Review of the Queen Elizabeth

Queen Elizabeth - Queen Victoria Mark II?

written by Land Ahoy posted on 16/12/10

We travelled down to Southampton on the day of departure by charter train, due to the bad weather the train arrived in Southampton some 2 hours late although having 300 passengers onboard the train the ship delayed it's departure to allow us to board. The embarkation was the fastest we have ever encounted, since most of the other passengers had already boarded the ship. The ship itself is almost identical to the QV with only minor modifications, the main difference being the addition of suites on the stern of the ship. The soft furnishings are of different colours, but otherwise the layouts of both ships are identical. We ate mainly in the Britannia resturant in the evening and had breakfast in the self-serviced Lido in the morning. We often went to the Golden Lion Pub for "British Pub Grub" at lunch. The food in all venues was of a reasonable standard but was not exceptional and was comparable to that serviced on most mainstream cruiselines. The portions were geared to European appetites rather than the enormous servings dished out of the cruiselines aimed at the USA market. The service onboard ship was good and attentive. The cruise ship was affected by an outbreak of Norovirus early into the trip. Cunard responsed to this by increasing the sanitation routines. This meant that passengers could not service themselves in the self-service food outlets (and this included beverages) and as such resulted in long queues at peak periods. Although I don't know the number of crew and passengers affected the majority of passengers I spoke to including myself were unaffected by this GI illness. We had an inside cabin which was adequate and had plenty of storage space, however, the coathangers need replacing (already mentioned in other reviews) The day time entertainment was by and large low key, the evening entertainment in the bars was the usual live music served up by all cruiselines. The headline entertainment in the theatre was on the whole good (I enjoyed the comedian, Adrian Walsh), the two singers (male and female) were talented. The production shows were slightly different in nature to those presented on other criselines. Two invloved an abridged musical format (A Slice of Saturday Night and Hotel Royale), a vocal production (Sing) and a dance show (La Danazza) all were enjoyable. A fifth show (The Piccadilly Line) was totally different, which was set on a London tube and involved poetry recitals and a little music, the general consenus of the passegers was that this was not a great success. I admired the novelty of the show but I failed to understand what the overall message of the show was about. The cruise was down the Canaries and the weather on the way down wasn't great and the ship moved around quite alot considering the seas weren't very rough - which suggests that the vessels isn't a "true ocean liner" this view has already being posted on many forums already. We missed one port (Las Palmas) due to high winds. The ports of call weren't important to me having visited this region quite a few times already. I enjoyed my cruise but the near identical layout of the ship to the QV meant I didn't feel I had sailed on a new ship but on a ship having had a recent refit. If you enjoy cruising on the QV you will enjoy this ship, if you didn't avoid the QE