Port Power

9 hours ago, Qld13 said:

Hi

Hopefully some experienced ladies might be able to answer this for me. I am booking hair appointments for my wife for our Nova cruise in Jan/Feb. Does the $49 charge for shampoo and blow-dry including taxes/charges etc, appreciate not including tip. Also don't understand that they do a "Blow out bundle of 3" for $149 which is $2 more than booking separately or am I missing something?

Thanks

I have had spa services such as facials and massages, and there were no extra taxes OR “service fees” (tips).  What was advertised is what I was charged.  

9 hours ago, Elizabethbea said:

Hi Port,  Im a cruiser in same state down in Dunsborough. Id love to chat about cruising-( esp the other line you cruise on.) Do you know how to message someone on this site?

I don’t think it is possible now, but my email address is in my signature.  I’d be very happy to hear from you.  Note you don’t write the usual way in order not to receive spam as @Host Jazzbeau noted.
 

carolpart59 at gmail dot com

21 hours ago, sea bright said:

On pre-pandemic holiday cruises there were special dinner menus for Chritmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Year's Eve. The whole ship was decorated from early to mid December. On NYE there was usually a party for the countdown - at the pool or Panorama - depending on weather. I believe we got Christmas "gifts" of upscale chocolates. We haven't been on a holiday cruise since the re-start so don't know if it's been dumbed down like so much else.

This is exactly the same as I experienced the Christmas and NYE just gone, but I didn’t make it sound nearly as exciting as you have!

4 hours ago, Fortunate2 said:

Experienced cruisers, your assistance please.   We're on the Silver Moon this holiday for Christmas and New Years and are not sure what to expect as far as festivities (I'm sure there are some), butler and housekeeper gifts and any general suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks!

On a different SS ship last Christmas/New Year, the ship was decorated throughout.  There was a fairly typical Christmas dinner that night (not lunchtime). So not any Christmas festivities as such. NYE there was a party on the pool deck until after midnight, with everyone rugged up!  It was a fun night.  Some ships might bring it inside.

9 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

Catching up on blogs!

 

In July DW and I took a wonderful trip to Maine and Nova Scotia, including a short cruise on THE CAT high-speed car ferry from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth.  I have posted the full blog and photos here, for those who are interested:

 

 

Do you get to give yourself a flag for posting a trip report? 😉

21 minutes ago, RyanJCanada said:

I’ve said it before, but outside of veteran cruisers there seems to be a real lack of knowledge about expedition cruising. It’s a shame because it really is a fantastic way to explore the world, and I think there are a lot of people who would love it if they tried it - but alas they haven’t even heard of it, apart perhaps from the Antarctic and maybe Galapagos.

It seems all those who went on Silver Cloud did thoroughly enjoy their experiences.  No mention of going out in zodiacs, so possibly they rarely left the ship.  Certainly the "small ship cruises" were a hit!  At least the ship fills up, which is good for business, and the real expedition passengers still enjoy their expeditions.

2 hours ago, Lois R said:

Maybe I  just have a bad memory but I cannot recall ever having a Captain's Dinner. 

Have you never been invited to dine at the Captain’s or another officer’s table during a cruise?  It is usually the first formal night where senior staff are introduced in the Venetian Lounge.

59 minutes ago, MarkWiltonM said:

We are thinking about a cruise on Silver Ray but we like to let our hair down and be very casual when we cruise. (And we just can't take any pretentiousness.) We usually cruise on Oceania, which is quite casual throughout their ships including all the dining venues. We also loved Crystal in the past but haven't sailed on the rebooted line. Would we be comfortable on the Nova-class ships? Do we have to dress up at all? Is there a casual dining venue in the evening? 

You could read through the many, many, many threads about dress code on Silversea, and even on Nova in particular.

Your idea of casual could be different to mine or others.

Or eat at The Grill every night.

I’ve been reading some posts on the CC Australian Cruisers thread.  It appears there are many Australian cruisers, mainly older folk who are used to sailing on Princess, who think of Darwin to Broome as “small ship cruising”. And very expensive, so are splurging!  “Small ship cruises” was mentioned repeatedly, but never once “expedition cruising”.  I agree, they seem to have no concept of expedition cruising!

On 8/3/2024 at 3:44 AM, gators70 said:

We will be in Sydney in December 2024 for a Princess Cruise Tour.  Looking to get suggestions on most economical way to get from the Sydney International Airport to the Amora Hotel Jamison Sydney on December 13.  We don't mind doing a shared shuttle as we are not on a timeline the day we arrive.  I've heard about Redy2Go shuttle services.  Has anyone used them, and are they reliable?

