Having previously cruised on the Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth we were very much looking forward to a sampler trip on the Queen Mary 2 before booking a Trans-Atlantic trip. Unfortunately it failed to live up to our expectations in many respects.

Our table in the dining room was in a very dark and dismal position and the tables in our section were long tables rather than the normal round ones. The food was "OK" but the waiters made no effort to engage with us. In fact we never leant their names. The Theatre was a little strange - to us it resembled an old time music hall kind of layout. The Commodore Club - our favourite on the other Queens was ruined by being attached at one end to a cigar saloon. This meant that most people crammed into one end of the Commodore club to avoid the very pungent cigar smell coming from this cigar saloon. As is usual with Cunard there were no tea/coffee making facilities in the cabin. Whenever we attempted to get some delivered to the cabin all we ever got when we telephoned was a recorded message saying that room service was busy. On our return to the ship in Cherbourg there was a problem with embarkation just at the point when all of the trips were returning. The queue to board was right along the quay, all the way into and out of the other side of the terminal - and it was raining ! - we all got very wet and very angry. Disembarkation at Southampton was a complete shambles. Rather than calling us to disembark in groups as normal, they continued to call groups even though the whole deck was jam packed with others waiting to disembark and we couldn't find anyone to ask to put a stop to the madness. We did email to complain. The initial response stated that it would take 28 days to respond to our complaint but if in the mean time we wanted to book another cruise we could use the link below !! The eventual response from Cunard was as disappointing as the experience of the QM2.

Come on Cunard you can do much better then this. We travelled on the Emerald Princess earlier this year and although there were almost 1000 more passengers the organisation was brilliant.