Transatlantic Crossing
 

Want to do top notch TA crossing 2016. Is the QM2 the way to go? I'm not a cruiser! J class BA/LH/SQ world wide but TA crossing seems like a bucket deal if I can find a week or 10 days off. Any other options. Could do a Seabourn or Silverseas somewhere but like the idea of crossing the Atlantic but would like it first class (although on the water not the air). Welcome advice! Thanks

If you only have 7 to 10 days, then QM2 would be the way to go. Most TAs on other lines will be longer and include port stops in Europe, Iceland, the Canaries, Canada, or the Caribbean depending on routing,

I prefer westbound TAs because you gain an hour each day of the crossing.

If you can devote more time, then you'll have more options.

seabourn crossings are 12 day

queens grill on cunard?
http://www.cunard.com/cruise-deals/t...imate-upgrade/

Cunard has the most regular crossings. The other lines are largely seasonal and run eastbound in March-June typically and westbound August-December. There are some bargains to be had within the 75-90 day window as they're not popular with typical cruisers. The typical southern Florida to Lisbon leg is usually 8 sea days + 1 day in the Azores, Canaries or wherever.

Seabourn has repos too of 9 days (Lisbon to somewhere in the Caribbean or v-v) but I would not fancy rough weather on a small ship.

As others have mentioned Cunard runs the most Transatlantic cruises on the Queen Mary 2 on a fairly regular basis and typically 8 or so days. Other lines have Transatlantic cruises but they are mostly repositioning cruises when they move ships from winter destinations like the Caribbean back to Europe in the spring then in the fall when they move ships out of Europe for the winter. Obviously that means fewer choices, limited dates, and they are typically longer cruises, at least longer than your stated target length. As destination cruisers the thought of more than a couple of days in a row without a port isn't that attractive to us but a shorter Transatlantic on the QM2 is a possibility even if wait down our cruise bucket list.

vacationstogo.com

I did the QM2 Westbound Transatlantic and I loved it. It isn't at typical cruise, it is an ocean liner, and you really experience it as an ocean liner. It takes 7 days to cross. The ship can do it in five days, if necessary, but they keep it at a steady pace to make it a seven day journey. There are several different classes: Regular, Club, and Grills. We sailed in the regular class, which I personally would prefer because I like dining in the big dining room. The Club class has its own dining room, and each of the Grills have their dining rooms as well. But there is nothing like the big room, at least for me.

Three of the seven days are formal, which means tuxedos and evening gowns for dinner. That was probably my highlight, drinking champagne in the champagne bar surrounded by everyone in formal attire, it was spectacular.

The Club rooms are basically the same as the Regular rooms, but the Grills rooms are much bigger. With the top level, you have your own butler.

QM2 is a fantastic experience.

And once you catch the QM2 bug, you need to watch the lecture from the architect.


It is a bit long, but it is really enjoyable and helps understand the uniqueness of the ship.

I've done 2 transats on QM2, once in Princess Grill (think J class) and once in Queens Grill (F class). Prefer the westbound leg ex SOU, as already stated above, you gain an extra hour each night.
You can also travel Britannia grade (Y) and Britannia Grill (M+). It's a really lovely way to travel. PG and QG guests have an exclusive lounge and outside deck area, butler service in QG suites too. Try it!!

Transatlantic Crossing
 

We did eastbound TA at the end of a 3 week driving holiday in Ew England. advantage for bus was luggage. Our daughter (14) brought one huge suit case filled with boxes of kraft macc n cheese, lucky charms, peanut butter cups and other things.

It is the best way to criss the Atlantic -there's nothing like watching Manhattan disappear as you sail away. Lots to do or plenty of places to do nothing. We loved the ship so much we are flying to NY on December for a Christmas/ NY cruise to the Caribbean.

It depends
 

We sailed westbound during the end of hurricane season. Not something I would repeat. It was bouncy. We would go in May or June. Some crossing go the northern route other the Caribbean route. The southern route has fewer ports but may have nicer weather. We really enjoyed Iceland on our northern crossing.

I would go other times of the year. The advantage is you can take as much luggage as you can haul. No over weight fees.

Cruising is a very civilized manner of travel. I recommend Crystal for the best in food entertainment and service. There is nothing like being served food from Nobu in your penthouse watching the sunset. Amazing. Simply the best!

I have heard Cunard has more stability in their ocean liners that are specifically designed for crossings.

Cunard ships (esp QM2) are liners not cruuse ships. QM2 was designed for rough ocean crossings.

