I Took a Cruise With The Most Formal Cruise Line on The Market

A couple of years ago I took a cruise that made me question everything I thought I knew about cruises. I didn't know what to expect from this cruise but the reality was more different than anything I had ever imagined because I just didn't know a cruise like this even existed. I'd cruised before on cruise lines that had no dress codes or really relaxed dress codes. I cruised as a teenager and as a child and at that point what I loved about cruising was running around the ship, it was eating cookies in the buffet, the idea of formal dining and formal dress codes just hadn't crossed my mind. This cruise was so different that when I came back I started my website and then later this YouTube channel. This video that you're watching and this channel would not exist if it wasn't for this cruise. It was actually my parents who found a fantastic deal on board the Queen Victoria. They asked me and my brother if we would like to go on this cruise and of course I said yes. I'm very much of the mindset that you should try everything at least once and I did learn a lot from this cruise. I had a fantastic week, it just wasn't what I expected at all. The cruise cost around £900 for a week in a balcony including all of the transfers and everything like that. We booked guaranteed cabins which means that you book the cabin grade but not the specific location. We ended up with one cabin on one side of the ship and one on the other really close together. We were very lucky with that one and it was brilliant because if the view was kind of rubbish on one side we would just go across and have a look out the other side. It was great. Of course I said yes to going on this cruise because try everything once but I did have some concerns in my mind about how much I would like this cruise. A seven night cruise is quite a commitment. You don't want to get on a seven night cruise and find that you don't like it but I figured I would give it a go. The first worry that I had was would I even have the correct clothes for a Cunard cruise? I'd heard a lot about cruising with Cunard. I'd heard they had very strict formal nights. Everybody took what they wore on a Cunard cruise very seriously and I didn't even know if I had the appropriate wardrobe for a Cunard cruise. I didn't know if I would fit in with everybody else on the cruise and I had no idea how I was going to pack formal wear into my tiny suitcase. I'm a big fan of travelling light. I'll normally take a carry-on or a cabin size bag for two weeks without any problem but I don't normally have formal wear to put in there. We were flying to Athens for this cruise so I needed to fit everything into my suitcase. If you're cruising from a local port you can take pretty much as much as you'd like but when you're flying you have a set amount of space. My dad and my brother actually packed jackets and bow ties and I don't think I've ever seen my brother or my dad wearing bow ties before. It's not really the type of thing that my family do when we do go on cruises but we thought we're gonna go, we're gonna have a really good time and most importantly we're gonna try something new, try something we've never done before. What I really wanted from this cruise was to relax for a week. That was my goal, to relax. We were cruising on board the Queen Victoria and as soon as you stepped on board the Queen Victoria and you looked around you know that you're in a different type of cruise ship. It was so unbelievably elegant, there were so many real flower displays, pianos, real wood promenade decks. It genuinely felt like being in some sort of movie. When I embarked the cruise we embarked in Athens and it was quite warm so I was just wearing shorts and flip-flops and when you're in such an elegant space you kind of look at yourself and you think, you know, do I fit in here? Luckily QAnon cruises they don't have any kind of strict dress codes for the daytime. You can wear shorts, you can wear dresses, you can wear pretty much whatever you want in the daytime but it did feel a bit weird kind of being in such elegant surroundings and just wearing like flip-flops. It did feel a bit strange. As you do when you get on a cruise we headed pretty much straight to our cabin. It was a very big, very comfortable cabin but at that point I was still a little bit kind of, I was wondering how I would fit in with the other passengers. Cunard definitely have an older passenger demographic and I have no problem with that. Quite happy to cruise with an older passenger demographic but I just didn't want to stand out. I kind of just like to blend in when I'm on a cruise. Probably shouldn't have started a cruise related YouTube channel but I do just like to blend in. I don't remember seeing any children or anyone younger than me on this cruise although I'm sure there were a few. I did bring my younger brother with me so I wasn't the youngest person there. I do know families who love cruising with Cunard but it's not kind of a Royal Caribbean or a Norwegian cruise line experience. It's a very different experience for kids I imagine on a Cunard cruise. After getting settled in and exploring the ship we headed to our first dinner. On paper this was an informal night so to me informal means jeans, it means leggings. That is not the definition of a Cunard informal night. To me the Cunard informal night was more formal than any formal night I've ever been to on any other cruise ship. On a seven night Cunard cruise you'll usually find two or three formal nights which are now called gala nights. It doesn't tend to be on that first night though because people just got on board, they've not unpacked, they're not ready for the formalness of a Cunard formal night. If you're going on a Cunard cruise or any cruise and you're going to the main restaurant make sure you bring some sort of jacket or shrug or cardigan or something because they make it very very cold in those dining rooms. I noticed this on the Cunard cruise a lot because the men were all wearing their jackets. They can't make the room too hot but then you've got all the