>but it was "interesting" to see people out by the pool area, sunning themselves.
"Interesting" is one way of putting it! We had a window side table, and a view of something so indescribably horrific in one of the poolside showers that two an a half years later I still wake up with night sweats when I think of it
>If I had one of those expensive, but non-private cabins, I would probably make very good use of the robes provided by Cunard, and know when to draw the shades.
So would I, but the point is neither of us should HAVE to! Stacking the suites one deck higher, or placing Todd English aft of the funnel would have made more sense. Much like the inaccessible Queen's Room and the impossible to enter except through the Queen's Room disco, the too visible suites are part of the liner's odd charm.
>I find it hard to believe that anyone, even on the QM2 maiden voyage, with no shortage of photographs of the ship and easily obtainable
deck plans, would book themselves into such a suite under complete ignorance that the suite is in close proximity to and in view of and earshot of public areas.
The catalogues went out of their way NOT to include the view from the suites and, to be fair, I dont think that anyone who booked them realised quite how....exposed....they really are. It is like the view from the hull-hole "balconies." They were advertised pre-introduction simply as "balconies." Many passengers were NOT pleased by the maiden voyage discoveries that the view from the balcony vanishes behind a steel wall as soon as one sits down and that the size of the cut-out makes the sittng area rather shady at times. We liked ours, but many did not.
Of course, there IS the trade off of the elegant private deck for suite class passengers. You remember~ the one with two public staircases running through it and the classy black and white photocopied "Private Deck" signs intended, futiley, to keep the constant flow of people up and down the stairs from crossing over.
