ABOARD THE QUEEN VICTORIA — The stock market ricocheted and U.S. presidential candidates bared their knuckles, but aboard Cunard’s newest ship, Queen Victoria, in the southern Caribbean, this was water off a duck’s back. In fact, except for the daily “programme” (this is a British ship), which announced the day’s activities, it would have been almost possible to forget the date.
Bookended by fiery sunrises and dazzling sunsets, tranquil days on calm seas gave way to moonlit nights. “On a cruise,” said marine historian Bill Miller, one of Queen Victoria’s lecturers, “all you have to decide is what to wear and what to eat.”
QUEEN VICTORIA STATS
Length: 964.5 feet
Width: 106 feet
Gross tonnage: 90,000
Number of passengers: 2,014
Number of passenger staterooms: 990
Number of crew: Approximately 1,000
Staterooms with balconies: 712
Top cruising speed: 23.7 knots
Original cost: Around $522 million
And which ship to go on — because they are different. Cunard’s ships are noted for their history, their British traditions and their formal evenings. I wondered how Queen Victoria would measure up to her distinguished predecessors and sister ships, which currently include Queen Elizabeth 2 and Queen Mary 2.
I boarded Queen Victoria in Aruba for the second leg of her 105-day world cruise. We were bound for Acapulco via the Panama Canal.
My first impression was of Queen Victoria’s bulk. She has 16 decks and carries 2,014 passengers and about 1,000 in crew. Though smaller than the QM2, this is not a small ship. However, my balcony cabin was smaller than I expected, with a tiny bathroom. No matter, as it turned out. The balcony was large enough, and here I spent some absorbing hours, listening to the ship cut through the water, observing the changing light, looking at the constellations and photographing the moon, which seemed to be full three nights in a row.
That must have been illusion, but why not? A cruise is part illusion. Grand staircases, mahogany paneling, stained glass, inlaid wood and custom-made carpeting, which the QV has aplenty in her stunning public rooms, lull passengers into forgetting that they are on a big sea, which sometimes can get rough. Once, I crossed the Atlantic Ocean on the QE2 in tandem with the QM2, and even that huge ship, as I looked back at her, was dwarfed by the mighty ocean.
Another illusion is of upper-crust elegance. Royalty, movie stars and billionaires may have traveled on ships at one time, but if and when they’re there now, most passengers aren’t likely to run into them. They would be in their suites, tended by their butlers.
SAMPLE ITINERARIES AND FARES
(All fares are per person, double occupancy)
May 6, 2008: 14-day Mediterranean Delights. From $2,975 (inside stateroom) to $25,175 (Q1 Grand Suite). Balcony fares from $4,175.
July 6, 2008: 12-day Voyage of the Vikings. From $2,2995 (inside stateroom) to $22,895 (Q1 Grand Suite). Balcony fares from $3,895.
October 12, 2008: 12-day Classic Mediterranean. From $2,445 to $22,345 (Q1 Grand Suite). Balcony fares from $3,345.
2009 World Cruise Fares: Fares for 105-day cruise (includes the trans-Atlantic crossing aboard QM2 from Southampton to New York at the end of the World Cruise), from $20,955 to $229,970 for a Q1 Grand Suite. Balcony fares from $29,140. Segments of the World Cruise can be booked at varying prices.
Extras: Liquor is extra, of course, but so are other beverages such as canned soft drinks ($1.75), bottled mineral water ($2/small; $3.50/large) and coffee outside of regular restaurant service ($1 for regular coffee and tea; $1.95 for cappuccino). Wine tastings, when offered, are $35 a person; whiskey tastings are $25 a person. Shore excursions usually cost between $39 and $199 per person. The spa’s hydrotherapy suite, with its heated pool, relaxation room, steam rooms and multi-headed showers costs $35 for a one-day pass. Group yoga and Pilates classes are $45 a week. Internet access is 50 cents a minute, with packages available.
Though the Queen Victoria has two or three formal nights a week, they’re more Swarovski than Harry Winston — and that’s fine. Cruises, I realized, give ordinary people a chance to dress up and explore sides of themselves they usually keep submerged.
On the Queen Victoria, for instance, I met a woman who lives outside Sydney, Australia, who said that after she and her husband signed up for the cruise, she worried for six months that she would look frumpy among all the sophisticated, stylish women. She was relieved to find out that she looked fine. That was useful information.
I also met an accountant from Colorado who was on for the whole World Cruise and who said that her divorce would become final while she was away. She was rethinking her life, wanting to explore creativity that she had previously neglected.
A long cruise provides the opportunity to do that, not only through lectures and classes but through conversations with people from all over the world.
You don’t eat on a cruise ship. You dine — and on the Queen Victoria, the dining options are legion. Passengers are assigned a dining room according to their cabin class, with the Queens Grill for the Grand, Master, Queens Suites and Penthouses at the top of the pyramid, followed by the Princess Grill for passengers in that category.
