Cunard Line, Queen Elizabeth, Australasia Review

Queen Elizabeth, Australasia

Queen Elizabeth

One if not two elevator’s especially up to deck 10-12 were inoperable and some time or another most days and these 2 lifts were required to reach our dining rooms and special decks, these were also limited to 4 pax per elevator.

We also met a couple in south Australia who apparently tested positive to Covid when they did the onboard test and had obviously mixed with other pax on the cruise before doing the morning test.
One wonders how many they had infected.

We had NO reports of Covid pax on the ship and yet we still had to wear masks except for on deck, pools, and dining rooms and not all pax complied and didn’t seem to be challenged by the crew on board.

Subcontractors in the ports and drivers etc and the ports themselves wore NO masks.
The USA, UK, Australia, NZ all mask free countries yet this ship is different.
God knows why!

The ship ran out of std blends if wines like Chardonnay or Pinot Gris being our preferred choice lastly on room service and earlier in the Princes Grill, forcing us to purchase premium brands at your exorbitant prices as you will see by our $2800 bar bill and including a few small souvenirs purchase made on board.

2 days before the cruise ended they ran out of Soy milk which my wife needs and even common fruits like a banana for breakfast had run out.

Washing machines broke down on other floors forcing other pax to use the ones on our floor making it difficult to get a space for those on deck 5

We were advise to book yoga and meditation spots as they filled up quickly before we had even seen the first ships Navigator ship’s program appeared in our room.

The programs all conflicted with Marrell spa yoga being at 1700 and just before dinner which started at 1830 and the rushed meal so we could go to see a 2000 show.

Some pax already knew about the changes as they had been advised by email before the cruise left Sydney of fact we were not going to Fiordland and Dunedin, but we never received any correspondence from imagine or Cunard.


Checkout of hotel was chaos again as we were told to keep an eye on our bags and then they were taken from the Ballroom by the hotel porter’s and loaded on a truck and never to be seen till at the wharf. Again not what was advised by Imagine escorts.

We had not been supplied baggage tags by Cunard despite their many promotional emails for other cruises.

Trip for us ruined by missing information and misinformed organisers.

Originally booked over 3 years ago this was a 70th birthday and our wedding anniversary and a trip of a lifetime costing us over $20k and as I am retired I am unable to save airfares and cruise payments in the near future.
Also as we had paid for our trip including all airfares man/ Syd Per/ man, we are at a loss to understand why we had to virtually pay another airfare before our new itinerary imagine are very inept in providing information in writing especially on these extra costs.
All they asked mainly was to see if we wanted to pay for upgrades etc on the cruise and train and exorbitantly inflated prices on the airlines. Imagine already had tried to reduce our days away on another trip which was 11 day cruise and 2 overnights in Sydney. We had seen the cruise we are currently on and If we had not said to change it back and complained to Imagine I guess nothing would have been done.

This trip has been completely ruined by lies, no information misinformation and complete incompetence and ineptness by Imagine, Cunard and Journeys the Beyond.

Baggage tags etc not sent by Cunard to us,no information regardless of any changes to our trip were advised in emails letters or otherwise. Some pax knew more than ground and ship personnel as they had received information even as far as the night of Jan 4 the day before our flight.

Very sparse duty free stocks or on board purchases or souvenirs in the shops and no bags to put what we’re our pathetic purchases in.
The tv entertainment was useless as half were foreign films catering for languages of pax who were not there. It was equivalent to what could be seen in a 1/3 world countries.

Fiordland and Dunedin compensation $100 dollars for 2 special port was again a slap in the face as we missed 2 special specific ports of interest to us. Then because the NZ contractors were unable to fix the hull problem we missed out on the Bay of Islands.

No compensation by Cunard for our Bay of islands at all, this to was a trip highlight for us.

The 50% refund in the form of travel with Cunard is unacceptable and we demand a full refund for the cruise and also for the airfares, journey Beyond trip on the Indian Pacific.

The crew on both the ship and the train trip can’t be faulted but the management of this failure on the suppliers abysmal.

Most New Zealanders including my cousin who lives in Tauranga and who we spent the day with, and some crew of Cunard and pax knew and told us about about the hull issues which had plagued most cruise ships since last November with the Biodiversity issues in NZ waters and we found out that people who late booked then, for this cruise were advised by Cunard they would it be calling in at the first 2 scheduled ports.

Only 1/8 of the ship was cleaned while we floated for another day.

We ended up visiting 4 ports instead of the 7 we booked for.
Basically we sat in our cabins or lounge occasionally as we just cruises the ocean for 9 days.

The captains announcements were demeaning and a slap in the face to us and by following what his superiors had obviously told him what to say, was quite disappointing.

The ships crew gave us more information than he did and as such were rewarded when we disembarked the ship.

4 days air travel to participate in less than 2/3rds of a cruise is abomination.

It’s taken is many years to save to do this trip