We recently returned from half world QM2 cruise Singapore to Southampton. Many good things about this 35 day cruise which, overall, we greatly enjoyed and for which the basic price (excluding on-board extras) was excellent value . Unlike some recent reviewers, we were very impressed with quality of food and staff attitudes in Kings Court buffet, which generally also catered well for vegetarians like me – better than the Britannia formal restaurant though food and service there were good too. We didn’t see any need to use the over-expensive specialist restaurants.

Staff service and attitude very good apart from the odd misery-guts in the bars, the coffee bar and the tours office – interesting to note that these are particular venues for the perhaps excessively high prices that we found charged for on-board extras (our main moan on this cruise), so maybe they’re fed up with complaints! That didn’t seem to embitter the equally expensive but reliably cheerful photography staff though...

Pool and games facilities are very good – though of course there’s always the danger that some selfish people will dominate them, as happened on this trip with the table tennis. As for venues, Kochi was a wash-out, due partly, apparently, to the Indian authorities’ cussedness regarding visas, but many of the others were brilliant – especially Langkawi island, Aqaba (where the Jordanian air force display team did a brilliant and moving display and fly-past) Sorrento (a late substitute for Naples) and Cadiz. We’d rather have had an overnight stay at any of these harbours rather than at flashy less impressive and very, very busy Dubai ( a series of traffic jams linking building sites and designer shopping malls...) Read more