I should preface this review by saying that I have always chosen Cunard for three basic reasons: its elegance, its service, and its onboard educational programs. That said, I can attest that, for the most part, Cunard's new ship, Queen Victoria, met or exceeded my expectations in all three areas.

EMBARKATION/DISEMBARKATION

Embarkation in Southampton at the City Cruise Terminal was a bit trying. As I understand it, the delays in boarding guests may have been due to the ship's sanitizing/clean-up operations, which were required following the outbreak of the Norovirus on the previous maiden cruises. Nevertheless, when I boarded at about 1:30 PM, there was approximately a 2 hour wait to actually get onboard. I didn't mind the delay itself so much. The real problem was that we were forced to wait standing up for most of that time and there were no chairs available (in the immediate area of the queue) where the people could rest their feet...if only for just a moment. Being in pretty good shape myself, I was able to manage this wait without any real problems, but I did have concerns for how some of the more elderly passengers were holding up. Apparently, there was insufficient seating in the cruise terminal to accommodate all the passengers who were awaiting embarkation, so they would call the boarding groups to line up well before they were actually permitted to embark (just to clear the waiting room). I'd never encountered this problem before when boarding the QM2, so was disappointed in the boarding process for the Queen Victoria. I don't know that I can blame the ship itself for this problem...it seemed to be more a product of the City Cruise Terminal's inability to accommodate so many passengers. Read more