Queen Elizabeth Review
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After over 50 cruises, I thought it would make sense to sail Cunard. BIG mistake. The Queen Elizabeth was coming out of a dry dock just prior to our cruise, so I expected to step aboard an almost new, spiffy ship. That didn't happen. There were broken items in the Lido, in the Casino, in the Laundry rooms and in the public bathrooms. And everything that was broken on Day 1 stayed broken to the end of the cruise. No attempts to repair anything took place. For example, in the Lido buffet, not a single ice machine worked, none of the toasters worked properly, one of the two ice cream machines was broken, one or two of the drink dispensers did not work. So it is not clear what they actually did in the shipyard.
One of the more amazing disappointments was that there was no senior officer (3 stripes or above) presence onboard the ship. The captain never made any public appearances and was just a disembodied voice heard at noon on sea days. Likewise, the other department heads were never seen roaming the ship much less interacting with the passengers. I did see the ship's doctor once, but only because he was on a "date" with his partner and having dinner.
The overall level of service was poor. Chaos is the best way to describe eating in the main dining room. On the first night, our party of four was assigned to a dirty table by the maitre'd. Rather than someone cleaning the table and resetting it so we could eat, we were left standing in the middle of the floor for ten minutes while they tried to figure out where else we could sit. Interestingly, that table was never cleaned during the entire time we ate dinner. Meals in the main dining room could take up to 2.5 hours to complete due to there being long unexplained breaks between courses. Waiters were very perfunctory in doing their job. There was no checking on how your day was, no information about the next day and really no attempt to interact at all-just put the plate in front of you and disappear. Of course, I might do the same if I had to serve what at best is mediocre food. The dishes served were uninspired and not reflective of the Asian part of the world we were sailing in. There was very little choice on offer, like only one salad to choose from. Dinners on Gala evenings were just the same as on every other night.