Stateroom availability issues on U.S. Website

[david,Mississauga]

I am wondering if other people have experienced this, either in Canada or the U.S.  When searching stateroom availability, a number is offered – always far forward or aft except, of course, when a specific category is not offered throughout the five sections of a deck. When trying to change the section of the ship all five sections are shown as “! not available”. This is obviously an error because the deck plan of the section of the ship is displayed with the offered room. Also, if I type in a midships stateroom number in the search box it will show the appropriate section if it is available. This applies to almost every voyage I have checked on both the QM2 and QE.

 

This is only a matter of interest.  I have two voyages booked for next year and am happy with our assigned room. Besides, I would never book anything on Cunard’s site, given other issues that have popped up over the years.

 

Cunard could be losing business if this is a widespread problem. A friend in the U.S. e-mailed me to say that he has looked at several Cunard voyages and for every one the better located cabins are not available so he is going on another line. (Sadly he didn’t bother consulting a travel agent.)

 

There is no point in me wasting time asking Cunard about this. I did that two years ago when there was an obvious glitch which could cost them a lot of business from Canadians. My e-mail made its way to Southampton. I was told the problem was with the California office so it was forwarded to them. But they did nothing for many months. Eventually that issue was corrected during the “pause” in operations.

[Paul NH]

Yes, I have experienced this problem.  There are suspiciously few cabin options available on every sailing.

[bluemarble]

Yes, this appears to be a widespread problem. At least I've been seeing it for a while now. In fact I was considering posting about it earlier today after continuing to encounter this issue while trying to check availability on some of the new Cunard voyages that went on sale yesterday.

 

Oddly, this error is not 100% consistent. There are some voyages where I am able to get the "Ship section" functionality to work. One case in point is the first of QE's voyages that is available to book on the US website, voyage Q130P, the Oct13th 5-night Amsterdam cruise. When I select that voyage, the "Ship section" functionality is working for me while checking Inside and Balcony categories.

 

Because of the inconsistency with this issue, I'm planning to dig a little deeper to see if I can figure out the pattern for when this issue happens and when it does not. But yes, this does appear to be a real issue with the Cunard website and it does appear to an issue with considerably more voyages than not. I'll be sure to follow up with my findings if I'm able to discern a pattern.

[TheOldBear]

For my current booking [October 2022], I have a BU guarantee - not an assignment.

The agent at $UNNAMED_TRAVEL_AGENCY did not see the available cabins that were visible to me on the Cunard site.

[bluemarble]

Well I could have sworn I was seeing this issue with the "Ship section" functionality on QE voyages, and @david,Mississauga, you indicated you were seeing it on QE voyages as well. In the past, I have almost exclusively been looking at QM2 voyages, so I can't say much about what I've seen for QE voyages before today.

 

Anyway, the pattern I am seeing at the moment is that the functionality to select a "Ship section" during the "Change your room" process of the overall booking process is working fine for QE voyages but not working at all for any QM2 and QV voyages.

 

@david,Mississauga, if you can point me to a QE voyage where there is plenty of availability but all the sections are showing up as "Not available" for you now, I'll be glad to take a look at it and let you know what I'm seeing.

Edited July 23, 2021 by bluemarble

[LadyL1]

I have been looking at QE voyage 18th January. Yesterday the aft suites deck 5 had some room numbers reversed and the Q4s on deck 7 were either blank or not in the same place as published deck plan. This was seen when going through the booking process.

[david,Mississauga]

12 hours ago, bluemarble said:

Well I could have sworn I was seeing this issue with the "Ship section" functionality on QE voyages, and @david,Mississauga, you indicated you were seeing it on QE voyages as well. In the past, I have almost exclusively been looking at QM2 voyages, so I can't say much about what I've seen for QE voyages before today.

 

Anyway, the pattern I am seeing at the moment is that the functionality to select a "Ship section" during the "Change your room" process of the overall booking process is working fine for QE voyages but not working at all for any QM2 and QV voyages.

 

@david,Mississauga, if you can point me to a QE voyage where there is plenty of availability but all the sections are showing up as "Not available" for you now, I'll be glad to take a look at it and let you know what I'm seeing.

 

Thank you for the information. I am now seeing the same for the QE. The ship section is working fine for three voyages I chose at random plus the Alaska cruise on which I'm booked. This correction must have occurred in the past few days because the glitch was ongoing for several weeks. But the QM2 and the QV are still hopeless as of this morning.

 

I wouldn't book anything on Cunard's site - even under "my Cunard." The information for transfers gives inadequate information. Last year we had booked an extended 14-day eastbound crossing and looked at shore excursions. There was a tour of Halifax, Nova Scotia  being offered from the port of Reykjavik. Of course, the crossing was cancelled so none of this mattered. Fortunately I have an experienced travel agent who can always sort out issues with Cunard.

 

In fairness, there is a lot of useful information on Cunard's site and it is usually accurate. But I pity those travellers who won't deal with travel agents and think booking everything on-line is the best way.

[bluemarble]

10 hours ago, LadyL1 said:

I have been looking at QE voyage 18th January. Yesterday the aft suites deck 5 had some room numbers reversed and the Q4s on deck 7 were either blank or not in the same place as published deck plan. This was seen when going through the booking process.

