A Michelin-star chef and pickleball - after 184 years, Cunard pivots

Sitting in the Commodore Club, forward of deck 12 (picture a contemporary-style London private members’ club), Tihany confesses his long-held intention to free Queen Anne from its Cunard corset.

“People think of Cunard as that traditional British line which goes through the fog on its way to America,” Tihany says, ahead of Queen Anne’s inaugural voyage. “Nonsense!”

These days, Cunard ships spend more than half their time in warm climes, including the Mediterranean, he points out, adding: “What I really wanted on this ship was enormous decks.”

The onset of the pandemic and the ensuing longing for fresh air only deepened his resolve to take loyal Cunarders (as they are known) outside. “When thinking about the design of this ship, I wondered: ‘Will I mention I need more outside space – or will I get shot?’ We were already over budget.”

A night to remember

On the evening of May 3, Life & Leisure is among the almost 3000 passengers (virtually a full ship) to set sail on Queen Anne’s seven-night maiden voyage – a round trip from Southampton in the UK with stops in Spain’s pretty north-western port of La Coruña and bustling Lisbon.

As we pull out of Southampton around 9.30pm, I surmise that Tihany got his wish, given there’s room for the entire ship to be on deck, partying around the Pavilion area – which spans decks 9, 10 and 11 and includes the main swimming pool. Many of the 1225 crew are up here as well, pouring prosecco and spritzers, and handing out small British flags.

The 350 Grill-class passengers are corralled in their restricted-access terrace on deck 11, safely buffered from the zircons, plastic sequins and ill-fitting cummerbunds floating around the rest of the ship.

The night might be a brisk nine degrees, with rain threatening, but the band is belting out tunes from Fly Me to the Moon to It’s Time to Celebrate.

Pilot boats and tugs chug alongside as the newest Cunard Queen pulls out of the Mayfair Cruise Terminal, the UK’s biggest cruise port, and slips into the Solent (the strait between the Isle of Wight and mainland Britain) with all the confidence of a fully hatched 113,000-tonne steel swan.

Passengers have forgotten the cold, and the ship is blowing its top with long, breathless blasts from the red stack. Fireworks explode and rain down in golden streaks – so much pomp, it feels more royal than the trooping of the colour.

“Well that was quite the spectacle, wasn’t it?” a British passenger exclaims to his wife, who is wearing an army-green Barbour rain jacket over her evening dress, as a dad urges his young son to wave more energetically at the drones circling the ship so he’ll “see himself on the telly”.

When it comes to Cunard, I’ve cruised only on the Queen Elizabeth – for three days in Australian waters. It was the tail end of summer. But true to the formal “sense of occasion” Cunard hype, I managed to spend my days at sea mostly inside – learning the foxtrot, eating in the chandeliered Queens Grill dining room, attending talks on wellness and history, and scoffing as many high teas as humanly possible.

I am guilty as charged by Tihany of viewing Cunard as that traditional British line deployed on foggy trans-Atlantic crossings, the guests all wearing mink coats and white tuxedos, sipping Brandy Alexanders.

So it’s a surprise, having spent the first night on Queen Anne’s pool deck, to find myself outside once again the next morning, for the daily 7am Sunrise Stretch class in the open-air Wellness Pavilion on deck 11.

The space is a new offering for Cunard, as is the al fresco Wellness Café, which starts serving breakfast from 8am.

Fear not, all the tried-and-true staples are still there – including ballroom dancing, Zumba, bingo, watercolours and bridge sessions in Cunard’s signature Queens Room, known as the social hub of all the line’s ships. I’m just saying there’s now more going on outside as well.

Queen Anne is Cunard’s first new ship in more than a decade, so this was always going to be a defining moment in terms of where the brand is headed.

What hit me first was the sheer size of the ship. It’s big, which seems to go against the idea of luxury in an era when most high-end expedition ships and discovery yachts carry no more than 300 or so guests.

Secondly, I’m struck by how this heritage line has embraced industry trends – most notably the push to feminise the oceans. Queen Anne has Cunard’s first-ever female captain in Inger Klein Thorhauge from the Faroe Islands, while Cunard president Katie McAlister greeted media and trade guests at the Southampton reveal.

There’s also the must-have, big-name celebrity chef in the form of Michel Roux Jr, who previously owned the two Michelin-starred London restaurant Le Gavroche. And West End and Broadway producer David Pugh premiered a brilliant version of Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter, directed by Emma Rice, on Queen Anne’s second night.

Also noteworthy is the aforementioned creation of interiors designed to emulate a five-star hotel.

