sure if it was of any use, as I had previously scanned the smoking thread here and it seemed plenty of others had complained with little or no effect. It's a contentious topic. Anyway, we're happy to sample other cruise lines; far easier for us to change than change company policy.........

Hi Queen of DaNile

My perception was that the QV was elegant and formal in a classic British sense, but NA was also classy in its own art deco way. They were similar but yet dissimilar.......I think I might not be making much sense here and it's easy to slip into sterotypes and generalisations - I'll stop here!

Having returned from an Alaskan 7 day cruise onboard NA not that long ago, I thought I might offer a comparison of my experience with Cunard’s Queen Victoria from March this year. They’re fairly similar in size with CC stats of 2106 pax for NA and 1988 pax for QV. QV was only our 2nd ever cruise and NA was our 3rd.

Boarding experience; similar for both – find your own way to your stateroom.

The ship; I thought both appeared well maintained and the public areas were kept very clean. Both have promenade decks allowing you to circumnavigate the ship; there were small drink tables next to many of the deck-lounges on QV – on NA one rested your drink on the deck. Gyms were comparable.

Food; I thought the food (Lido, MDR and casual outlets) quality and variety was far superior on NA compared to QV. NA’s ‘As you wish’ dining option was also a plus over the set dining times on QV. I had lurked on the CC HAL board prior to our Alaskan trip and was concerned about many posts lamenting the deteriorating quality of HAL meals, but as a newbie on HAL we thought it was very good to excellent (it must have been outstanding in the good old days!). One thing we thought QV did better than NA was better hand hygiene enforcement. On QV there were staff standing with hand sanitisers at the entrances of the Lido and MDR. It was difficult to walk by without having it squirted into your hands, whereas on NA there were hand sanitiser units on stands at the entrances and most people I observed just ignored using them.

QV’s afternoon tea though had a far better setting in the Queen’s room than NA’s Dutch high tea in a cordoned off section of the MDR.

Henry in NA’s Explorations Café was excellent.

Entertainment; I can only agree with the many posts about how comparatively poor HAL’s shipboard entertainment is, with BB Kings being a saving grace. Even the limited entertainment on Paul Gauguin was better. Digital workshop onboard NA was useful.

Cabin; we had balcony/verandah cabins on both ships. Had great cabin stewards on both ships. Both ships were similarly comfortable and spacious enough with NA winning the bathroom size stakes – but still not as good as our experience on Paul Gauguin. However, a big shout-out to those CC posters who recommended the HAL aft cabins. On NA we had VB 7143 and the panoramic view from the stern coupled with the fresh air of Alaska (when people weren’t smoking) was truly wonderful. We only experienced some minor vibration once when the ship was manoeuvring in dock (I can’t even remember which port it was).

Overall; there’s a lot to like about the NA when compared to QV. However, our other concern from lurking on the CC HAL board was HAL’s smoking policy. Thanks to the CC board we booked fully informed about HAL’s smoking policy, but still decided to take our chances with a verandah cabin. Alas, we rolled the dice and sometimes we won (we could enjoy the verandah smoke-free), but more often we had to quickly retreat into our cabin because of smokers nearby. Ok well, it was only our 3rd ever cruise so we don’t have high status with any cruise line. Time to try another cruise line, but it brought home to us that a verandah non-smoking policy is a necessity, for us at least.