In December I went on my first cruise, the Dymocks – Cunard Australia Literature Festival at Sea. This was a 5 night roundtrip voyage sailing from Sydney to Hobart. There were presentations and book signings from acclaimed authors including Alexander McCall-Smith, Fiona Macintosh, Anita Weiss, Graeme Samson, Anne Buist, Paul Cleave, Sue Williams, and Elizabeth Stanley. My stand out was a presentation from investigative journalist Nick McKenzie who spoke of some of the work he has completed during his amazing career. I’d never thought about the life of an investigative journalist before. It was fascinating, It’s more than breaking the big stories, there is danger and risk and hopefully rewarding outcomes of righting wrongs. Nick was such a captivating speaker with faultless dialogue. I was not the only one that found his talk interesting and enlightening as he received an extended standing ovation . Apart from the Literature Festival the Cunard Queen Elizabeth ship was a very impressive. Before I get into all the fancy details of the ship and everything onboard I’ll go through a few general things. Gratuities – Don’t get caught out by this. Gratuities are automatically charged to your onboard account, they are charged daily per person (at about $US16 per person per day, so for 5 days $US80). You can go to the purser at the beginning of the cruise and ask for the automatic gratuities to be removed so you can pay your own gratuities to your steward, servers and staff. It’s also worth keeping in mind the ship is international so everything is in $USD.
The Mareel Spa treatments also incur a 15% surcharge. This is separate to general gratuities and tips and regardless of whether you booked and paid prior to sailing.
Electrical outlets – you will require an adapter for UK to AU. These sold out from the onboard shop so a few people must have forgotten or not known. Internet is available by purchasing an internet plan. You will then have access to the ships WiFi. We purchased a plan before departure so it would be all sorted when we got on. Unfortunately that didn’t happen and connecting was a real issue so we needed to talk to the ships IT people. The internet wasn’t very reliable and dropped out a bit. This is probably one of the things I think they should look at. There were quite a few people in the line to get internet or fix internet issues. Sea sickness didn’t really cross my mind on a big ship like the Queen Elizabeth. Going through Bass Strait we had some dodgy weather and I did get a bit ill. The purser had sea sickness tablets available for purchase for USD $9 a pack which were a god send. After that I felt great.

The room

I was travelling with my mum and we stayed in a stateroom with balcony with twin single beds. The beds and pillows were super comfy. Each bed had a bedside table which could have done with a power outlet (as mentioned above there was only one power outlet and that was at the desk seen on the far left of the image above). There is a lounge and small coffee table which is behind the balcony picture in the above image. There is a small fridge which is full of items you can buy, so not much room to put in anything else. You can purchase bottled water which we chose to do (USD $24 for 6 1L bottles). They do say that the water onboard is suitable for drinking if you don’t want to purchase the bottled water.
The bathroom was a good size and all things considered the room was a lot bigger than I thought it was going to be. There were two full length cupboards to fit dresses, suits etc and plenty of drawer space. There was a safe and a TV on the wall opposite the beds. The balcony was massive! There were two chairs and a table. When we arrived in our room we had a complimentary bottle of bubbles and a lovely note from our steward, Agung, introducing himself and letting us know he would be looking after us during our cruise. He was lovely as were all the staff.

The Theatre

It is hard to believe there is a theatre this large on a cruise ship. Also amazing that it’s full for each performance. There were different shows each night with two different performance times so people who had early dinner bookings could see the later show and visa versa. On our cruise the theatre is also where some of the guest speakers and authors presented.

Some other features of the ship

My verdict

I loved the cruise. The Cunard Queen Elizabeth is a beautiful ship and you feel very special while you are cruising as it’s so fancy. I don’t think this is the cruise liner for children even though there were a few families with young children on this cruise. I had such a great time and would definitely cruise again on the Cunard Queen Elizabeth. If you are interested look here for the departures from Sydney. Also just a note that this is not a paid review. I saved up to take my mum on a fancy cruise. It was my gift to her. It was lovely to spend quality time with her.