SWFLAOK

And after 3 cabins are combined and made into 2 cabins, the you will be paying at least 1 and a half times as much for a cabin than you are now. Since they have to cover the costs of the upgrade, it's likely that you will be paying twice as much for a cabin as you did before. Since most of the post seem to indicate that Crystal fans valued the money saving they got from having a small cabin, will they still book Crystal if they have to pay twice as much for a cabin that is still minimal size for the other cruise lines in the small luxury ship business.

The newer SS ships are still small enough to go into smaller ports, and still have a high space to passenger ratio. Silver Dawn has a maximum passengers of 596,and a crew of 411. Silver Whisper, Silver Shadow, Silver Muse (a sister ship to Dawn), the Seabourn Odyssey and Encore, and the RSSC Explorer and Mariner all have significantly fewer passengers than the Crystal Serenity, and have a higher passenger space ratio. Obviously, what's left of Crystal still has it's fans, but they're not looking for a luxury cruise. They looking for a very nice cruise at a reasonable price, and some comforting nostalgia onboard a ship they've known and loved in the past. Those that are really looking for a luxury cruise will stay with Silversea, or try out RSSC or Seabourn.

We never sailed on Crystal, because we don't like a small cabin with a lot of activities to do elsewhere onboard. We especially don't like lessons, or watching movies in the a theater type environment. While I love to cook at home, and have taken cooking lessons in the past at culinary schools, I don't want to do that when I'm on vacation. And I would rather watch a movie in my cabin. We also didn't see it as being an economical cruise compared to the other cruises we were doing. And the ships were too large for us, with over 900 passengers. We've only been on 1 cruise with that many passengers, and it was a 1 and done on HAL. We sailed to the Amazon from Barbados and back on Silver Whisper in2018. We sailed in a Silver Suite which was 500 sq feet of luxury. There were a few days at sea along the way, and long passages on the Amazon, and we enjoyed watching them from our cabin, while enjoying our favorite beverages which were restocked in our cabin whenever they became close to needing to be. My brother was onboard as well in a smaller cabin. He had a plumbing problem in his bathroom that they were unable to fix in several tries. They moved him to another cabin, and while he packed everything in his cabin, his butler moved everything to his new cabin and unpacked everything to the same places they came from in his previous cabin. We didn't always feel like dressing up for formal night, so we sometimes had dinner in our cabin. Our butler served our meals and his service was flawless, and my brother was always welcomed by our butler to have meals in our cabin. He was the best butler we've ever had.

We have stayed numerous times at the IC Papeete, since the Paul Gauguin always had pre and post hotel stays available there, and day rooms if you weren't staying there overnight. The day rooms were usually well worn, but add on nights we paid for were always nice rooms, that had recently been renovated. I had read that they had eventually renovated the wing used for day rooms (closer to the airport), but we had stopped doing the day room thing by then. From those we talked to at the hotel, the overwater bungalows were often hard to sleep in due to waves underneath. We had a great 2 weeks in overwater bungalows on Bora Bora (Sofitel Marara), and Moorea (Beachcomber which later became IC), back in 1995, and when we decided to go back in 2017, it was cheaper to take a cruise. We never ran into the Costco discount people there, but they were everywhere in the Cook Islands, and it's a good reason not to go there. We did have problems with the hotel being available for day use by the locals who normally partied at the bar all day (usually with drinks from their own coolers) while their kids filled the pool with no adult supervision. They also had a BMW dealer take over the hotel during the day, using the entire area that cruise passengers need to use after they're kicked out of their rooms and are waiting for the bus to the cruise port. They were offering test drives from the parking area so we tried to sign up for one, but they said it was open to residents only. We asked why they were at a hotel full of tourists if it was for residents only, but they had no answer for that.

If your flight is late, or cancelled, or you miss your flight connection because of a delay, and are downgraded to economy when you paid for an upgrade to business class, it's the airline that has to come up with the payback. Unfortunately, it goes back to the cruise line if they booked it on your behalf and you have to request it back from them. We had this happen on a Viking River cruise, and eventually got the money back from them that Delta paid back for having too short a time between flights, resulting in us flying economy from Atlanta to Amsterdam rather than the business class seats we had paid for.

