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From costume balls to bingo, the QE2's entertainment package is pure nostalgia, often featuring performers like Tommy Steele, Des O'Connor and Fyvush Finkel, who, like much of their audience, have seen their best years but are still going strong. The ship's band plays classic Palm Court compositions from the romantic past. In the British-style pub, a sextet of middle-aged jazz musicians splendidly re-creates the New Orleans sound. Excerpts from Broadway and West End productions are scheduled to start in late May. "Where else," asks Scotsman Reg rhetorically, "can a wealthy senior citizen...
...dinner," says Reg, 68, a retired engineer from Aberdeen, Scotland, "but there's a sort of 'olde-worlde' feeling about it that's all too rare these days." It is a feeling that appeals to a certain age and type. "They call themselves snowbirds," says Thomas Quinones, the ship's onboard public-affairs director. "They sail around the world, keeping ahead of winter." Many are retirees who make cruise ships their semipermanent homes. Some have sailed first class on the QE2 a dozen times or more; they are known to the crew almost as family, donning their jewelry and dining...
There's also a medical facility, which includes an operating table--onboard in case of emergency--and even a morgue, which unfortunately has seen service on a ship whose average passenger age is usually somewhere in the 60s. Happily, shipboard romances occur far more frequently than funerals. Widows typically outnumber widowers, but the ship's officers are always there for unescorted ladies...
Though the QE2 definitely caters to an older clientele, she began to draw a younger crowd after the film Titanic romanticized the gilded lifestyle of the older liners. The gymnasium is getting more use, as are a nursery and a video-game room, and the ship has installed new direct-satellite phone and e-mail facilities...
Elizabeth will probably sail on for another 30 years, but in 2003, Cunard will launch a bigger and even more resplendent sister ship. The Queen Mary will be the largest passenger ship ever built, with palatial interiors to accommodate 2,500 guests. It will have suites, staterooms and apartments--not with portholes but each with its own private balcony. Mary will also have her own onboard brewery...