Their Ship Comes In : QE2 Sails Into L.A. to Pick Up a Privileged 500

Its promoters call it the voyage of a lifetime.

Most people would have to work a significant portion of a lifetime, even maybe more than one lifetime, to pay for it.

The Queen Elizabeth 2, the last of the great transatlantic ocean liners, sailed into Los Angeles Harbor on Sunday to pick up about 500 passengers for the 56-day Pacific Rim stretch of a six-continent, 104-day world cruise--a jaunt costing from $58,000 for the QE2 equivalent of steerage class, to almost $500,000 for a luxury penthouse “signal deck” suite.

Half a million dollars for a two-room suite on a ship for 3 1/2 months. And one man aboard the QE2 on Sunday, a man whom ship officers declined to identify, had rented four such suites for himself and his party, for a total circumnavigating cruise cost of $2 million.

“It is quite a lot of money, isn’t it?” said QE2 cruise director Peter Longley, with no small amount of British understatement. “But, obviously, he thinks that it’s worth it.”

Even some passengers with much more modest accommodations seemed appalled anew at how much a sea jaunt on the Southampton-based QE2 was setting them back.

“Costs? You want to know how much it costs?” grumbled John Morawetz of New York, as he and his wife, Alice, boarded in San Pedro. “It costs too much, is how much it costs. We’re lucky Reagan taught us about deficit spending.”

The retired couple, who had flown here to visit relatives before taking the cruise, said their eight weeks aboard the QE2 will cost “about $50,000” for an H-class stateroom.

“But it’s worth it,” Alice Morawetz said. “It’s the dream of a lifetime.”

John Morawetz looked unconvinced.

Some, however, get to cruise on the QE2 for relative peanuts. While others are paying thousands, Grover Alison, 72, is sailing the world on the QE2 for about $15 a night, all because he’s a good dancer.

Alison, a retired publishing house representative, is one of 10 “Gentlemen Hosts” aboard the QE2--the youngest among them is 50--who act as conversation and dancing partners for single women, in return for their cut-rate fares.

“It’s been one of the great experiences of my life,” said Alison, on his second world cruise aboard the QE2. “I could never have afforded a world cruise otherwise.”

Before you write off for a job application, be advised. All “Gentlemen Hosts” are carefully screened by the Cunard Line to weed out any undesirables. And there are no “lady hosts;’ single women passengers far outnumber single men.

According to crew members, the average age of their passengers is about 60. The ship, too, is getting on in years by cruise ship standards, having taken its maiden voyage in 1969.

But almost everyone aboard seemed to agree that despite its age--or perhaps because of it--there is no other passenger ship quite like the QE2, which spends most of the year shuttling the Atlantic in regularly scheduled, 4 1/2-day crossings from New York to Europe, the only passenger ship to do so.

Only during the winter, when North Atlantic weather would make the voyage unpleasant, does the 963-foot, 1,900-passenger QE2 become a more leisurely paced cruise ship. This year’s winter cruise will take the QE2 to Europe, North Africa, South America, North America, Australia and Asia, with 45 ports of call.

The venerable ambience of the ocean liner is one big reason for its popularity. From the line-for-line oil copies of French masters that hang in the halls to the crystal in the dining rooms, the QE2 seems to sail out of a time when sea travel, not air travel, was the way to see the world.

“It seems like something out of the 1930s or ‘40s,” said Eileen Lappert, a Florida retiree who got aboard in Ft. Lauderdale and will disembark in Honolulu.

“It’s much more of a traditional kind of ship,” said a 49-year-old man who identified himself only as Tom, a Valparaiso-to-Hong Kong passenger. “It’s not like other cruise ships.”

In fact, crew members seem to bristle slightly when a visitor refers to the QE2 as a cruise ship.

“Most cruise ships are like floating condominiums,” said the British-born Capt. Robin Woodall, 59. “They look like flats (apartments) stacked up like boxes. This is a liner, the finest ship in the world.”

“What sets us apart from what I call the ‘sun and fun’ ships is that we were designed as a ship rather than a floating hotel,” said cruise director Longley. “There’s a nostalgia to it, a grandeur to it.”

For the 15 hours that the QE2 was docked in San Pedro, it was within binocular-viewing distance of another, more down-on-her-luck queen--the Queen Mary, another Cunard Line transatlantic liner.

The Queen Mary sits empty and forlorn after 25 years as a Long Beach hotel and tourist attraction. The Long Beach City Council recently voted to reopen the ship under the auspices of a nonprofit group, despite warnings that the group may be underfunded for it.

Underfunding is not a problem aboard the QE2. Especially for that guy with the four penthouse suites.