When my husband and I saw this mini cruise on the Queen Elizabeth for 5 days to and from Southampton (we live about and hour away) we thought what an ideal opportunity to try this iconic brand. Our past experience consists of seven cruises on Celebrity, Royal Carribean and more recently Azamara Club and Oceania.We were expecting great things from Cunard!

Embarkation from start to finish took about 50 minutes so no complaints and there was a welcome bottle of champagne in our stateroom. The stateroom itself was a bit basic in decor considering Queen Elizabeth is only 2 years old but that sort of thing dosen`t spoil a holiday for us. What does however is bad service and mediocre food.

The Lido buffet was like a bun fight at breakfast and lunch, with not enough food areas open and the standard of food was the worst we have had on any of the mentioned cruise lines. I ordered a fresh pizza one lunchtime which was O.K. but received such surly service from the chef I wanted to apologise for being so awkward! Read more