Ill be interested to hear a balanced review from one of our forum member Cunard regulars about QA.
People familiar with Cunard who were on the maiden voyage (which ended this morning I think) say there were some fairly serious food & service problems early on, but after day 4 it was fine. Also lots of new staff, including some completely new to cruise ships they thought it was maybe 50/50 between new and experienced. I think some issues are to be expected, and I would suggest if you book a maiden voyage it is naive not to expect them to happen.
The bigger changes seem to be the promenade deck, which is apparently much smaller than QV/QE, with fewer sea views, and no steamer chairs at all! That sounds to me quite shocking. I would have thought a promenade deck with steamer chairs was part of the Cunard DNA and should have been built into the ships design from day 1...
The other big breaks from "normal" Cunard seem to be a total lack of memorabilia / ship paintings / ship models etc, and the much smaller Queens Room. It was mentioned that this space is identical to that of a recent Holland America ship... I forget which one they said, but they have 3 Pinnacle Class cruise ships - Rotterdam, Nieuw Statendam and Koningsdam, just how similar to QA are these? I remember one of the reasons the QV was switched to a new ship was so that they could incorporate a large QUeens Room as it was felt essential, so this seems another break from "Cunard DNA". Is QA just a standard new Pinnacle Class ship, with different decor?
