We sailed on QM2 from New York - Caribbean Cruise 8 December. We had previously enjoyed the exact same cruise in 2008 and we were unpleasantly surprised how things have changed for the worst. The 'Carnival' accountants have obviously been hard at work and it shows. The service was inferior with many 'new' staff. We were told that most experienced staff had transferred to the new Queen Elizabeth. The price of drinks/wine was scandalous and the quality of food was below par. The Kings Court restaurant on deck 7 was abysmal and was nothing more that a cafeteria and a 'slop shop' with long lines of people everywhere.
The 'al la carte' evening dining within the Kings Court' i.e Lotus, Chefs Galley etc were all block booked by people at the start of the cruise so it was impossible to dine elsewhere in the evening other than our allocated table in the Britannia restaurant. The evening entertainment was absolute rubbish with a third rate comedian and a fifth rate ventriloquist, whilst the Cunard singers/dancers were boring and repetitive. One of our supposed island 'stop offs' at Grand Turks was cancelled, which meant we had and extra day at sea. We also discovered that many American passengers, and some upgraded to 'balcony cabins', had in fact only paid $500 per person.
When we got back to NYC 19 December, we found that our BA flight had been cancelled owing to the snow problem at Heathrow. BA put all the Cunard passengers up at the Marriott in Brooklyn and also paid for our lunch and dinner meals. There was no Cunard staff or management available other than some token 'meeter's and greeters' who had no idea what was going on. As we were part of a Cunard block booking we were unable to re-book our flights with BA even though all other BA independent passengers were able to get a return flight to London on the 22/23 December.