Both Grill dining rooms are single seating and passengers can order off the menu. In fact, said executive chef Jean-Marie Zimmerman, “when they use our menus, we’re shocked.” Caviar, lobster and truffles are readily available. In good weather, Grill passengers can dine outside in a charming courtyard with an Italianate fountain and lighting fixtures that resemble old-fashioned gas street lamps.
The two-level Britannia Restaurant, where most passengers have dinner and sometimes other meals as well, accommodates 878 people in each of two dinner seatings, with open seating at breakfast and lunch. The food is ample but not inspired — not surprising considering the numbers served. Provisioning and cooking for the 3,000 people aboard the ship is a job of staggering complexity, requiring seven kitchens and mammoth storerooms.
Passengers who want an alternative to their assigned dining room have several options. For an extra $20 at lunch and $30 at dinner, they can try the Todd English restaurant, whose menus were developed by the celebrity chef, but whose kitchen is in Chef Zimmerman’s jurisdiction. The Lido on Deck 9 serves cafeteria-style breakfast, lunch and dinner. At lunch, pasta and pizzas are made to order and are excellent. Another lunch option is the Golden Lion Pub, where large TVs play sporting events and the menu consists of such items as steak and mushroom pie.
Though passengers could compensate for some of these calories just by walking from one end of the ship to the other (Deck 3, which goes almost all the way around, is one-third of a mile), the Queen Victoria has a well-equipped gym and offers a variety of exercise and stretching classes, including yoga and Pilates. Fencing classes, a shipboard first, build stamina and balance. There are paddle tennis and shuffleboard courts, where the action can be far from decorous. Two outdoor swimming pools are seldom too crowded for swimming laps.
While Queen Victoria’s spa, billed as the Cunard Royal Spa and Fitness Centre, doesn’t have the name-brand cachet of the Canyon Ranch spa on the Queen Mary 2, it has a large variety of treatments and experienced therapists. Services under the spa’s jurisdiction include a beauty salon, an acupuncturist, a physiotherapist and a dentist who is equipped to do tooth whitening and emergency repairs.
QUEEN VICTORIA’S STATEROOMS
Queen Victoria has eight kinds of accommodations: Grand Suites, Master Suites, Penthouses, Queens Suites, Princess Suites, Balcony, Oceanview (no balcony) and Inside.
They range in size from 2,131 square feet to 151 square feet. All passengers in the Grand, Master, Queens and Princess Suites eat in the 142-seat Queens Grill or the 132-seat Princess Grill and have their own indoor and outdoor lounges plus an outdoor dining area.
Most passengers eat in the Britannia Restaurant, which serves 830 of the ship’s 1,007 staterooms. The Britannia accommodates 878 guests in two dinner seatings, with open seating at breakfast and lunch.
Most of the staterooms on the Queen Victoria are in the Balcony category and range in size from 242 to 472 square feet, including the balcony. They are attractively furnished in blonde wood with a small desk and sofa and two single beds that can be pushed together or separated. They have small bathrooms with a shower but no tub. (Princess Grill staterooms and up are tub-equipped.)
Storage space in the Balcony staterooms is tight, especially for a ship that takes passengers on long cruises and has many formal nights. Most passengers found the drawer and closet space inadequate and improvised. One woman and her roommate on the World Cruise asked that the sofa in their room be removed so they could place a clothes rack in that space. Another couple brought S-hooks and hung some of their garments outside the small closets. Some people who planned to be on the ship for months went to Wal-Mart and bought a set of plastic drawers.
Cunard says that the cabins will be fitted with more drawers after the World Cruise ends in April.
In a hydrotherapy suite, guests can assuage their backaches under strong jets of water in a heated pool, and then recline on contoured, heated lounges between steam room sessions and play time in a hydra-headed shower.
Among the treatments, the dry flotation bed looked particularly inviting. After a massage, spa director Mark Nel explained, the dry flotation bed turns into a water bed. “The body is weightless in water and you relax. You’ll fall asleep within minutes!”
The dry flotation bed costs $119 for an hour’s treatment. For a less expensive version, life-stressed passengers can sprawl on one of the cushioned teak lounge chairs on Deck 3.
The ship has a casino for those who want it, but it was far less popular than the library, which has 6,000 books and periodicals.
There’s also a supervised playroom for children but few were aboard.
Most passengers were retired or semi-retired. Many had the time and money to book the whole World Cruise from New York City to Southampton.
Among them was Irma Klindt of Pasadena, who has made more than 105 trips with Cunard. She has an apartment in Pasadena but said that she hadn’t opened her Christmas mail yet.
She has been aboard Cunard ships since Dec. 11 and won’t get home until the end of April.
Ms. Klindt, who retired from Pacific Bell more than two decades ago at the age of 55, isn’t an heiress. She travels as inexpensively as possible in an inside cabin. “The world comes to me when I’m aboard the ship,” she said.
