The second 1500 miles on a boat across the North Atlantic
Home: Queen Mary 2

I’ve never thought of myself as a “cruise person”. In fact, I had assumed (hoped?) that I would pass to the end of my days before ever taking a cruise. And I think that goal may still be in the cards if I hire a good lawyer, because getting this officially classified as “transportation” rather than “a cruise” should be entirely possible.

Still, it contained a lot of cruise-like elements, and I understand now how easy it can be to become a Cruise Person.

The included element that I got the most value from by far was the food. I don’t think I’ve ever had room service in my life before, but we had our first two breakfasts delivered at exactly the time we asked with exactly the items we wanted. Rett continued to enjoy it, but I actually found visiting the buffet myself an even better experience. Dealing with the million plates, trays, covers, coffee pots, etc., inside our small room was annoying, and the buffet (just one level up) had all the same stuff, but more, and then I could select exactly what I wanted in that moment (and in what quantity), rather than what I wanted the night before when filling out the menu card.

Again, the sit-down dinners always had new appetizers, soups/salads, mains, and desserts, with fine-dining presentations, and attentive service from the army of waitstaff. Often when we’re riding, I’ll quickly tire of restaurant meals, but surprisingly that didn’t happen here even though I ate nothing but restaurant meals for a week. I think that was due to the amount of “real” food on the menus (vs. deep-fried who-cares), and due to them keeping portion sizes reasonable. Even when we were “banished” to the buffet for the two gala nights where we didn’t meet the dress code, it was still excellent.

And I realized especially in 2026, that’s where much of the value of this crui… er, transportation, lies. It feels like price increases in the “dining out” category have far outpaced almost anything else in the last five years, to the point where each of our dinners, even without drinks (which cost extra), but with US-level tax-and-tip, would cost $150. So 7 of those dinners for “free” approaches half of our $2300 total fare. Include our breakfast and lunches, our maybe-$100/night “hotel room”, various other entertainment, and we near the point where the actual transportation part of the equation is thrown in at no cost.

Of course if we weren’t trapped on this boat, we wouldn’t choose to spend >$200/day eating every meal out, but again, that’s the cruise attraction: it makes you feel like you can afford a certain lifestyle that you never could on dry land.

Rett then took advantage of much more than me. For several days, her schedule was packed: a dance fitness class, followed by an actual dance class (where I joined her for the foxtrot day, but my body learns at 1/10th the speed dance classes are taught at), then lunch, and then (because 11:59am changes to 1:00pm every day to match the time zones) directly into choir practice!

We both went to two of the tightly-produced evening song-and-dance stage performances, and while I couldn’t get the acerbic voice of Simon Cowell out of my head (“alright, that would have been an excellent cruise ship performance…”), Rett pointed out that it’s providing steady employment for singers and dancers, and a (semi-captive) audience to watch them do what they love.

The performance I enjoyed the most, in the same theater, was the culmination of Rett’s choir practices, with the newly-assembled choir of 80-some fellow passengers delivering a surprisingly-good set of sea shanties on our transit’s last day (including a beloved one we just heard at the Sterling Renaissance Festival!) It helped that their director (the ship’s overall Entertainment Director) was not only a good singer to lead the songs, he’s also a good arranger (they actually did harmonies!), and a good conductor, to keep it all tight and ship-shape. I loved seeing Rett have an opportunity to participate in things like this that she loves to do, but essentially has no chance to do in this nomadic phase of our lives.

I stayed less-active, though I still got a good amount of steps in by ranging far and wide each day across the ship’s 13 decks (and except for arrival and departure with our bikes, I didn’t use a single elevator!) But there always seemed to be so much going on that I only accomplished a fraction of the maintenance/repair tasks I had assigned myself for this Internet-free week. Oh, except it doesn’t have to be Internet-free. For exorbitant prices, they’ll sell you good Starlink access for the whole journey. We just bought it for the last 24 hours (for $28), and previously, shared (hotspotting worked fine) each of our free-trial hours.

Weather was good, in a North Atlantic way, if not a Caribbean cruise way. Near-constant mid-60s temperatures were cold enough to keep the outdoor areas vacant most of the time, but not so cold as to make it explicitly unpleasant to go out and get some air. One day a headwind and the ship’s speed combined to produce 50mph winds on the open top deck (which Rett and I had fun trying to walk against in a very-unstraight line), but other days were much calmer. A bit of rain, but no real storms we had to dodge, so the ship never had to crank up to its rated speed, and could complete the journey in the required time at a smooth 24mph. Only a day or two had waves even worth mentioning, and while we would weave from side to side while walking down the long hallways, sea-sickness was no issue.

On the final day, I saw a dolphin, and supposedly a whale was spotted at one point, but there really wasn’t much to see besides endless water. Which is cool in its own way. It’s certainly the most-isolated I’ve ever been (if you ignore the ~3000 others isolated with us)!

I think the biggest difference between this “transportation” and “a cruise” is that cruises tend to stop in more than one port-of-call. And it’s that regimented, efficiently-packaged way of seeing the world that is most at odds with my personal travel philosophy. As much as I loved this week aboard the Queen Mary 2, I think I would still violently rebel against “shore excursions”. So while it will be difficult to leave some aspects of this fantasy life of catered-luxury behind, we’re excited to go ashore at the Queen Mary 2’s lone port-of-call, and to range far beyond the reach of Cunard Line on our self-designed year-long “shore excursion”.