We had sailed on the two other queens which we thoroughly enjoyed. and had high expectations of a cruise on Queen Elizabeth which I now wished we had not bothered.

Congratulations to the hotel team, the food, restaurants, bars and cabins all first class. The pursers team were hostile and were not interested, their response was either no, or don't know.

I now understand the expression 'what happens on the ship, stays on the ship', as Cunard's customer service team take no responsibility for ensuring excellent customer service. The first ten days of our cruise was excellent, and started to deteriorate at St Petersburg, we had booked the two day tour via Cunard working on the basis if anything goes wrong the on-board team on hand to resolve, wrong assumption. The young tour guide was good spoke excellent English but rather timid when larger tour groups pushed their way ahead of us, this was particularly apparent when we were queuing to get into Catherine's palace from leaving the mini bus it took us 2hours 20 minutes until we walked through the doors, we had spent all this time outside in the cold, wet and windy weather. Regrettably the weather did not improve and after a great deal of discussion (at times heated) we were allowed to have our packed lunch on the bus. I think the main reason for allowing us was the fact the hydrofoil was cancelled due to the bad weather.! We left st Petersburg port fourteen hours late, and arrived into Kiel 21 hours late, the captain advised delay in leaving due to the high winds, yet four other large cruise vessels entered or left the port. Read more