The Queen Victoria isn’t perfect and has already had its share of problems. An outbreak of norovirus on the maiden voyage afflicted about 100 people and kept the well-equipped medical center busy.
Stormy seas off Gibraltar prevented the ship from docking. Some of the Britannia dining room service has been spotty. And the staterooms don’t have enough drawers.
Stirling and Clare Kenny of Stratford, Ontario, and Naples, Fla., said they had read the negative criticisms of Queen Victoria’s Christmas cruise and didn’t know what to expect. The Kennys boarded in New York and plan to get off in Sydney, Australia.
They have cruised on most lines operating from North America and this is their 70th cruise. “This is way better than we thought,” Mr. Kenny said. “It meets all my expectations and exceeds them.”
Then he shrugged off comparisons with other ships. “The best cruise is the one you’re on right now,” he said.
QUEEN VICTORIA’S FIRST PANAMA CANAL TRANSIT
On January 21, Queen Victoria approached the Port of Cristobal on the Atlantic side of the Panama Canal. Huge cranes towered against the dawn sky, ready for the ships that carry grain, cargo containers and petroleum between the East Coast of the United States, Asia, and the west coasts of both North and South America. Without the canal, the freighters would have to make a long, treacherous journey around Cape Horn.
The 50-mile-long canal cuts through the Isthmus of Panama at one of the narrowest points between North and South America. Three sets of locks raise ships 85 feet to Gatun Lake and then lower them again. The 90,000-ton Queen Victoria would just fit in a lock, with two feet to spare on either side and just under 18 feet front and back,
On the day before the transit, lecturers Diane and John Stockman had referred to the Panama Canal as “the eighth wonder of the world.” Seventy-five thousand people worked on it; around 32,000 people died in the effort. It took decades to build. A French team tried, starting in 1880, but were defeated by mosquito-borne diseases and a flawed plan. In 1904, an American team began work on the canal and succeeded. Without fanfare, on Aug. 15, 1914, a freighter, the SS Ancon, became the first commercial ship to make the transit.
At 6 a.m. on January 21, three Panamanian pilots came aboard the Queen Victoria to assume navigational authority for the ship. The morning sky was fiery red, illuminating the dense jungle that borders the canal. Magnificent Frigate birds soared overhead.
Two men rowed a boat toward the Victoria to throw the lines needed to hitch the ship to small locomotives called “mules” that would guide her through the locks. Over the years, more complicated technology has been tried, but the rowboat-toss method has proven best. Then the ship nosed her way into the first of the Gatun locks and the gates swung closed behind her.
It takes 52 million gallons of water to move a ship through the Panama Canal. The concept is simple. As a ship ascends, water flows from Gatun Lake at the crest of the system into the locks below, raising the ship in steps to the level of the next lock. When that level is reached, the forward gates open and the ship proceeds into the next lock to repeat the process.
At 23-mile-long Gatun Lake, the ships pause to await their turn to begin the downward journey. There, water drains from each lock until the ship is level with the one below. The descent is especially tricky on the Pacific side, where there are 18-foot tides.
For passengers and most crew, it’s a splendid spectacle. For a ship’s navigation officers, a Panama Canal transit is a long, tiring day. Scraped paint is probably inevitable, and Queen Victoria got her share.
But after nearly 100 years, there is a matter-of-fact quality to this remarkable journey. Around 14,000 ships go through the canal every year, and everyone knows their job.
To appreciate what this eight- or nine-hour crossing really means you would have to know that Gatun Lake is still one of the largest manmade lakes in the world, that the Panama Canal was the most expensive construction project that the United States had ever undertaken until that time and that the canal was dug with steam shovels removing enough earth to circle the globe four times.
Though the locks were so well built that they have never needed to be replaced, dredging and construction go on continually, especially at the Galliard Cut, which crosses the Continental Divide and is prone to landslides. Near the Centennial Bridge just north of the Pedro Miguel locks, a new channel is being built that will accommodate larger ships than can get through the present locks. It is scheduled for completion in 2014.
The cost to transit the canal is by tonnage. Traveler and adventurer Richard Halliburton swam the canal in 1928 and paid 36 cents. The Queen Victoria paid $275,000.
In late afternoon, she reached the Miraflores locks and was released into the Pacific. Hundreds of people on shore waved and cheered as this great ship completed her first Panama Canal transit. People on the ship waved back. Some had tears in their eyes.
So many large ships are built every year that we might take them for granted, but they are amazing feats of engineering as is the canal itself. One of Queen Victoria’s lecturers, Ben Cameron, recalled a line from Shakespeare that seemed appropriate to the moment: “What a piece of work is man!” Shakespeare wrote in “Hamlet.”
There are times when humanity’s best shines through. This was one of them.
– Terese Loeb Kreuzer
Terese Loeb Kreuzer is editor of Travel Arts Syndicate; TravelArts-Syndicate.blogspot.com.
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