It's a redo of the Hotel Tahiti from the 1960's. so not a new property.

To add to the discussion of Fiji hotels, at the end of a cruise a few years back on the Paul Gauguin, we had a 3 night post cruise at the Intercontinental in Fiji. The Paul Gauguin was owned by the ICG at the time. It's a really great hotel, with a great breakfast buffet, a really nice and mostly empty beach, an adults only infinity pool, and we were assigned an upper floor (the second floor) very large room, with a view of the waterway at the south end of the property. It was very nice, and would have been perfect except fhat we were there during a kiwi holiday. The New Zealanders came in large family gtoups, all staying in small rooms, with none of the adults keeping track of their kids. The worst we saw was a young woman who had started drinking at happy hour at the table next to ours when gram and gramps brought her 2 young children to join in. They ran wild, as gram and gramps ordered their happy hour drinks. Then dad brought their youngest into the bar, and handed the little screamer to mom who immediately started to breastfeed. While doing so, she ordered a second cocktail and asked for the same drink I was having, which I had found quite intoxicating. She finished it quite quickly and ordered another since happy hour was drawing to a close, all while breastfeeding. I thought how different the Kiwis must be than those of us from the US that they thought that was OK. I'm sure the baby slept well, but... We did cancel a cruise from Fort Lauderdale to New Zealand after that due to Covid, but we haven't been tempted to go to New Zealand after experiencing their tourists in Fiji.

Is there small print with the 2025 cruise that says it's that hotel or equivalent? And if so, can they tell you what they consider equivalent. We were told by a different cruise line that the Fiji Pullman hotel was equivalent to the Fiji Sofitel. We did not agree. One is on the beach in a great location, with a wonderful, large pool. The other was near a small beach with almost no amenities, and next to the end of the runway, and still a long way to the airport terminal. The Sofitel is still there, and the not at all equivalent, the Pullman, is now permanently closed. That cruise was cancelled due to Covid, and after trying 4 times to reschedule it, we asked for our money back instead of yet another FCC, and they said yes. Hopefully we get it soon. B

The 250 amount for the credit was told to us by the other couple onboard that was automatically upgraded, and we did receive something around that amount. But we had already paid for unlimited wifi for 4 logins on both segments, and we should have had that for free with gold status, so maybe that was part of the credit we received. And really, 100 dollars as compensation for everyone getting free laundry, is way too little if you want to consider gold status to be a reward for loyalty. I stopped counting our laundry receipts when we reached 800 dollars. And we didn't have anything dry cleaned, we didn't have any formal clothes, and we wore many of our clothes more than once. If we had a launderette on our deck up front, we might have used that for our socks and underwear, but there wasn't one.

Even after they acknowledged that we had gold status, we didn't get a newspaper (which we didn't care about since we paid for upgraded internet and could read news online), and we had to ask for our 250 onboard credit, which seemed unfamiliar to them. When we boarded the first segment of our cruise, we expected to have it mentioned in our arrival letter in our cabin that we would be reaching gold status shortly after our 2nd segment began, but it wasn't mentioned. Nor did we get any additional letter welcoming us to the 2nd segment. We spoke to another couple who reached gold on the second day of their 2nd segment, and had already received their 250 ship board credit, and a letter congratulating them when they boarded for their first segment. A few days after we reached gold, and saw it on the Regent website, we went to reception. We didn't really see anyone in the office type rooms around reception to speak to. They were probably in their offices while everyone was off the ship on excursions, or trying to find a place to have lunch after our late return from the excursions. In retrospect, I should have mentioned to reception when we boarded that we were qualified for gold during the B2B cruise that we were boarding. Maybe they would have looked into it to make sure it took effect while we were onboard.

We took a taxi from the Vancouverb airport to the Pan Pacific hotel which is attached to the cruise terminal for an Alaska cruise in August of 2018. It took over 30 minutes to get to the hotel, and was between 35 and 40 dollars, before adding a tip. It was Canadian dollars, which were worth considerably less than the US dollar at that point, but we put it on a credit card with no foreign transaction fee, but they didn't give us a great exchange rate.

