dstamps

Jim - Thanks for the kind words. I am afraid you may be right about the trajectory of the cruise experience. I mean Seabourn's newest ship will be their biggest. Maybe it will have a zip line. Hope you thoroughly enjoy your next cruise or other vacation.

I could understand the OP's post if this were his first cruise and these were his reactions to the whole concept. But he has taken MANY cruises, has obviously been unhappy with all of them yet continues to take them to be with his friends. imo this disqualifies any credentials to review a cruise line because he knows in advance it will be unsatisfactory.

Let me see if I understand your logic by way of a food analogy.

When talking about desserts, I have stated that I much prefer chocolate ice cream over vanilla cake for a variety of reasons. Although I can think of many things I would rather have than vanilla cake, it is still a dessert, enjoyable, and after all there are many worse things to eat that I can think of (balut, hakarl, durian, etc.). Nonetheless, I have been to many bakeries to sample vanilla cake because doing so with our friends is fun. But at this point I have let it be known that I would prefer to sample ice cream parlors from now on. So, according to you, this declaration and my stated preference for chocolate ice cream somehow disqualifies any credentials I have to review vanilla cake.

I find your reasoning bizarre.

I had two goals in my original post.

The first was to provide a review specific to my Med cruise on the Sojourn. In an effort to be honest and upfront, things have degenerated into a conversation about the relative merits of a cruise vacation. Let me be clear, I am not paying for the privilege of spending 14 days to be tortured inside some middle east prison. We went on vacation and we had fun. Yet at the end of a cruise, I always know that we would have had more fun and experienced much greater luxury on a land vacation. I think Flamin June nicely presented some of the reasons why I prefer resorts, and being on the water holds no special meaning to me. The one clear thing cruises do better, and Seabourn seems to excel at this, is cause the passengers to mingle and create a sense of comradery. Since we bring our own friends along, this benefit is lost on us, and it certainly does not offset the significant drop in luxury.

To get back on point, there are five areas I judge a vacation on facilities, accommodations, food, entertainment and service.

Facilities: The Sojourn is fairly new, but is already starting to look a little threadbare. Noticeable stains on carpeting and occasionally the smell of raw sewage in the hallway. If you like to gamble you will be extremely disapointed in the casino. As a smaller ship, it compares to SS. All the other ships had significantly more to do. I particularly like the cooking school and art classes on Oceania, as well as the golf on Crystal.

Accommodations: If you compare similar room categories, the Sojourn's rooms are quite large. In the same class as Regent which might be slightly larger. If you compare by dollars spent, you can get a much bigger, nicer room on Princess, Oceania and Celebrity for the same money. I think Crystal had the smallest most uncomfortable rooms.

Food: I think the top two lines would be Oceania and Crystal. The Sojourn is comparable to SS, Azamara and Regent and they are not far behind the top group. Things get complicated if you include the for charge restaurants. Take for example Celebrity, the food quality is better in their for fee restaurants than on the Sojourn, but the main dining room and buffet is substantially worse than the Sojourn's.

Entertainment: The entertainment is much better and more diverse on the larger ships. On the Sojourn, it is dancing or drinking in the smoky observation lounge. Team trivia seemed to be popular, but we skipped it.

Service: This was the biggest surprise for me. The service on the Sojourn was similar to that on Princess or Celebrity. Sporadically slow, inattentive definitely not 5 star. Want breakfast in the MDR during a port day? Sorry, not going to happen. Want to order off the menu in the Colonnade? With the overcrowding and under-staffing, good luck getting a drink refill let alone an order in. Expect on 1.5 to 2 hours to be finished for a breakfast ordered off the menu. I think Regent and Crystal had the best service, though it could border on obsequious.

I hope that provides more detail than the previous posts.

In what is already a too long post, my second goal was to educate the novice looking for cruise reviews about the nature of this site. If you google cruise reviews this is the first hit. If you google car reviews the selection is much more diverse. To use the car analogy, this site is not car and driver, auto trader and it definitely is not consumer reports. This site is akin to the BMW club of North America. Do you think you would get an unbiased review of a Lexus there? How about a Mazda? I think it takes some time for people to realize the nature of this board, and I don't want anyone misled by unchecked bias.

Tilly, what context am I missing? You brought up the Michelin guide. Not everyone realizes that Seabourn will never achieve a single star. Please explain yourself, and how they are not even trying to achieve excellence in their cuisine.

Oregon50- I don't disagree with anything you said, that is why I prefaced the whole thing with I don't even know why I am bothering. I was open, honest and upfront when I stated that after 10 cruises, I prefer land based vacations.

