Queen Elizabeth, Mediterranean
4
We departed from Southampton on our Xmas Canary Islands cruise, embarking was reasonably straightforward, Covid testing was efficient however the instructions as to where our room card was and how to complete and register the watching of the safety film was inadequate and there were considerable numbers of guests summoned the following day to your muster station to confirm you had indeed watched the film. The crew on board were very attentive, food was good in the buffet and Britania Restaurant. The buffet was all served by crew but at times they needed more crew to avoid queuing. Shore excursions were expensive and underwhelming, disembarking was organised chaos. Guests were told the time they needed to be at the gangway, most seemed to ignore that requirement and as usual with Cunard guests there was a rapid growth in wheelchair users that were then pushed passed the queues to the front which held up the rest of us and caused chaos in the lifts. The queue was continuous snaking off the ship into the baggage area and there were insufficient different numbers for cases so it took a lot longer to find yours within your numbered group. We will not be cruising with Cunard in the future whilst Covid is around, we were disappointed that upon arrival at La Coruna , our penultimate port and a day after our "two day pre departure test" on board a fleet of seven ambulances arrived at the quay and removed positive tested guests. There were limited numbers of guests on board and a large number of sealed off staterooms, why couldn't the guests be made to isolate for the last 24 hours? By taking these guests off they then had to redo their Passenger locator form, ten day isolation in a hotel or hospital, fly back to Gatwick and then get to Southampton to collect their car. Not good service and not what we expected from Cunard.