We only cruised on Silversea once before. We enjoyed it, but only booked it because we could easily get to the starting and ending point in Barbados with a roundtrip on Jetblue from Florida where we could drive to the airport and use Jetblue points to fly. We enjoyed our Silver Suite, but hadn't booked again since there we no other "local" cruises we were interested in. While we're not a new customer, we have always preferred to cruise on Regent, and the reason is the included airfare, pre boarding hotel, and often a free or post 3 night land extension. We've cruised on Regent 6 times so far, and have 2 more cruises booked. One is with a credit taken since we don't need airfare. The credit given was insignificant, and less than we expected. But the business class flights on our previous cruises have been the reason we've kept cruising to destinations that are intercontinental. Because Silversea offered door to door, and we had enjoyed our 1 previous cruise, we booked the 2025 World Cruise on Silver Dawn. If D2D had not been offered by Silversea, we would have done a World Cruise or 2 Grand Voyages with Regent instead.

We were on SDII last spring for B2B cruises before they headed transatlantic from San Juan. Both of our cruises were quite full. They did a covid at the dock before boarding and if it was positive, you needed to be checked by the doctor. Since the doctor was doing the covid swabs, I don't know what happened, but there were a few positives. After that, we had to look at a monitor on the reception desk every morning, and facial recognition would identify us and record our temperature. I don't know what happened if you had a fever since we never did. I doubt that the unoccupied staterooms on deck 4 is due to covid. Quarantine cabins are normally on the lowest deck. We heard that there were quarantine cabins on deck 2, and someone who was staying on that deck told us that food was being delivered to one of them for several days before those guests left the ship. If I were going to take a transatlantic on either SD ship, I would book a commodore suite on deck 3. I'm prone to seasickness, and even if you're not, deck 4 feels the waves a lot more than deck 3 (having felt the waves on both decks on our past Caribbean cruises). We really liked our commodore suite on deck 3 on our spring cruise. It felt really spacious, and the 2 bathrooms was a big plus when it came to showering after an excursion, or when getting ready for dinner.

The 2024 cruise is really just a cruise around the Pacific, with the most port intensive areas being Alaska, Australia, and New Zealand. Having already cruised to Alaska and Australia, and taken more port intensive cruises in the South Pacific (3 times) and 2 cruises out of Singapore to Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam, and been to Hawaii by air, so the only part of the 2024 cruise we were interested in was Japan. That's why we're booked on the 2025 World Cruise, which is on Silver Dawn. It has many stops in Japan, which will be a long flight from Florida. It has really nice stops in Vietnam and Singapore, with great special events. It then heads to the East coast of Malaysia, and on to India, and Egypt and the Suez canal (with a special event to the pyramids and the Cairo Egyptian museum after hours). It then goes to Turkey and Greece, and Naples and Sicily. It then heads to 2 ports in Spain that we haven't been to before. There's only a few ports in Europe that we've been to before (Lisbon, Bordeaux, Southampton and Amsterdam), but we don't mind visiting them again. We've never been to Paris, and there's a special event with an evening party at Versailles. We've never been to Scandinavia, Iceland or Greenland. This cruise covers most of the places we haven't cruised to. We're really looking forward to the 2025 WC. We've sailed on Silver Whisper to the Amazon in the past, and loved that ship, and expect Silver Dawn to be even better.

We enjoyed everything we ordered, but did not include anything from the meat selections (we got that elsewhere) the vegetarian selections (that's a selection of last resort if we don't see anything better) or soups and salads. But the Miso cod and the Lobster tempura were good, and the appetizers and dim sum were all delicious. We even went back and ordered more. We enjoyed the Asian mushroom, fried rice and fried noodles. And yes, soy sauce and miso are salty, as are many sauces such as Hoisin. Leaving salt out of the sauce isn't going to happen, We signed up for a wine tasting menu on Splendor that was held in Pacific Rim in the early afternoon. The food was made by the chef, and the host was the head sommelier. It was the best meal we had on our 25 days onboard. And the wine was great too.

