SusieQft

Having just booked my very first cruise on Silversea, I would like to thank everyone for their comments on this thread. I realize that dress codes tend to be "done to death," probably on all the forums. But some of us are new here and a current thread is much easier to find than digging through the archives.

Our boarding time in Vancouver wad originally 4, and changed to 2:20. We arrived at ~12, and there were no lines. We had numerous stations spaced out with lots of walking between. So it took a while, but no waiting.

I can't answer for Regent, but the Walgreens NAAT test just worked perfectly for us to board Seabourn Odyssey in Vancouver yesterday.

We boarded Odyssey yesterday, and I am posting this from the ship, at least if you see it I will have. We had booked a window cabin on Deck 4, and discovered at check-in they had moved us to a balcony cabin on Deck 5. That was a relief, even though I finally had to go on a scavenger hunt myself to find our luggage on Deck 4. Deck 4 is an isolation/quarantine area, complete with red warning signs, PPE, etc.

Sometimes if the internet connection goes out for technical but non-nefarious reasons, you will get the message "This website is not available." Perhaps there is a benign explanation.

We board tomorrow for the same. I would prefer to have low expectations and be pleasantly surprised than vice versa. This board has certainly adjusted my expectations downward. This will be our first time on Seabourn, so future bookings hang in the balance.

We rented a private mail box (PMB), and get almost all our mail there. Ours is PostNet, but we used to use a UPS Store before we moved to our current location. They hold all our mail until we get home. When we are gone for more than 30 days, we have our mail forwarded there from our house address. I think you can forward the mail for up to one year. This solution does have a cost, and is less convenient for routine mail when we are home, since we have to drive about a mile to the mail drop to pick it up. But it is next door to a convenient grocery store, so it is usually not a wasted trip. And besides the travel security, it also allows us to receive packages in a safe location away from the weather (usually heat in our case) and porch pirates. At our previous house there was no obvious place for the delivery person to leave packages, so sometimes it took us a while to notice we had received one. Once we found a package several months after it had been left under a bush. The PMB was our solution to that problem, and it also works well for extended travel. BTW, the USPS Informed Delivery is not available to PMB customers, but some mail receiving companies will provide a similar service, and also mail forwarding on a selective basis or just all of it.. The post office does everything they can to make things difficult for PMB users.

I find this thread disturbing because we are booked in Splendor 934 for 67 nights starting in Dec 2023. I just reviewed all the Splendor and Explorer reviews on Suite Guru, and there is a paucity of reviews in that part of either ship except for the recent one from 2012_Alaska_Bound for 932. If there is similar vibration in other areas as some have mentioned, then trying to second guess a cabin change in advance may not be that helpful. I am hoping that this is a maintenance issue on Splendor that Regent will resolve well within the next year and a half. Am I being too naive? Since Explorer has been sailing a lot longer and no one is complaining about a similar issue there, that would support the idea that it should not be a design flaw, and hopefully something they can fix. Certainly they have been made aware of it. If not, then Navigator is not the only Regent ship with a reputation for uncomfortable vibration issues. That would be a shame. We are also booked on Navigator in December 2022 (in a forward suite), so we will eventually be able to make our own direct observations and comparisons.

Were you previously notified that they would not, and this is back-tracking since the announcement came after you were on board? Or was the new policy to start on a later segment?

@purpleally, I am responding, with some trepidation, only because you have made these exact same complaints several times before. 1. I do not consider myself a "Crystal person," at least not any longer. Does the fact that I used to sail on Crystal mean that I cannot have opinions about other cruise lines? 2. My wish is that people would stop trying to police the language of others! 3. Do you really think it is "luxurious" to pull the rug out from under the passengers with regard to providing the testing to fly home to the US, with less than 2 weeks notice before sailing? After promising for months that any onboard testing needed to fly home would be provided on the ship? Even if they said they will still provide it but with a charge would be better than abandoning the passengers to find their own somewhere else. How is this not a valid complaint? I am very disappointed to realize that it is really Carnival and/or HAL that calls the shots on Seabourn.

Bill, I totally understand your point here. We felt the same about Crystal, although we had finally decided to branch out a little and did have a Regent booking for fall of 2020 before the you-know-what hit the fan. We thought it would be nice to have more itinerary options and see what else is out there. All our Crystal Society loyalty credits are worthless now, and we were almost far enough into that to get a "free cruise." Oh well, live and learn. Our one Regent booking has expanded to 3 now, still all in the future, so I sure hope we love Regent as much as I think we will. We also have a booking on Seabourn, just to try it out, and hope to also try at least Silversea and maybe even Cunard/Viking/??? in the near future. I suspect that Regent is going to be my new favorite, but I am definitely going to play the field a bit for now. Having been burned once, we are leery about restricting ourselves to just one line. Loyalty perks are nice, but can be ephemeral.

I realize the decision probably came down from HAL and that HAL owns Seabourn, but I booked Seabourn, not HAL. I thought Seabourn is supposed to be better than HAL, but maybe I was mistaken about that.

I am also an UNHAPPY recipient of this notice. Last night I ordered the self tests, and paid extra for expedited shipping because the standard shipping would have them arriving the day before we fly to Vancouver, way too close for comfort. I have seen conflicting reports about wifi availability on Seabourn. Is it included now, and will it be reliable enough for proctored tests? I am another Crystal "refugee" looking for a new favorite cruise line, and I have to say that Seabourn is not off to a great start. Thank you @pattycruisealot21 for the info about the testing site at the Convention Centre. It is great to know that is another option.