Tihany worked alongside designers from London’s David Collins Studio and Richmond International plus Sybille de Margerie in Paris to bring the interiors to life.

They began by visiting Cunard’s extensive archive in Liverpool, where, to understand the past before they reinterpreted it, they examined everything from light fixtures and painted motifs to the braiding on the commodores’ uniforms.

Then they let the outside in.

“Being outdoors in open spaces is what people want since COVID,” Tihany says. “With Cunard ships, that was always going to be an evolutionary process.”

The ship is a litany of firsts for the brand, including Cunard’s first designated outdoor yoga space, along with mini golf, a pickleball court and an archery area.

Above the main Pavilion pool on deck 9 is a screen for open-air cinema, with a gelato cart serving ice-cream (yet more firsts). The outdoor Sky Bar above the pool is open from 10am to 4pm, after which you can adjourn to the Pavilion Bar until 10pm, while the Panorama Pool Club and bar at the stern go from 10am to 10pm.

“The expanded wellness offering reflects the changing interests of people on these ships,” says Lewis Taylor of David Collins Studio. (Old habits die hard, though: the ship’s indoor casino tables are busy from opening time at 11am until late.)

In terms of the past, the art deco vibe lives on, from the geometric carpet patterns and wallpaper motifs to the Great Gatsby-style lighting, including a circular installation of crystal glass rods adorning the Chart Room cocktail lounge and wall-mounted fan lamps in the stairwells.

In the Princess Suites, you’ll find the trademark Cunard scarlet red with gold pops, while the Britannia staterooms are decked out in royal blue and mustard yellow. (I happily spend the voyage in a Britannia Balcony stateroom, just below the Britannia Club Balcony class of travel.)

The distinctive usher-style red hats and jackets worn by the bellhops have survived. The Twinings tea is still here, as are the Penhaligon’s toiletries and the all-white bed linen and duvet covers finished with gold thread.

And, of course, there are the royals, long associated with Cunard.

Queen Anne, the ship, is named for the monarch who reigned between 1702 and 1714. Crown jeweller Garrard not only has its first on-sea boutique on deck 3, it has replicas on display of ‘The Girls of Great Britain and Ireland’ tiara, along with the ‘Lover’s Knot’ – both created for Queen Mary.

In short, this ship feels fresh and of its era design-wise, but with a strong dose of nostalgia that seeks to reassure die-hard Cunarders that not much has changed.

If only it were that simple.

Not everyone likes change

Queen Anne is almost full for its inaugural sailing, and it’s not hard to hunt down loyal passengers with Platinum sailing rights, given they had first dibs on the berths. Tel (aged 76) and Miyuki (74) from Kobe, Japan, are sitting with their long-time friend, 70-year-old Taka from Osaka, in one of the indoor lounges.

“Can you believe I met them on the old Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1996, cruising from Honolulu to Yokohama?” says Taka.

The trio has done a Cunard cruise together virtually every year since. Taka has tried other lines, but Cunard stole her heart with its oh-so-British glamour.

“I fell in love with Cunard watching the ballroom dancing in the Queens Room on the QE2 all those years ago,” she says. “I love the huge Queens Room on every ship; the afternoon teas, the great service.

“When I stepped on Queen Anne, I couldn’t believe how small the Queens Room is compared with the other three ships – and how low the ceilings are in some areas.

“I’m not tall, it’s not that I’ll bump my head,” she laughs. “It’s just that this is not what I expect from a Cunard ship. Nor do I think the service is quite up to scratch.”

Taka admits she prefers the traditional Cunard product. “Just this morning I booked my cruise for next year. I’m going back to the Queen Elizabeth.”

The ship is populated mainly by British, American and Japanese guests. Some of the British and Americans I speak to are a little more forgiving – remarking that this is a new chapter for Cunard, and that teething problems are to be expected.

Queen Anne is stable and smooth on the water, and the interiors are undeniably lush. But some guests say the ship isn’t quite ready, and the meal service is often slow (although this does improve).

“If Cunard sticks to what they know, it gets a bit boring,” says a Londoner, recently retired and treating himself. “It will take them a while to speed up room service and sort out glitches in the Wi-Fi, and that sort of thing, but they’ll get there. This is the ship’s first week at sea.”

Disembarking in Lisbon for the day, I overhear an Australian teenager telling her parents that, while it’s nice being on a new ship, she still likes Queen Mary 2 best. “Can we book that again for next year?” she asks.

Ouch. I’m tempted to give Queen Anne a hug. Such talk shows Cunard is onto something in terms of brand identification and loyalty. The $US600 million question is, will that buy the line another 184 years?

