Queen Mary 2 Caribbean Celebration Voyage December 20, 2007 - January 3, 2008
Getting to the ship This is the first cruise on the Queen Mary 2 for me; I've been on 8 Princess cruises over the past 2 years. I flew from SFO to JFK using the cruise line air package on an overnight flight. I use the cruise line air whenever I need to fly to the ship so when the airlines have a problem getting me to the ship it doesn't become my problem. After landing in JFK I was met by a friendly Cunard rep and in about an hour I was on a van heading to the ship. The drive took about an hour with lot's of traffic. The Brooklyn cruise terminal in nice and new and it was an easy flow into the check in area from the van. There was the usual security check in with about a 10 minute wait to get my cruise card. Since I got there early (around 11:00am) I waited with about 20 others in the waiting area which is spacious, new, well lit with bathrooms and what looked like vending machines for some pre boarding gourmet food. At 12:00 noon they opened the doors and we began boarding the ship through some nice heated glass enclosed gangways. It was nice going through the gauntlet of white gloved ship board employees and Santa Claus as I found my way to my inside cabin.
The QM2 The ship is the longest, widest, fastest passenger ship in the world and it's in great shape! Most everything was clean and shiny. I had an inside cabin and it was clean and well maintained. The whole ship is very classy with wonderful art, with a lot of Cunard history to read about throughout the ship as well as a lot of paintings of various ships thought maritime history. You get a great feeling for what Cunard is all about. The public rooms are great, the Royal Court Theater is classy and elegant, I saw numerous shows there and never had a problem finding a great seat, the Illuminations theater that has the planetarium in it is beautiful, I saw 3 of the planetarium shows, a lecture and one movie in it. All shows started right on time and were great. The Queens Room is huge! I tried the afternoon tea service and the service was exceptional, I always had a full cup of tea plenty of things to eat. The New Years Ball was great with lots of elegantly dressed people, free champagne, dancing and balloons at midnight. Again everything was on time and classy. The ship itself is the smoothest sailing ship I have ever been on, a lot of the time it seems as if the ship is standing still even though it's cruising at 26 knots!