We travelled to New York the day before the cruise and stayed overnight at the Comfort Inn, Brooklyn Cruise Terminal. This is a great location if you are sailing from Red Hook and want a basic, clean and inexpensive hotel for the night. Be sure your driver knows where you are going though as we have experienced a lengthy excursion with a driver who had problems finding the hotel, GPS notwithstanding. There aren’t many places to eat in the area if you are there around supper time but lots of delivery menus on hand and a great free breakfast in the a.m.

We arrived early at the cruise port, thanks to the Comfort Inn's free shuttle service. Check in was very speedy but we waited more than an hour to board the ship. Our cabin was ready so we dropped off our hand luggage and went to the buffet for lunch. We were happy to have our suitcases delivered very speedily and were able to start unpacking well before the lifeboat drill. I am amazed how many people don’t follow instructions at the drill, arriving at the wrong life boat station, wearing their life jackets and ignoring the staff. As a result, the drill seemed to take forever.

We prefer early dining and had to visit the restaurant to change from the late seating scheduled for us this trip. The young assistant maitre‘d seemed very overwhelmed with all the requests and took our name. On previous cruises, we were given another table right away so were a little worried and it took another day till things were sorted out. While we eventually got early seating and a nice table on the upper level, this was not the level of service we are used to on the Queen Mary 2. Read more