First of all though, Cunard are a great cruise line and no one I've spoken to has had any complaints about the onboard experience or staff. What's been annoying people was the amount of time spent in port.
Time was that you would arrive at a port about 8:00am in the morning and leave by about 5:00/6:00pm that evening but just lately Cunard seem to have been including a lot of half day stops on their cruises.
Arriving at 8:00am and leaving at 1:00pm or, (and this was my favourite example), on a recent stop to Malaga they docked at 1:00pm and left at 6:00pm but all the shops were shut in the afternoon till 4:00pm!!!!!
Length of time in port isn't always included when itineraries are first released either so unless clients carefully check times of embarkation/disembarkation when they book they may be unaware of the fact that they're only getting a half day experience of the port.
The other complaint people have been mentioning to me has been the speed the ship travels. Just lately it seems as though the ships have been going a lot slower to conserve fuel, (and fuel costs), whilst cruising between the different ports.
So why are they doing this? The two do seem to be related.
I thought maybe Cunard had been offering half day ports of call to save money on port charges but maybe it's to take into account the new speed the ships are sailing at, taking longer to get between ports to conserve fuel and taking the attitude that half a day in a port is better than offering an itinerary with half the amount of destinations that there had been in previous years.
Don't forget as well that if your cruise ship is travelling slowly in rough seas you'll feel a lot more movement than a ship moving under full power.
What do you think? Has this affected a recent Cunard cruise you were on? Did you know before you arrived that you'd only be in port for half a day? How did this this make you feel?
Share your thoughts on this matter here!
Happy cruising.
WE recently travelled on P&O Ventura to the canaries, it was only doing 15knots, on previous cruise we have done 21knots and covered much more sea. It clearly is a Fuel saving measure.
ReplyDeletewe sailed on Queen Victoria 5 day cruise, no captians cocktail party, more cuts?
ReplyDeleteQueen Victoria was doing around 10 knots around the channel on its cruise to Le Havre clearly saving fuel I also was shocked at no captain's cocktail party? We never met any officers?
ReplyDeleteWas on the Queen Victoria's 5-day cruise. Ship was hardly moving at times and certainly much more slowly than any other cruise I have ever been on.
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