 

Also looking for the best way to get from the Cruise Terminal when we arrive back at port on January 4.  The ship is supposed to dock at 6 a.m. but I don't know when they will let passengers off.  Our international flight leaves at 11:50 a.m. so instead of using the Princess transfer, we were thinking it might be safer to get a private transfer to airport.  Does anyone know how long it takes to get from Cruise Terminal to Sydney International Airport?   It's going to be on a Saturday.  It also appears that Redy2Go has private transfers as well.  And we would look to be using our credit card.  Any feedback would be appreciated.

I loathe Redy2Go!  Unreliable, especially at night.  My son and I stayed at the Amora Jamison Street pre cruise.  Loved  it!  Walked to the ship the next morning, dropped bags early and spent the day exploring.  Just use Uber.  Almost as cheap for two people anyway.

6 hours ago, Aus Traveller said:

Maybe I misunderstood your post. 🙂 Apologies if I did. Are you saying that you leave the ship (without having breakfast) then go to the hotel and have breakfast there? With check-in time in hotels usually in the afternoon, do they allow you to have breakfast that day?

 

By the way, we don't join the buffet crush before leaving the ship, we have breakfast in the dining room. Service is very prompt on disembarkation day.

 

 

The OP is disembarking the ship and wanting to change their flight until the next day. Not boarding a ship.  Hence staying at a hotel in the CBD area after the ship and heading out to the airport the next morning.

2 hours ago, snag said:

Hi, could you please tell me if you can walk off and see some of kangaroo island without doing a tour? Thanks snag

If you walk out of the tender dock and head around to your left and the green house across the road (ask the volunteer guide to point it out), the sculpture walk is very interesting.  There are several paths to meander, some interesting historic points of interest, and some great metal sculptures.  Well worth doing, and a very enjoyable walk.

2 hours ago, Qld13 said:

Hi

Not been on Silversea for a few years, now looking forward to going on Nova in Jan/Feb and wondered does Atlantide or any other restaurant do special dinners at all at start, during or end of cruise? Basing question on that Regent do a lobster and beef Wellington dinner, I think on the second to last night of a cruise.

Thanks

David

You can order lobster at any time during a cruise, plus it is on the Atlantide menu periodically through a cruise. Formal nights often do something a little special, or the Captain’s welcome dinner.  Then there is the seafood buffet!  I can’t comment on whether been Wellington is on the menu as I cannot eat it.

3 hours ago, MissSophia said:

Good Morning Coolers 😊

 

It was 2:30 in the afternoon here. 😎

1 hour ago, sanne said:

Aussies needed a passport! Without it you could not embark. 

As I said, I’ve taken many Kimberley expeditions with various companies.  Some didn’t need passports.  I probably mixed them up. Some didn’t go out to Ashmore reef.  One was a round trip from Broome.

I totally agree Silversea never “dumped” any cruises in Australia, including the Kimberley.  Silversea doesn’t discount at all as far as I’m aware. They will offer no solo supplement closer to departure, which is the big draw card for solo travellers.  Australia’s would just have taken the opportunity of a close to home, luxury cruise.

1 hour ago, sanne said:

14 minutes ago, RachelG said:

I am pretty sure Silversea filled up a large number of unsold cabins with deeply discounted fares offered to Aussies at last minute.  I say this based on the large number of Aussies onboard, most who had never sailed on Silversea or any other ship for that matter and who had no idea what expedition cruising was about.

You could be right.  I seem to remember an email from my TA, but not the price now.  It’s the sort of cruise I would book last minute if the price was attractive and I was free.  I guess some people just read the “luxury cruise” part, maybe “Kimberley”, and didn’t look any further!  And no need for expensive flights to go to the other side of the planet. Nor a passport required.

1 hour ago, drron29 said:

Just Wow. more about meeting sales targets than customer satisfaction.

Notice the instruction to “upsell”.  Possibly this has always been the case, but it seems more a RCI instruction.  
 

As all staff are new employees and never in the cruise business, how can they immediately and effectively advise the customer of cruises that meet their needs?  Previously there would have been a mix of old and new employees, so assistance and advice available.  I wonder if these new recruits will ever get to @expeditionexpert’s standard?  Probably not under RCI conditions.

On older ships we used to take our own extension cord.  The electrician would check and tag it.  Better than the dirty cords that were seemingly dragged out of the engine room!  Cruise companies usually have a request form to fill out prior to sailing where you can ask for distilled water.  This helps the ship cater for everyone. We would receive a 2 litre bottle.   My husband took his usual CPAP machine.  Modern ones are pretty compact and come with a bag.

8 hours ago, sanne said:

We were also on this cruise, our fourth time in the Kimberley. Rachel has summed up perfectly our thoughts about our time on the Cloud.