We've seen teens in PJs sleeping on the floor in airports. And not jut at night, but waiting for their flights during the day. They're in the departure lounge, where everyone is walking on the carpet, including pets having accidents. Sometimes, they have their faces on their back pack or other carry on, but we've often seen them with their face on the carpet. We always wonder why their parents didn't teach them not to do that. But maybe since it was tolerated in school, the teens considered it acceptable, and ignored what their parents told them. Maybe enforcing civilized behavior should be part of what their education in school requires. And if not, maybe no one under 21 should be allowed to travel without a parent or legally responsible guardian.

Just logged in and checked and there are all blanks for our next cruise in April, and our April 2024 cruise isn't there either. I'll wait until tomorrow to complain. Software upgrades are often done on the weekend, but should be corrected by the next day,

And he looks like he has a bad case of toenail fungus. Ugh!

Whenever I hear someone say "rules are made to be broken" it always annoys me. Rules were made to prevent problems that occurred in the past. We spent so much time with causal analysis, resulting in new rules, and then they were just made to be broken.

We just booked our first Viking Ocean cruise, after taking a long delayed Viking River cruise last May. We are most often Regent cruisers, but have also cruised on the Paul Gauguin, Silversea, Sea Dream, and a "one and done" on HAL We have never cruised on a ship with more than 1000 passengers and never want to. We really enjoyed the Viking River Cruise, but we found the ships very confining, especially with extreme Covid measures still in effect for the first half of our cruise. Having to turn sideways and face the wall, while wearing a mask, to allow someone to pass you in the hallway (or turn back and wait until a larger person exited the hallway) became old very fast. We loved our Veranda Suite which used it's square footage so well. We loved our room steward who always knew when we left the cabin, and kept it really clean. We enjoyed the food, but we didn't enjoy all of the tables in the main dining room being for 6 or more diners. This might have been acceptable before Covid, but we were uncomfortable with it since we had to provide saliva for a Covid test every morning. And we often prefer to dine alone after a busy day. We had no complaints with the other cruisers onboard, and we enjoyed the excursions. There were no dress code problems. But on our recent Regent cruise, we did see some of the same things that are being mentioned here. People would go to the Coffee Connection in the morning in their pajamas. They would wear their bathing suits to restaurants at lunch, putting on a coverup on top, but sitting with a wet bottom on their chair. On several Regent excursions, the cruise guests became very rude and demanded to have the itinerary changed, or to be brought back to the ship because they were tired, or wanted to get back for lunch, or weren't enjoying the excursion. They didn't react well to being told that the excursion would continue as scheduled and they could pay for a cab to return to the ship. While we have seen guests decide to leave an excursion in the past and return to the ship at their own expense, we had never seen this level of rudeness before. We also had problems in the specialty restaurants at dinner, with large tables of loud and obnoxious people as early as 7 PM. They seemed to have had quite a few drinks before arriving for dinner, and weren't very interested in an upscale meal. So this could be a new trend on all high quality cruise lines. I think there might be many people who have cruised on the huge ships in the past, where the cabin was low priced, and the drinks weren't free, but they partied a lot and had a good time. Since they haven't been able to take a vacation in a few years because of Covid, and they've also saved money since they couldn't go to restaurants, they're looking for a more upscale experience. However, they're looking for a party experience, and expect to be accommodated. We're looking forward to our first Viking Ocean cruise, and if someone tells us to clear their view, we'll definitely offer them some advice.

On our recent B2B on Splendor, our key card continued to work on our second cruise, with out any changes. We did however, ask for a new one since we reached Gold status a few days into our second cruise, and hadn't heard anything about it. When we finally decided to ask about it, we actually received pushback from reception, saying that we were wrong and had not reached that level. We had to show that the Regent website showed the correct number of nights sailed and that we were gold status for a number of days. Reception still needed to check with the general manager before they got back to us. We asked about our onboard credit that came with it. She had to check again, and we received it. We donated to the crew welfare fund since we still had credit from our cancelled shore excursions and were getting close to the end of the cruise. Destination Services and Reception had a number of under performers on our B2B cruises. They were the low point of our cruise. Otherwise, we were very satisfied.