 

Thanks, @LadyL1. That is a different issue of course, but certainly worth mentioning since they've messed up the Room Selector diagrams that appear during the booking process in several places. I'll take this opportunity to illustrate the issues you've found as well as add several more that I've found.

 

QE Deck 5 Aft

Room Selector                            Deck Plans

 

 

The issue here is that suites 5197 and 5198 are reversed in the Room Selector. If you pick suite 5197 thinking you will be in the center suite, you won't be.

 

QE Deck 7 Mid-Aft

Room Selector                            Deck Plans

 

 

Suites 7082 through 7109 are shown too far forward in the Room Selector. They should be shifted aft two positions to cover the spots that are unlabeled.

 

QE Deck 7 Midships

Room Selector                            Deck Plans

 

 

Suites 7050 through 7069 are shown too far forward in the Room Selector. They should be shifted aft six positions to cover some of the spots that are unlabeled. Suites 7078 through 7101 are shown too far aft in the Room Selector. They should be shifted forward four positions to cover some of the spots that are unlabeled.

 

QE Deck 7 Mid-Forward

Room Selector                            Deck Plans

      

 

Suites 7036 through 7057 are shown too far aft in the Room Selector. They should be shifted forward two positions to cover the spots that are unlabeled.

 

QE Deck 8 Forward

Room Selector

          

The "Finish" button is covering the button to select cabin 8029.

 

QE Deck 6 Forward

Room Selector

 

The same spot in the Room Selector is both Oceanview cabin 6001 and Inside cabin 6009 depending on which type of cabin you have selected. The positions of starboard Inside cabins 6009 through 6027 are too far forward by one position.

 

QV Deck 5 Forward

Room Selector

 

Suites 5001 and 5002 are reversed. 5001 should be starboard and 5002 should be port.

 

QV Deck 4 Forward

Room Selector

 

This isn't the usual Room Selector diagram.

 

Edit to add: Sorry this doesn't work so well on a phone. I designed it to display side-by-side diagrams on a desktop.

Edited July 23, 2021 by bluemarble

[AMHuntFerry]

Now that I see what you're seeing, yes, I had the same issue last winter. I wanted to see which cabins were available so that I could could tell my TA my top choices when we met to make the reservation for a QM2 May 2022 voyage. I remember that cabins were shifted from their proper spot, and some were so shifted that they were not visible in the browser. I gave up on the Cunard site and went to a well-known general travel booking site which was much more user friendly.

[bluemarble]

Just to make sure everyone is clear about the original issue, here are some screen shots of the Room Selector page for QE and QM2 voyages with "Ship Section" selected.

 

QE Room Selector - Ship Section

 

 

For a QE voyage, it will allow you to navigate to any section that has availability.

 

 

QM2 Room Selector - Ship Section

 

 

For a QM2 (or QV) voyage, it always displays "Not available" for all sections regardless of the actual availability. In this example, a cabin was selected in the Forward section of the ship. You can switch to another deck but not to another section.

 

The only hack I know of is one @david,Mississauga mentioned, to use the "Search for a specific room by number" function to select an available cabin in another section. That requires knowing an available cabin number from some other source or what could be a lot of trial and error guesswork to find one.

Edited July 24, 2021 by bluemarble

[bluemarble]

I'm reviving this thread since I just noticed the issue that prompted this thread appears to have been fixed on the Cunard US website. I am now able to select the various ship sections on all three ships using the Room Selector during the "Change your room" function of the booking process.

 

Here's the Room Selector screen from the Cunard US website for a QM2 voyage which happens to show availability in all five of the ship sections on this deck,

 

 

Other glitches with the Room Selector deck layouts which I mentioned in reply #8 above remain uncorrected. But at least the most serious issue preventing navigation among the various ship sections on the Cunard US website has been corrected based on what I'm seeing today.

[LadyL1]

I just looked at a January voyage, and it still shows  all “unavailable “ if you click on different sections of the ship. It has been like this for some while.

We also have a voyage booked, where I do not think we have the intended stateroom because of number misalignment, as previously mentioned on this thread.🤔

[bluemarble]

7 hours ago, LadyL1 said:

I just looked at a January voyage, and it still shows  all “unavailable “ if you click on different sections of the ship. It has been like this for some while.

We also have a voyage booked, where I do not think we have the intended stateroom because of number misalignment, as previously mentioned on this thread.🤔

 

Sorry to hear you're still finding issues with the all the sections of the ship showing "unavailable".

 

There is is an issue when there is only one cabin available in any given category. For example, on one of QM2's January voyages, there is only one balcony cabin available. After Cunard selects that one cabin for me, the ship section diagram in the Room Selector does show all sections are unavailable. In one sense that's correct since there are no cabins available other than the one it already selected for me.

 

I'm also seeing occasional glitches where the ship section diagram shows all sections are unavailable when I initially select "Change your room" or when I switch the room type. Once I click through all the "Next" and "Finish" buttons and then start over with "Change your Room", then it starts showing availability in various ship sections. I haven't yet figured out the pattern for when that glitch happens.

 

So yes, I'm afraid there are still some issues with the Room Selector.

[david,Mississauga]

I just had  a look at a QM2 voyage we have booked for next year. It is even worse than before. It won't give any information at all after clicking on the stateroom category.

 

I had noticed a couple of weeks ago that the availability of ship sections had finally been fixed after several months.