 

Interestingly we also sailed on the Orion in 2006, our very first Kimberley cruise and the experience was much more detailed than what we see and do now on this itinerary. And for the whole cruise we did not see another vessel of any description! How times have changed. On this latest cruise we had to ‘take turns’ and work round other cruise ships in the area. 

Because of the rules that allowed cruise ships to operate in Australian waters, many more smaller and medium sized expedition ships are coming into the Kimberley.  There should have been a size limit set for cruise ships initially, but expedition cruising was not an industry back then, so it wasn’t thought necessary.  So more and more international ships are heading into the Kimberley, often too big at more than 200 passengers to get into many areas of interest.  Nor can zodiacs handle the distance to visit other beautiful waterfalls and rock pools.  Obtaining sufficient numbers of experienced expedition staff who know northern Australia then becomes another problem.

International ships are also selling expedition cruises years in advance, even though they don’t have their permits for said cruises at the time of booking.

There are really a lot of ships in the northwest during the season.  The smaller ones (up to 120 maximum dual occupancy or less) IMO offer a much better overall experience.

(If of interest, I have been on six Kimberley expedition cruises, as well as across the top end and down the coral coast.)

17 minutes ago, expeditionexpert said:

Hello my dear guests, friends

 

As a veteran SS cruise consultant, affected by this, I made the hard decision to take my knowledge to a competitor. RCL is a big believer in outsourcing and so were newly installed sales executives at SS. The sales floor was notified of outsourcing in January 2024 to Manilla beginning with the inbound lines. This news was a huge shock to us at SS, many of us immediately began to pre pare for the worse. Soon the lay off's and colleagues quitting and moving to competitors began. We moved to competitors in this segment of cruising who still believe in domestically knowledgeable cruise consultants to stay in house, luxury of planning this type of vacation which starts with your first contact experience.

 

It took years to build that sales department with hard to find cruise consultants that dedicated themselves to learn such a complex product, just to save a buck. TA heavily depends on internal knowledgeable cruise consultants and so do direct guests who ultimately had the luxury of having a consultant with heavy product knowledge in their back pocket in a corporate office. 

 

Calling direct customers or TA will be directed to an outsourced call center in Guatemala, Mexico, and manilla (main center). And online information requests on the website of any sort would be contacted by a limited domestic outbound sales department which remains in limited numbers (Miami,London, Sydney) and is partially manilla as they build that team and will soon replace the remaining domestic direct cruise consultants. 

 

With the ousting of Massimo, which is one of the ones responsible for this phase at SS, they may be reversing course, but maybe too little too late with depleted talent. Who knows.

 

I truly miss assisting my guests at SS. 

 

Best wishes to everyone. 

 

 

 

 

Thank you very much for posting your first hand knowledge.  And welcome to Cruise Critic.  Please stay as a contributor and enjoy the conversations. They’re not all bad!  Mostly we enjoy our cruises, but perhaps this isn’t told often enough.  Thank you for working hard for your guests.  Hopefully you will confuse to do so with your new company.

5 hours ago, Archipelago said:

Was thinking of 4 segments on that WC . Is there a discount for linking segments and for airfare I guess they would use one way on the first segment and one way return on the final segment . ? Not able to do a full WC days at this time .

When you book back to back cruises (segments), there is a reduction in total price.  It is considered one cruise for the purpose of booking D2D flights.

3 minutes ago, ging466 said:

 

Well done Carol! One of my US friends has booked it and she told me her's was 50% single supplement.

 

Cheers

Jennifer

I actually booked through my US travel agent.  Even at the current really low exchange rate, I will save a few thousand dollars at the very least, possibly much more by the time of final payment.  Plus US$6,000 OBC.  

On 8/2/2024 at 8:16 PM, Sololux said:

This is the reason I have to fly from France to the U.K. first then onwards to the embarkation country as U.K. travel agents have advised that I must I must book my France to U.K. flight but they can then handle my flight and cruise requirements, legally, from the U.K. onwards.  Everything would then be covered by U.K. T&C which they are familiar with.

Please come back and clarify for us.  Did you book with a UK travel agent because you prefer that particular agent?  That is what I have assumed.  It’s good to see that you are well aware of the various legalities and responsibilities of TAs and different regions.

3 hours ago, frankhi said:

On Silversea?

Yes. Silversea’s 2027 World Cruise.

17 hours ago, frankhi said:

https://www.silversea.com/lp-singles-fares.html?sortBy=prod_cruises_all_languages__price-asc

I did notice that a good many of these zero single supplement cruises are this year.  As the ships are ready to sail and are not full, that’s the perfect opportunity to sell some more cabins.  Just desperate marketing rather than wanting to open opportunities for solo cruisers.

The alternative is to book 18-24 months in advance.  That early there is usually a 25% supplement that disappears when the cruise is within 18 months of departure.  I have just booked 2027 and was charged only a 25% solo supplement.