Friends had fortunate experiences and we were looking to see if Cunard could be a standard way of traveling from the US to Europe, South Africa, Australia, and through the Panama Canal. The answer was a definite NO! we now don't even want Cunard literature through the internet or by mail.

The basic aspects of the cruise consisting of stateroom, entertainment, dining, library, and their associated service were excellent as expected. Areas of the ship suffered from severe smoker's stench despite smoking being restricted to two specific areas, The vaunted Planetarium showed an aged tape on construction of the space station and the age showed in its clarity. One had a feeling of being nickle and dimed throughout the cruise. The photographing was ubiquitous and expensive. The shopping was primarily for the wealthy although a few cheaper things could be found. My wife suffered food poisoning and we both suffered a major respiratory ailment by the time we left the ship.

Embarkation was easy, provided you arrived early although they lost our picture and credit card so we had to have them re-entered, then they lost the credit card again, and again. it is disturbing that they had such problems with a critical piece of information. The debarkation was a horrific debacle suggesting they had never done it before. We were supposed to have priority to meet our shuttle buses to the airport to make our Cunard scheduled flights but wound up stuck in the assembly area for two and a half hours without any information and no Cunard staff so that food, drink, or bathroom breaks were essentially unavailable as we could be called at any moment. The luggage pickup indicated that we were the last people off the ship and there was no information in debarkation documentation or Cunard people that indicated where the shuttle buses were. The Shuttle drivers did not appear to know what airlines were at which gates at the airport, which extended the delay. We missed our flight, which began the real inexcusable aspect of our cruise. Read more