Travel: Queen Mary 2

On arriving at our 'stateroom', as all cabins are called, a bottle of chilled sparkling wine and a welcome message awaits. There is room for a small sofa, TV, wardrobes and fridge, and a double bed alongside a small bathroom and shower. A balcony is the most welcome feature though, at first overlooking the dreary docks but with the promise of more impressive sights.

As rooms onboard go, ours is mid-range. There are those with no sea view and ones with a window that look out on to the ocean below, before you get the balcony class. For the deeper pocketed, there are suites, handily coming with their own butler and the promise of personalised stationary. They range from Queen's suites, at just over 500 sq ft, up to the 2249 sq ft Grand Duplexes.

After a safety demonstration, there's time to explore, and although the ship's size is obvious (it's more than three-and-a-half times as long as Big Ben is high and weighs 151,400 tonnes) it takes a while for the incredible scale of the operation to sink in.

Wherever you go, there are staff opening doors, smiling, dispensing hand gel, serving drinks and generally doing whatever they can to be helpful. In total, the crew is 1,200 strong. But for the first day at least, their main function is directing confused travellers around the colossal, £5bn pound floating resort, with its 13 decks, four stair towers and 22 lifts.

Built for regular transatlantic crossings and annually going on a three-month world cruise, there was not nearly the time to try out everything on offer. A four-night trip, which included two stops in Ireland before arriving back into Greenock, is barely long enough to learn your way around this giant, let alone give every form of entertainment a go.

We had to make do with a quick peek in the impressive 1,100 capacity theatre, although an Italian-themed musical one night and a stand up show from former Catchphrase host Roy Walker on another made this a rather easy choice. More of a disappointment was missing out on the planetarium - apparently the first at sea. It doubles as a cinema, showing an up-to-date selection of films.

A spa, meanwhile, is set over two floors covering 20,000 square feet. The operator, Canyon Ranch, made its name operating elite resorts in the US. The result is a highly professional service, with a range of treatments from body cocoons and hot-stone massages to facials across 24 treatment rooms. Admittedly, luxury spas are not my correspondent's area of expertise. I went for a massage though (a first) and while at times the deep tissue option was painful, a burly masseur pounding, contorting and digging elbows into my limbs for nearly two hours was shockingly therapeutic. A nearby selection of saunas, hot tubs and a luxury pool were the perfect way to reflect on the experience.

The outdoor pools remained predictably barren for the entirety of our voyage up the Irish Sea, with only an underemployed barman at the open-air cocktail bar. This is no doubt a rather more popular attraction on the Caribbean trips.

There's a gym full of treadmills, rowing machines and bikes. For many, though, the food will make this facility redundant. For a mere two hours in 24, between 2am and 4am, guests are deprived of the opportunity to stuff their faces at a series of buffets (although there's always the 24-hour room service). Between 4am and 6:30am, there's a continental breakfast. The full cooked options are available for the next four hours. Then it's lunch till 3pm, followed by afternoon snack time. Dinner is served 5:30pm until 11pm, with late snacks after that. The word ‘buffet’ might conjure up images of stodgy Chinese restaurants, stale sandwiches and sausage rolls, but that's certainly not what's on offer here.

Given the number of people being fed (there is the capacity for more than 3,000 guests) the quality and choice is remarkable. From sushi, cooked seafood to cheeseburgers, cottage pies and salads, an array of puddings and just about everything in between, it's all fresh and keeps on coming. All nine kitchens and 150 chefs are put to good use, while they'll also knock you up a pizza or pasta dish, made to order. Asian and Indian cuisine are also provided.

Not that the buffet is the only option. The Britannia Restaurant, seating a mere 1,347, is nearly three stories high and spans the width of the ship. The food is decent, if not quite living up to the grand surroundings on the one occasion we visited. The a-la-carte Todd English restaurant, named after the US chef who designed the menu, would prove a hit on land although a surcharge required to dine there meant it was the quietest eating venue. Two exclusive venues - the Queen's Grill and Princess Grill - are available to guests with the most expensive rooms.

After dinner (and before late snack) there's a series of more than a dozen bars and lounges. While the surroundings, the ship’s Winter Garden apart, are similar, many have their choice of live music, with quizzes popular in the Golden Lion, a traditional-style English pub. There's a champagne bar, nautically-themed 'chart room' and Cunard’s signature Commodore Club.

The least used venue on our trip was the nightclub - named G32 after the ship's hull number. Members of a live band on each night were tight, talented and fun, far more so than their made-for-cruiseship name - Vibz - suggested. Most seemed far more keen on the ballroom dancing though, which takes place next door in the ship's imposing Queen's Room, the largest ballroom on any passenger ship. It’s unashamedly old-fashioned stuff and hugely popular.

What else? There’s a huge library (a large section on the Titanic may be best avoided for nervous sailors), duty free shops, an art gallery (£3m worth is on display throughout the ship, apparently), a golf simulator, beauty salon, cigar lounge, putting green. I only lost $40 (all prices are in dollars) in the well-appointed casino.

Trips are organised during calls at ports, allowing passengers to hop off, be taken by bus to whichever sightseeing jolly they’ve selected, and be back on board within hours. There’s also the option to get off and find your own fun. There’s only time to dip your toe into new places, but expeditions in unfamiliar cities don’t come much safer or hassle free than this.

Cunard has build up a hugely loyal customer base, and it’s not hard to see why. One widow says she’s been on board for a three-month world cruise, spent a few weeks at home, before getting back on board for the British Isles expedition. Passengers have high expectations and, nearly always, they are met. This was illustrated when a short, and surely expected half hour queue for tenders to take passengers back to the ship at the end of a day in Dublin was met with a near-mutiny by irate daytrippers, although the comical overreaction suggested that everybody was secretly enjoying this rare opportunity for a good old moan.

A trip on the QM2 won’t be for everyone. Some will baulk at being told what to wear after paying handsomely for a place (strict dress codes operate in most areas during evenings) and clearly, travellers seeking adventure will look elsewhere. Republicans, meanwhile, would do well to ignore the numerous bits of Britannia kitsch and portraits of Royals, past and present, scattered throughout.

The passengers here, though, are delighted to play along. The incredible 1.3 million who crowded along the Mersey to greet the Three Queens – the QM2, the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Victoria - when they arrived in Liverpool to celebrate the shipping line’s 175th anniversary is evidence that to many, there remains something inherently enchanting about these ships. If you’re looking for a chance to do very little, guilt0free, while being waited on relentlessly, served up with a hefty dose of nostalgia, look no further than the QM2.