I just don't see how this invalidates my opinions about cruising in general and about Seabourn in particular.

Believe me, I am not here to flame you guys. I just think there might be some people out there that believe this sight is about objective cruise reviews, instead of a cruise enthusiast board. That is why I posted my thoughts.

Obviously the food is not of Michelin quality, but then it isn't trying to be!

I could not think of a more damning assessment of the food quality on Seabourn. Thank you for making my point that if fine dining is important to you, you can do much better on land. I can understand the difficulty a ship would have sourcing fresh high quality ingredients, especially on a penny pinching all-inclusive budget, but your own admission that they don't even try? Wow! Are you sure you really love Seabourn? And if so, why?

Tillylovesseabourn- given your username, I think you have adequately proven my point about cheerleaders on this forum. Why review the Sojourn if I don't like cruises? If you read the full post, you can see that I compare the Sojourn to other cruise lines I was on with the final assessment that Seabourn is nothing special, and is in many ways a lesser product to the other lines.

Vistaman - you bring up a good point that I neglected in the original post. One of my dislikes about cruising is the all-inclusive product. By going all-inclusive I feel that cruises have diluted the quality of the experience to the point that they are not in the same class as true luxury properties. Substituting proseco for real champagne in a cost savings measure? Wow, what luxury. Seabourn management should be ashamed of their wine list.

wripro- as chief cheerleader I figured you would reply as such. You have a history of attacking the poster, not the content of their complaint.

I believe I answered your question in the original post. We were hopeful that we would find a suitable cruise line if we kept trying and we really enjoy vacationing with our friends. Planning a vacation is very time consuming, and we are very grateful that our friends have taken that burden upon themselves for our benefit. We have been on many land based vacations that were absolutely perfect. I am 100% convinced that Seabourn will never deliver an experience that comes anywhere close to as good as we have had at numerous resorts. So, we have very politely let it be known that we thoroughly enjoy their company, but please no more cruises.

I have been debating if I should bother writing a review of the Sojourn for some time. First, I don't like cruises. Our best friends, keep dragging us along on various cruises (We have cruised with Oceania, Celebrity, Princess, Cunard, Silver Sea, Regent, Crystal, Azamara and now Seabourn). We really enjoy our time with them, but don't like the cruises at all. We held out hope that we would eventually find a line we like, but after our spring Med. cruise on the Sojourn, I am never setting foot on a cruise ship again. Compared with a nice hotel, the rooms on ships are much smaller and less luxurious, the food is astronomically better at a restaurant and worse yet, I think cruises are more expensive than a better hotel vacation. The real deal breaker is that everything feels rushed on a cruise. You show up one place in the morning, then leave by dinner. You spend most of your vacation in a bus or private car and there is no time to see anything in-depth. I don't find this style of vacation at all relaxing.

Secondly, I don't know if there is any point posting a negative review here. If you are considering a cruise and have come here for objective advice, you are entirely in the wrong place. If a poster here has more than 10 posts, ignore everything they have to say. These posters are so in love with cruising, and Seabourn in particular, that their perspective is completely skewed. They have been referred to as "cheerleaders", but this term does not go far enough. I realize that I might seem like a troll, but I don't care. I call things how I see them, and if you don't like what I have to say, so be it.

After that long preamble, how does Seabourn compare with the other cruise lines I have traveled with? There was nothing about Seabourn that made me say "wow". The main difference between the cruise lines seems to be the size of the ships. Seabourn was on the smaller side, with relatively less to do.

The rooms on the Sojourn were not more luxurious than other lines. I don't have exact numbers, but I feel they were slightly larger than other lines. That said, the penthouse suite we stayed in had this bizarre glass partition wall that served no purpose and just wasted space.

The food was good, but really only average compared to the other cruise lines, and was substantially worse than a good landed restaurant. The included wines were terrible. At least they let you bring your own on board, which was a cinch in Europe.

The service was spotty at best. I think there were many regulars on board that monopolized all the attention. A lot of the regulars seemed to be very demanding of special requests. Their behavior coupled with a running dialogue of how things were better in the past was off-putting. Certain staff members were good, but there were an equal number that had a palpable "i don't care" attitude. I have experienced slow, or unenthusiastic service on other lines, but I have never seen such indifference and obvious disdain by staff. Fortunately, none of it was directed at my party.

I don't know what else to say. If you insist on cruising, I would advise picking by price and itinerary. Their is nothing special about Seabourn.