ladies with their arms out. Just bring something because you don't want to be shivering at the dinner table. The next day we actually had a sea day which is really good. I like starting a cruise with a sea day because you can kind of settle into it. We spent the time relaxing, we went to our first afternoon tea on board and we really just got settled into the Cunard life. It's amazing how fast you can get used to something and by the time we were on the first day you felt like you belonged on this Cunard cruise ship which I didn't when I embarked. When you go to the toilets on a public Cunard cruise they have the little hand towels instead of the paper towels and I think that kind of sums up what a Cunard cruise is like. Your Britishism this week is toilets and I know people outside of the UK do use the word toilets but the way that we refer to restrooms or bathrooms we just call them toilets. We wouldn't call something a bathroom unless it had a bath or shower in it and we really don't use the term restroom. You would just say I'm going to the toilet. If you wanted to be more polite you might say I'm going to pop to the loo, I'm going to use the facilities but generally speaking you just go to the toilet. The signs say toilet, they're just the toilets. That's just what we call them. Afternoon tea was absolutely amazing and possibly my highlight of this entire cruise. Cunard actually have four types of afternoon tea I believe and it won't be a surprise to you that I went to the one that was included in the cruise fare. It was in the queen's room and you would have a string quartet playing, you would have people serving you food with white gloves, little sandwiches, scones and cakes and it was so unbelievably fancy but it was, it was awesome. You can get used to that. A warning though, you will get used to having another meal between lunch and dinner and then when you get back home you're sat in your office, you're sat at your desk and no one is bringing you cakes or tea at 3.30. That takes some getting used to again. That's not the fun part. The schedule on a Cunard cruise is pretty relaxing. They have things like trivia, they have shows in the theatre, they have music around the ship but you're not going to find all of these lively kind of game shows that you would on the big American cruise lines. On this sea day though I knew that my first formal night was coming up and having been to the informal night and been just amazed by how formal it was, I was looking forward to the formal night just to see what everybody else would wear. For that formal night I wore a floor limp red dress and I fit in perfectly. This is exactly the type of thing you'll want to wear if you are taking a Cunard cruise. Everybody takes the formal nights very seriously on a Cunard cruise. People cruise with Cunard because they love that traditional elegant type of cruising and it does not disappoint. We had photos taken on formal nights too and it's rare you get dressed up like this and take photos so that was really nice. The food was great, the waiters on board were lovely. It was a bit strange kind of eating in your best clothes. I don't want to kind of get my clothes dirty but you soon get used to that. You get used to it very fast on a Cunard cruise. The real difference between a formal night and an informal night with a Cunard cruise is that men have to wear bow ties on a formal night and don't have to on an informal night and women will wear something slightly more sparkly. You can wear trousers and a top, you don't have to wear a dress but something slightly more sparkly on a formal night. Basically the best of the best I think for a Cunard formal night. I really enjoyed the dining and it was a surprise to me how much I enjoyed the dress codes. The thing that really shocked me though was just how enforced the dress codes were. On most cruises the formal night dress code will only be applied in the main dining room but on a Cunard cruise it is ship wide after 6pm which means you can't go to a bar, you can't go to the theatre wearing your jeans even if you didn't go to the formal night dinner. That took some getting used to. You can still go to the buffet and there's a couple of places where you don't have to wear the dress code but generally speaking you can't just wander around the ship unless you're wearing your amazing dress after 6pm. To be honest the ship felt so elegant that it would feel really weird to be wandering around it wearing jeans so I didn't really mind. Plus in the theatre it's also really cold with the air conditioning and having a long dress basically means that you have a blanket so that's good. As the cruise went on we realised the thing that I think is one of my favourite things about Cunard and that is the fact that the room service is free. As much as I like the formal dining and I like the dress codes sometimes you just can't be bothered to get dressed to go to dinner and then you can have this room service in your room for free, a proper menu. We had the most amazing dinner as we sailed out of Kotor and that's the type of memory that I think is really important about cruising. Sitting with your family, eating is important of course and watching a sail away. It doesn't get much better than that. When it came to worrying about who the other people on the cruise were I really didn't need to worry about that. Everybody was really nice and I did kind of stand out a little bit but it really didn't it didn't matter. I felt very kind of comfortable on board. I didn't feel out of place or like anybody was looking at me which was the main thing. Everybody on the cruise tended to keep themselves to themselves which is fine by me. I think that's probably because the majority of passengers on board were from Britain and that's kind of just how we are here in the UK. Despite this cruise being a massive culture shock going from a Norwegian cruise line very casual cruise to the most formal cruise line on the market this was one of my favourite cruises and I'm definitely looking to cruise with Cunard again. To learn about the worst cruise I've ever taken watch this video next.