We have taken 6 Regent cruises, and after our first dinner at Sette Mari on our first cruise, we have never eaten there again. For 2 people, it was just too food much for us. All of those wasted appetizers put on our table, a few dinner entree choices, and a dessert buffet, isn't the way we eat, on cruises or at home.

We were in business class from Prague to Heathrow to Miami on June 5th. Our first flight was BA landing in Terminal 3, and our second was American taking off from Terminal 5. Our first flight arrived on time, and we were among the first off the plane. We had 2 hours and 50 minutes, had studied the map, and tried to move quickly. We were good until we got to the line for the bus. It was long, with buses not arriving very often. After nearly 30 minutes in line, with the lines getting longer all of the time, buses suddenly started showing up as soon as the previous one left. We then got to the terminal 5 train, and everything moved more smoothly there, but we were misdirected to our gate by 2 different employees toward the end. We made it with enough time to stop at the restrooms before boarding. Our luggage also made it to our plane. It came off first in Miami, so it might have made it at the last minute as well.

Our 2 worst cruise experience with groups were on the Paul Gauguin in the past few years pre-Covid. One was a group of 45 to 50 French Canadians with their TA. They weren't bad onboard, as they mostly spoke English as well, and interacted with other guests. But the TA was loud and obnoxious, and while she spoke English, she made a big deal about having everything spoken word in every venue being translated to French. The worst experience we had was on an excursion to One Foot Island in Aitutaki in the Cook Islands. On the boat, there were only 6 of us who were not with the TA, and 30 with her. The captain of the boat was very entertaining, and the French Canadian guests were laughing at his jokes. But about 15 minutes into the cruise to the island, the TA realized that he wasn't speaking French, and insisted that he do so. The Cook Islands are not French speaking, and the captain spoke no French. At that point, the TA insisted that he start from the beginning of his remarks, and stop after each sentence so she could repeat it in French. By the time we reached One Foot Island, I was tempted to swim out to sea and drown rather than travel to the 2 additional stops on our excursion. Fortunately, some wine was served with our lunch, and the captain and TA came to an agreement which limited the captain's stories, and the TA's translations to a minimum on the rest of the trip. We had one additional excursion on that cruise with the TA and here group, and were able to switch to another one at the last minute after mentioning it to destination services. The other one was with a shorter round trip cruise to Papeete. It was a group of people who had received a free cruise for their sales performance. I never found out what business they were in, but it seemed to be a not-for-profit, and most of them had never traveled far from their mid-west homes. They were all in the porthole staterooms, but had 2 of the largest suites booked for gatherings. They all tried to stay together for the first few days, but since they didn't really know each other, they blended into the rest of the guests after that, and were no longer a distraction. We had actually encountered a similar group many years ago when we stayed at the IC Moorea for a week, but they were kept busy everyday with seminars and group meals, and remained annoying for most of our stay.

We had a very good first experience with SS back in 2018 on Silver Whisper with a cruise from Barbados to Manaus on the Amazon and back. We loved our cabin, we felt the meal at La Dame was well worth the cost, we had a great butler in our Silver Suite, and a great waiter at The Restaurant that we met again at Compass Rose on Regent Voyager a year later. We just completed our 6th Regent cruise a few weeks ago on Splendor. While it was still very enjoyable, and we had already booked a cruise in 2024, and just booked one for April 2023 with friends and family, it was not up to previous standards. Our boarding in Southampton was slower than expected, there were supply chain problems with wine and spirits, there were several very incompetent restaurant staff, and destination services planned very poorly, and were sometimes rude. Some of these problems were solved during our 24 nights aboard. However, the supply chain problems and destination services scheduling became worse on the second leg of our cruise which was fully booked as compared to being more than 100 less than capacity on our first leg. We had already booked the 2025 World Cruise on Silver Dawn, and are still looking forward to it. With all of the cruises that are taking place now on the luxury lines, there will be many more crew members coming on board and being mentored by the long time employees that are still there. Hopefully the supply chain problems will be resolved. We continue to see more of these problems in our local stores and restaurants than we have seen in Europe on our Viking and Regent cruises this year, and the prices were significantly lower there for food and wine as well.