New York to Southampton on QM2 is a fantastic experience. I can vouch for what others have said about the Cunard liners being built to smooth the effect of rough seas. Back in the 1970s I sailed that route on the old Queen Elizabeth II, and have a distinct memory of eating breakfast in the main dining room and watching waves climb high onto the big windows of the room.

It took me more than three decades after that to make another crossing on the QM2, and even in Standard class instead of the higher Grill booking classes, it's a premium quality experience. Hope you get a chance to enjoy. A fair number of my musings about travel when I retire always circle back to that kind of sailing.

Crossing longitudes by ship, cruise or otherwise, is a great way to minimize the effects of jet lag.

As for the QM2; from what I've read, the basic hull design of the QM2 and the Queen Victoria is shared with various Carnival Corp ships including HAL's Nieuw Amsterdam and Eurodam, Carnival Spirit class and various Costa ships. Not sure I buy the fact it is an ocean liner. Maybe more power than a cruise ship of the same size (HAL did that with 4 ships which are near identical: 2 of which are designated for global voyages and thus have 4 20 cylinder diesels while the other two not designated for such have 16 cylinder engines instead (and thus lowered max cruise speed by 2-3 knots).

QM2 has a different hull than Queen Victoria. QM2 was truly designed as an ocean liner.

Queen Victoria is the exact same hull as the HAL Vista class ships, Carnival Spirit Class, etc and isn't really an ocean liner.

Transatlantic Crossing
 

There is a trip report by bingbongboy somewhere in the trip report forum of a Cunard transatlantic

by all means, yes. Go.
 

We did a westbound crossing in 2012 and loved every minute of it. A crossing on QM2 is not a cruise. Cunard excels at keeping your days filled with intellectual and entertaining events. If you wish to skip the black tie, you may do so-just eat in the Kings Court (which switches over to specialty restaurants in the p.m.) We loved our daily visit to the dog kennels on board (only ship to transport pets). It is a very 'British' ship , in the best sense . Fellow pax will be middle age to older, well traveled , not remotely stuffy or snobby, evenly split between Americans and Europeans-
Go ! You will have quite an adventure.

Transatlantic Crossing
 

I did a transatlantic repositioning cruise from Miami to Barcelona - cruise ships tend to move fleets in April from US and they return usually in November from Europe - I didn't go fancy at all but the rates are generally low! Pick a ship low end to high end. I paid $550 pp for balcony 11days on NCL Epic (first time big ship and NCL def not fancy) but smooth sailing entire time. Flew home BA J from London on points

I looked for it.... and it appears the entire trip report has been deleted.:(

I did a TR a decade ago that included a brief description of a crossing on the QM2 - http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...-o-donors.html

We are going Holland America in April FLL to CHP. Our first TA, but 10 or so long cruises. This time issue seems to be a pain in the watch stem!
Our cruise is 17 days with 6 in a row at sea, before the first port.

Canapes
 

Anyone know what are deluxe & gourmet canapes like on QM2?

I had not thought about that - thanks for the advice.

Again - thanks - good to know. ^

Just my 2 cents' worth...we did an eastbound crossing in April and I will never do that again. I was so exhausted with setting my clock ahead one hour six or seven times that my meal times got discombobulated. I prefer westbound as I'm coming home and it doesn't matter how tired I am.

doesnt help with fire, seabourn i did was rumored to almost call passengers to go to top deck in case lifeboats were necessary. kitchen fire, photos showed massive blackening on outside of ship.

on that crossing, there were many cunard pax. of QE2 i think it was. regulars. one of them had been on a crossing on it, went through a serious wave, which tore all the hatches off one side of the ship.

had a rogue wave on seabourn crossing, tipped maybe as much as 45 degrees. not really a big deal to me. couple older fell, no injuries. reportedly only damage was (of course) a bottle of louis xiii.

luckily i think no serious problems on transoceanics (vs others) in many years

On our eastbound crossing this past spring, Seabourn tried something new and we set the clock forward 30 minutes each day while we were at sea. Odd - and definitely made trying to convert times for emails back home a bit challenging - but it did the trick and we were all able to slowly acclimate.

I'm doing the same crossing in 2017 and hope they keep that method.

I did an eastbound crossing and found my body adjusted just fine - maybe because I could sleep as much as I wanted (including naps). I'd been warned that it would be a problem and didn't I want an extra hour each day, but in all honesty, it didn't really matter to me.

Different strokes.......