We first cruised on the QM2 in 2004, its inaugural year. Beautiful ship at that time, it still is, despite all the rust we see now, combined with a lot of wear and tear. We last sailed the QM2 just prior to the remastering and we like the changes to the Carinthia Lounge and Kings Court buffet. We do think that, overall, the standards, especially food quality, have slipped over the years.

To put our comments into perspective, we are Platinum World Club members on our 9th Cunard cruise, but this was our 42nd cruise, including Princess (Platinum), Holland America (3-star Mariner), Disney (Gold Castaway) and 4 cruises with Celebrity (Classic level, I think). We remain flexible and reasonable, expecting that things do sometimes go wrong but that every effort is made by those involved to do what is necessary to mitigate the problems, which was not the case here.

We were on the September 23-30 seven day voyage to New England and Canada from New York City to Quebec City. We were advised the day before embarkation that the ship would be late arriving in Brooklyn on its transatlantic voyage and to arrive two hours later than scheduled. Having already arranged for Cunard transfers from Newark, there was no flexibility to delay our arrival and we were at the ship shortly after 12 noon. Read more