My wife and I (aged 63 & 64) were really looking forward to only our second cruise bearing in mind what ship we were sailing on (Southampton to Singapore) and the history surrounding the Cunard line. Our only other cruise had been 1 week to the Caribbean with a weeks stay in the Dominican Republic. We were therefor expecting this to be a huge step up in class but we were left a little disappointed.

We had booked through Imagine cruising with an upgrade to superior balcony and this is where our first disappointment came. Although the cabin was excellent the view was completely restricted by a large lifeboat. In fact you had to lean out and bend to the right to even see the sea. Of course none of this was mentioned when we booked. As expected the decor and service was a step up from our previous cruise but we found the food quality and variety a big disappointment. The cabin and waiter service was first class and the price of drinks in the various bars were not excessive. However the cheapest bottle of wine with our meal was 40 US Dollars. Needless to say the wine waiter had very little to do. What surprised us being first time QM2 cruisers was the comments from all the experienced cruisers. They were all super critical and thought the standards had dropped considerably.

The entertainment was on the whole OK with some interesting speakers (Martin Bell & Jackie Stewart to mention a couple) and a couple of decent comedians. We pre-booked 4 shore excursions with Cunard and apart from the Dubai (Burgh Khalifa) we thought we had been overcharged for what we got. Our biggest let down was our trip through the Suez Canal. We entered at 3.30am which meant we missed a huge part. The excuse that this was our arranged time did not go down well with most of the passengers. We were also diverted to Heraklion instead of Port Said due to the troubles in Egypt. This was followed by a calls at Safaga and Sokina which were a complete waste of time unless you had booked a Cunard excursion to the Pyramids (5 hours each way by bus). One of these ports had absolutely nothing to see apart from hundreds of containers. Read more