This was our first Cunard cruise so we were looking forward to travelling on the Queen Mary and the ship itself did not disappoint. However in many ways the cruise did not live up to our expactations for a few reasons. We were offered an upgrade to a Princess Grill suite (for an extra charge) a few days before we left Australia. These cabins were lovely and have probably spoilt us for future cruises. Our cabin boy was everything he should have been - efficient yet very out of sight and low-key.

The ship is so big that it took us a few days to familiarise ourselves with it. I'm sure it could go through a hurricane and still feel stable and comfortable.

It was the level of service where we felt let down by Cunard. A lot of the bar/wait staff are Russian/Eastern European and they are just not jolly people. It was hard to find a staff who had a personality or sense of humour let alone someone who seemed happy in their job. We were told that about 1600 Australians boarded the ship in Hong Kong which is a large percentage of the total complement of passengers and you would think that if Cunard had done their homework they would know that Australians like to have a good time but good entertainment was hard to find. A couple of the "guest entertainers" were OK but there were too few. The 50's and 60's night was by far the best night's entertainment but it was quite late in the cruise and there was nothing else like it. We went to the trivia sessions in the Golden Lion Pub a few times but one of the Entertainment team obviously didn't like Australians very much. Apparently Cunard offered a lot of Australians greatly reduced fares to fill the ship so perhaps that's why the standard of entertainment was not so good in order to reduce the budget. Read more