I've done Transatlantics on both Crystal and Holland America. I prefer Crystal, but in the Spring we'll go with Holland America because it gets us to Europe in time for DH's mother's 85th birthday. Then it's just a one way flight back. If you book through United or American's cruise portal, you get extras, plus you earn miles. Just a thought. Also, love going west to east because you gain time. Coming the other way, you set your clocks ahead an hour nearly every day. Ugh!

Nanook, you have that backward. Going west to east you lose time. It's going Europe to the US you gain time.

Am I the only one who doesn't care if I gain or lose an hour daily on the ship? I've done two transatlantics (losing time) and one transpacific (gaining time), but neither direction made much of a difference to me.

I'm late to the party but I'm doing the Seabourn Quest spring crossing - 16 nights Fort Lauderdale to Monte Carlo (with port stops in Madeira, Gibraltar, and Malaga). I'm excited for the sleepy pace - for me it will likely be a "working vacation" but for my mom it will be a new fun experience!

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.......

I did a ~13 day eastbound TPAC in March that had a 9 hour change (UTC+8 to UTC-7). Time change was done every day at 1600, and dinner was at 1800, so it was like eating at 1700 every day of the time changes, which was front-loaded so most of the time changes came in the first week. All for the convenience of the crew.

I find it much easier on a ship with daily hourly changes than being dumped on Europe after a TATL with your arrival at midnight at your place of departure. If there was a fast sea voyage from the west coast U.S. to western Europe, I'd do it.

My Mum and Dad are big cruisers, hear about them a lot when I see them! They would equivalent of BAEC life time gold with Cunard (not that you get huge benefits with cruise loyalty programmes)

If you want to cross the Atlantic in the old fashion 'silver service' style, akin to the Titanic etc then only Cunard offer this. Whilst the other Cunard ships (Victoria, Elizabeth) are just off the peg ships. The QM2 is a bespoke ocean liner and the only one of its kind left. Not quite a streamlined as the QE2 but designed to take the north Atlantic in mid winter.

On 10/06/2017 Regent has an 11 day TA from Lisbon to New York and includes free business air to Lisbon....great pricing...

seabourn still has amazing deals TATL (although can be similar deals elsewhere)

regent prices are crazily high now (makes their best suite a good deal actually)

There was a crossing priced for about USD 120 pp pd a few years back which would have been interesting. Not sure how comfortable a TATL on a small ship would have been in early/mid December however (sailed across on the Prinsendam a few weeks earlier and it was rough - and the Prinsendam is 6x larger by GRT than the Seabourne ship doing that run).

No matter what the line, repositioning cruises - esp TATL - seem to have some of the lowest per diems of any options offered by that line. I've definitely been eyeing them over the years. Haven't bitten yet - not enough time in the year to do all I want -but would love to get on a luxury line at a premium line price.

Husband shares the same concern about how enjoyable that many sea days on a small Seabourn ship in the Atlantic might be:p (and I'm the one who gets seasick! But I have drugs for that:p)

Have also considered doing a TATL crossing instead of flying back after a vacation (we're on the east coast of the US which makes it somewhat easier to consider). Have (retired) friends who do that regularly - hey, a crossing on the Queen Mary 2 is cheaper than business class seats. Could be even cheaper than coach, depending on specifics, so....

I'll be doing the Seabourn Quest spring crossing again in 2017. The one this spring was amazing - very relaxing and only one day (very early on) where the seas were questionable. The rest of the time it was incredibly smooth and incredibly tranquil.

my seabourn pride crossing was a roller coaster with a rogue wave and apparently almost having to be mustered in case evacuation was necessary from galley fire

after that i was highly amused by complaints on silversea alaska when stabilizers off (and highly impressed by how effective stabilizers are)

Hoyaheel, seabourn sometimes matches TATL lows elsewhere

in 2006 i paid 8% single supplement on $2500 fare for 12 nights

follow link to see seabourn lows for a number of years

The low fares (~$1200 for 9 nts Lisbon to St Maarten IIRC) was on either the Legend or Spirit both of which have now apparently departed the fleet. The Odyssey, more than triple the size of either the Legend or Spirit according to Seabourn.com (pretty close to HAL's Prinsendam in GRT and maybe even longer), is making the TATL this December. Prices are high accordingly, $3900 for 12 nts as of now. Not sure if cruisers will like 10 whole sea days....

seabourn transatlantic was my first cruise, second was silversea alaska

i agree re size of ships, but that is because i am not a cruise person
(i want more of the book a cabin on yachts smaller than seadream)