Tour the Queen Mary's First-Class Lounges and Third-Class Quarters
A guided history tour through the Queen Mary in Long Beach, with access to the ship's exhibits after the tour ends.
The Queen Mary has not sailed under her own power since 1967, and that is exactly what makes the walk work. She is not a reconstruction. The operator's own tours page sells her as an authentic 1930s ocean liner preserved in remarkable detail, with original spaces still in place.
This ticket is really two visits. The first is the guided history walk, where a guide takes a group through the ship's rooms and shows how First, Second and Third Class passengers lived, travelled and moved aboard. The second is everything you do on your own afterwards, on the same admission.
Tickets start at USD 45 per person and cover both halves: the guided tour and admission to the ship. Starts are listed on the quarter hour from 10:15 AM through 5:15 PM, seven days a week, with the open slots for your date shown on the booking calendar. Confirmation is immediate, booking closes 60 minutes before the start time, and cancelling at least 24 hours ahead returns the full fare.
One thing to settle before you pick a slot: the booking form offers a single ticket type, priced for ages 13 and up.
Queen Mary Glory Days Historical TourOne guided history tour of the Queen Mary plus admission to the ship, from USD 45 per person. Starts run daily between 10:15 AM and 5:15 PM.www.viator.comAllow More Than an Hour for the Guided Part
The booking listing describes a one-hour Glory Days tour. The operator's own tours page puts its guided history walk at approximately 75 minutes. Plan around the longer figure and the rest of your day still holds either way.
Glory Days is the ship's own name for it. The Queen Mary's FAQ files it among the Legacy Tours, next to Haunted Encounters and Steam & Steel, and the tours page describes the same walk as stepping inside an authentic 1930s ocean liner preserved in remarkable detail. Narration is in English only, which is the one thing to check against your group.
After the Guide Leaves, the Ship Stays Open
The listing gives a duration of two to eight hours, and the spread is the point: admission keeps working after the group breaks up. Most historic exhibits run daily from 10 AM to 8 PM.
What is open to you on your own includes the Engine Room, the Propeller Box and the Bridge area, where the wheelhouse, chart room, signal bridge and docking wings sit about 90 feet above the waterline. Further in there is the Captain's Quarters, a Radio Room that has been on the air since 1979, a Ship Model Gallery holding 1/48 cutaways of the Lusitania, the Normandie and the Titanic, and an Isolation Ward that keeps the ship's list of stowaways and recorded deaths.
Every admission also carries a complimentary Embarkation Introductory Tour of the Promenade deck, led by one of the ship's Pursers, while availability lasts.
Job Number 534
Work started at Clydebank in Scotland in 1930, and for the first stretch she had no name. Cunard knew her as job #534, and the Depression stopped construction for several years. She was launched in 1934 and left Southampton on her maiden voyage on 27 May 1936, carrying five dining areas and lounges, cocktail bars, swimming pools, a grand ballroom, a squash court and a small hospital.
Then the numbers on either side of the war. The ship carried 2.2 million passengers in peacetime and 810,000 military personnel during the Second World War. She retired from the sea in 1967, and an estimated 50 million people have come aboard her in Long Beach since.
Parking, Ages and the Practical Half
The ship runs its own lot. Rates are USD 0 for the first 10 minutes, USD 15 from 11 to 59 minutes, and USD 25 is the visitor maximum for the day. Those rates move for special events, and on a handful of dates day visitors are routed to the Pike Parking Garage on Cedar Avenue with a complimentary shuttle; the operator's hours and parking page lists which dates. Public transport runs nearby if you would rather not drive at all.
The listing itself is short on surprises. One ticket type for ages 13 and up, a mobile or paper ticket, one booking covering up to thirty travellers, and 4.8 from 105 reviews. Service animals are allowed, and the operator rates the experience as suitable for all physical fitness levels.
Everything starts at 1126 Queens Highway, where she is berthed, and there is a single meeting point for the whole group.
Take one of the earlier slots and the day opens up behind it. The exhibits run to 8 PM, and the Observation Bar and Art Deco Lounge sits forward on the Promenade Deck, open from 11:00 AM on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and from 4:00 PM the rest of the week. An early start is the difference between seeing the tour and seeing the ship.