If it were me I would prefer doing the WESTBOUND. Reasons being:

- the opportunity to visit London or Paris (again) as a pre-cruise then relax on the ship heading back to the US. Paris to London on the Chunnel train is pretty easy now (from what I hear) and you could do both before the cruise.

- gain one hour each night as opposed to losing an hour. Really cant do much with the extra hour except catch up on your sleep.

- no super long all-day 'daylight' westbound Transatlantic flights back home (all the way to Vancouver?) after your cruise is over, when you most likely are ready to just get back to the real world. At least going to London (or Paris) it's an overnight flight and you can sleep, sort of.

- leaving from NYC heading eastbound maybe isn't as thrilling as it used to be when the ships left from Manhattan and you sailed down the Hudson and past the skyline of New York City and Statue of Liberty. 

As far as the sea conditions, I hear QM2 handles her own quite well and this may not be as much of a factor? 

Crossers and cruisers are different breeds.

Crossers tend to be adventurous inveterate travelers, somewhat eccentric, looking for unusual travel venues.

Cruisers tend to be more vanilla, want a vacation where they are waited on, and not have to think about where to eat or sleep.

[ 02-19-2011: Message edited by: desirod7 ]

quote:

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Originally posted by desirod7:
In the fall many regular cruiseships have repositioning voyages from Europe to the Caribbean and can be a very good value. Springtime reverse.

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Don't be overly concerned about following seas and on-coming seas. I've had rough weather in both directions and calm seas in both directions.

Typically you would want a cabin on the South side of the ship (starboard eastbound, port westbound), as pointed out in an earlier post, especially if you're on a newer ship with a balcony; that's going to be the sunny side.

Even when QE2 was doing 5-night crossings they did not always turn the clocks ahead every night on eastbound crossings. On some ot the 10 eastbound crossings that I took, they tried different schemes to turn the clocks ahead by 5 hours during the voyage.

For example, on my last eastbound crossing in November 1987 they used the following scheme:

a) Turn clocks ahead by 2 hours a few minutes after leaving New York. This took into account that many people flew to NY on sailing day, were tired, and tended to go to bed early anyways.

b) Turn clocks ahead by 30 minutes on nights 3 and 4. Losing only 30 minutes sleep twice in 5 nights was a lot better than losing 1 hour every night.

c) Turn clocks ahead by 2 hours during lunch on arrival day. This recognised the fact that most passengers travelled to London and beyond and ended up eating dinner late on arrival day and the 2 hour change at lunchtime shortened the time between lunch and dinner.

On two other voyages they turned the clock ahead by 1 hour on nights 2, 3 and 4 and then turned the clock ahead by 2 hours at lunch on arrival day.

Even when they turned the clocks ahead every night, I only missed breakfast once and never felt tired after losing the hour.

OTOH, on my westbound crossings which were all 5-night voyages they turned the clock back every night and I miseed brekfast more often than not. Go, figure.

Brian

* in 2011 there is only one 6-night crossing scheduled.

[ 02-20-2011: Message edited by: Brian_O ]

If the weather was favorable (not warm just no rain) ,we loved to sit in the sun and watch the wake unwind. There were, I think five such decks facing aft, and at different levels. We prefered the area just below the funnel deck.

[ 03-21-2011: Message edited by: Cambodge ]