Cunard is a little unusual in its marketing positioning. It runs the gamut from premium luxury – with some of the largest, grandest suites at sea complete with private butlers – through to cheap-as-chips interior cabins that barely measure 14 square metres. It’s like putting an Ibis budget hotel in the basement of The Peninsula.

There’s also the “additional costs” billing issue. Most ships Cunard competes with for Grills Suite guests moved to all-inclusive pricing years ago. It’s distracting to be signing chargeback tabs to the room, rather than knowing you’re all paid up except for a couple of premium restaurants.

And the currency is American dollars, hitting Australians hard. Ditto my new Japanese friends with their weak yen. Not least when a barista coffee is $US4.50 ($6.80) a pop and there are no coffee machines in the cabin categories below the Princess Grill Suites.

Virtually all meals outside the main dining options – the Britannia restaurant for the majority of passengers, the Britannia Club restaurant for Club stateroom guests, and the Queens Grill and Princess Grill – are billed. Although food and beverages, along with other packages, can be purchased ahead of sailing.

But critics slam this as brand confusion, saying Cunard is too focused on selling its lower-end offering to the masses. Can a ship in the era of niche travel really be both?

In truth, it’s luxury for the maximum of 570 passengers who can afford a Grills Suite (and hence enjoy a small-cruise feel with big-ship benefits).

Don’t be put off, but do research which class of travel and pre-paid packages are right for you. Maybe it’s worth upsizing to a Grills Suite to dine in one of the designated restaurants, especially if you’re partial to cuisine classics like lobster bisque soup with aged cognac, grilled lemon sole fillets with Baltic shrimps and roasted rack of ‘Red Gum Creek Lamb’, followed by soufflé.

The Britannia main dining room (on decks 2 and 3) is a reliable, solid option. But you’re probably not going to have something truly memorable delivered to your table.

The four alternative dining venues – yet another first for Cunard – are Aranya (offering Indian cuisine), Aji Wa (Japanese), Tramonto (Italian) and Sir Samuel’s steakhouse, named for the line’s founder, Sir Samuel Cunard. They’re all of the highest quality but cost extra (around $US35 for three courses with sides, rising to $US50 with a decent glass or two of wine).

These venues are also on the small side, with seating for 30 to 50 guests, so book early in the cruise as they fill up fast.

Sailing back to Southampton, it’s hard not to reflect on the history of these Queens. Few cruise lines can say their ships were used as World War II troop carriers, including for the D-Day evacuations. Sir Winston Churchill said Cunard’s Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth helped shorten the war thanks to the hundreds of thousands of troops they transported.

In the 1840s, Charles Dickens sailed with Cunard to Boston, and the RMS Queen Mary was the fastest ocean liner between London and New York until 1952.

Queen Anne is the latest chapter in a lengthy tale. As Captain Klein Thorhauge tells us: “There is only one ‘first voyage’ for Queen Anne, which all of you ... will go down in history as having experienced.”

There will be hurdles and difficult strategic and ethical decisions ahead as the entire cruise industry grapples with issues like overtourism, replacing fossil fuels and getting cut-through in a crowded marketplace.

But Cunard has a strong point of difference: its fleet is part of history. Nothing can change that – no matter how low the ceilings get.

The writer travelled courtesy of Cunard.

Queen Anne at a glance

The ship | Carries up to 2997 guests and 1225 crew. It has 14 decks and 1397 staterooms spread across 28 cabin categories, starting with the lead-in 13.7-square metre Britannia Inside category.

Queens Grill is the top echelon, and has 65 suites across six categories. Queens Suites start at 47.1 sqm, rising to 133.7 sqm for a Queens Grand Suite. There are 127 Princess Grill Suites (measuring around 28 sqm), and 164 Britannia Club Suites, all with balconies. The ship has 27 wheelchair-accessible staterooms.

Restaurants | Passengers in Queens Grill, Princess Grill and Britannia Club suites can dine at their designated restricted-access restaurants. Four alternative dining restaurants are a great addition to the Cunard experience.

The Bright Lights Society light show bar (from 7pm to late) is unique to Queen Anne.

Pools | Two, plus multiple whirlpools. Grill passengers have their own whirlpools on the Grill Terrace.

The Mareel Spa includes a steam room and saunas. A 50-minute facial starts from $US229. A seven-day pass to access the spa’s facilities is $US149, a three-day pass is $US99 (there are no daily passes).

Sailings | Queen Anne’s home port is Southampton, from where it will cruise extensively through Europe, moving towards sunnier climes such as the Canary Islands over the northern hemisphere winter.