Cunard Queen Anne Queens Room dancing My Way, Wave Duo, Night Club Two Steps

On June 30, 2024, Maria and I completed a wonderful Norway 7-day cruise of the Queen Anne (QA) from Southampton, the third or 4th voyage of the QA. It was preceded by a smooth 8-day transatlantic cruise on the Queen Mary 2 (QM2) from New York so that our experience with the QA will not be compromised by jet lag. For us, the dancing on the QM2 was quite good, the QA, good but CAN be improved.
I (Tony) participated in one of the QA design user-opinion workshops on some of the concepts two years ago and was pleased to see the current product. However, I was not prepared for the dramatic shift away from the traditional Cunard experience, and have heard negative comments from passengers. We feel a lot can be said about the pros and cons of this Queens Room and Queen Anne. We danced during presentations of the "Queens Room Musicians" and the "Queen Anne Orchestra", two which when combined forms the "Big Band", and herein by the "Wave Duo": Daisy and her brother Marcos. We have put together another video of some Queens Room specifics and how we feel about this dance venue ( • Cunard Queen Anne Quee... ). CCL/Cunard made this Queens Room experience assertively different from the other three Cunard ships. In our humble opinion, Cunard should not have relied on paid passengers to communicate these changes and their rational. Towards the end of this voyage, we felt that we understood, though do not support, their positions. However, we learned that as traditional Cunard ballroom dancers, we and others can still work with the QA entertainment staff and turn a voyage into one that wears out our dance shoes.
*** note added 7/6/2024:
The dance situation on Queen Anne has improved significantly, as shown in a report in Facebook, by Michael Morrison, 5 days after we left the ship. While onboard, we felt our suggestions to the musicians and the entertainment director were rapidly responded to positively, and efforts were made to bring back more ballroom dance music. They have been to this channel and shocked us by playing our favorite songs, which we appreciated.
As an example showing the rapid adding of ballroom songs, while trying to sing My Way as in this video, Daisy had the first verse wrong and had to restart her song. Of course we removed that part of the video before we publish.
Dancers have to speak up!
Go Cunard go!

[@darrensurman]

How nice to have met you both recently on Queen Anne at the afternoon tea dance and to see your wonderful dancing again. Keep dancing ... Darren & Mark

[@tonymariadance]

It was our pleasure meeting you both at Queen Anne. We hope you have enjoyed the ship and Norway. Have a nice day!

[@davidhouston3946]

Great video, thanks. From videos I've seen there doesn't seem much wrong with Queens Room. We'll dance on any floor, it doesn't need to be rectangular. Biggest issue I'm picking up is using the room for other things and not offering dancing. We don't mind a party band/disco in the mix we'll still do ballroom, latin or disco if we have a space. We won't be on her though, QM2 is our only interest with round trips booked next June and September of 2026. Looking forward to more videos, and particularly if you do any from QM2!

[@tonymariadance]

We just took the QM2 to the QA. Very enjoyable cruise. We even met Monty Murry on that cruise. I have 40 GB of QM2 dance video and will surely be putting them out. Thanks for watching.

[@clintoncollier]

How many dance hosts do they offer on board, pls?

[@tonymariadance]

None on the Norway cruise.@@clintoncollier