Queen Victoria – 30 nights – Santiago (Chile) to Southampton.

We flew from Heathrow on a BA flight to Santiago and had an excellent flight. We were met at the airport, rather chaotic, but after all this was South America, and we were soon on our way to the ship. A bonus being that we stepped at a vineyard on route. The check in was fine, but as soon as we stepped on board we could sense something different. During Queen Victoria’s refit last May a lot more Grill rooms were added, this made it very snobby, something we have never experienced before. The ship also started in Hamburg not Southampton , but on the whole the Germans were very pleasant people. The same could not be said for the Americans, who boarded In Fort Lauderdale, we found a lot to be very arrogant, even being told off by one man for Face Timing my grandchildren, this was by a pool outside with very few people around. We had booked this cruise in NOVEMBER 2016, so not a late booking. We realized last year that we had made a mistake of our choice of cabin, could we change this NO in 13 months of trying. As diamond members we thought (quite wrongly) that we would be given some consideration in changing our cabin, not a free upgrade may I add, but at our expense. We had asked for a table for two, this was allocated right by the entrance, my husband was looking straight into the slop bucket!! We moved 5 times, never to a table for two, and none were suitable. Hence we dined in the Lido every evening which was not ideal. On the whole the staff were lovely, the cabin steward, all the waiters even the officers were very pleasant, it was just the clientele which let it down. Sadly it will be a long time before we consider Cunard again after nine sailings with them. So on what we have just experienced we could not recommend Cunard to our friends and family anymore. Not the British ship which they seem to advocate in the press, a German/American one with lots of extra grill rooms. The ports we went into, bar one, Montego Bay, where a State of Emergency still exists,were excellent and we enjoyed them, just the ambience on the ship that let it down for us.