Jump to content

cruiseej

Members
  • Posts

    3,422
  • Joined

Everything posted by cruiseej

  1. If you can go to Seward and have a full day there, taking a Kenai Fjords Tours boat trip (6) into Kenai Fjords National Park, to the foot Holgage and Aialik glaciers, is a great experience. Yes, you're about to board a cruise ship for a week at sea! But it's different in a smaller boat going up close to the base of glaciers, and you'll likely get to see sea lions and other marine wildlife. Even if you stay overnight in Seward just one night, you can take an 8 am boat tour, get back around 2 pm, pick up your luggage at the hotel, and board the ship.
  2. We just returned from a cruise which we started with three days in Barcelona on our own. I found it easy to book tour guides — we did two half-day walking tours through Tours By Locals with a fabulous guide (Gothic Quarter, Sagrada Familia, Park Guell, etc.) — and to book entry/audio tours/guided tours at a number of attractions (Barcelona Cathedral, Picasso Museum, Casa Mila/La Pedrera, Casa Amatller, Palau de Musica Catalana). And there's plenty more to see; we just ran out of time before we had to board the ship! It did take a bit of planning, so if you don't enjoy doing that, booking a comprehensive multi-day tour can make it easier — at the expense of being locked into where they decide to take you, how long you spend at each attractions, etc. I suspect it's hard to go too far wrong in a city like Barcelona!
  3. On Seabourn, it is one concurrent connection per person. That's a much better approach. (They also sell a premium package which allows multiple devices per person and higher bandwidth.) For one thing, it allows us to message each other when we're in different places on the ship, which is impossible if one person can have a connection and the other can't.
  4. I was too busy trying to fit the large bottles of Molton Brown bath products into our luggage! 🤣
  5. Reading this thread reminded me that there was no bath mat, just a towel, on our recent Sojourn cruise. I'm happy to say it did not negatively affect our opinion of the cruise, nor make us think Seabourn is in a state of decline! But I think our towels were in good condition. 😂 We had a great cruise.
  6. Getting someone onto the helicopter isn't risking their life. (Well maybe if it was in the middle of an intense storm… But if the weather is within the helicopter's operating parameters, I don't think it's a life-threatening risk lifting someone onto the helicopter.
  7. On our recent cruise on Sojourn, there was a Chef's Dinner which turned out to be one of the best meals we've had on Seabourn cruises, even through the printed menu didn't wow me in advance. We had no problems with the pace of the meal, although I'm sure that depends on how packed it is in the Restaurant and how on-the0-ball your server is in firing and fetching each course.
  8. Well, if that's a change going forward on all the ships, it's a good step in the right direction, as far as I'm concerned. Thanks for that report! Perhaps management is listening to feedback from passengers after all! 😀 On our recent Sojourn cruise, there was a guitar player who was in the Club before dinner; our group always gathered in the Observation Lounge, so we didn't really spend time with the guitarist. He also played in the Club in the early post-dinner slot, before the band or DJ took over, but we were at dinner and/or at the nightly show, so again we didn't see him. I might prefer the former trios, but a guitar player with a diverse repertoire who can take song requests would be okay with me. And they could turn the jukebox back on for the in-between times when there's no performer in the Club.
  9. We and friends are booked an a Galapagos cruise next year on the Silver Origin. One suite on Deck 5, suite 520, is shown in a lighter color on the deck plans than all the surrounding Classic Veranda suites. Does anyone know why this suite has this different color on the deck plans? Thanks.
  10. No need to cancel and rebook excursions. Seabourn Square can have the accounting manager reverse the prepayments and charge the existing excursions against any non-refundable OBC, so only refundable OBC remains.
  11. As a mostly-rock guy from the 70s and 80s, I can give you lots of examples of music which is stripped down/reworked classic rock/pop/ballad in a format a trio or quartet could easily do. Here are links to a few random examples from the top of my head: Miley Cyrus doing Metallica John Legend doing Bruce Springsteen Sara Bareilles doing Elton John Jon Bon Jovi singing John Hiatt Brandi Carlile doing Elton John Miley Cyrus doing Tom Petty Carrie Underwood doing Ozzy Osbourne Alison Krauss doing James Taylor Heck, Miley Cyrus doing Sinatra Outkast (hip hop) done acoustic Louis Armstrong by pop stars Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes The above artists and many others can shift from Sinatra to Broadway to rock to pop. Carrie Underwood has sung with Guns 'n' Roses. Lady Gaga sings with Tony Bennett. Musicians can reinvent songs from any era and do them in their style — and do them justice! And I'd rather hear an original take on a classic song by a live performer(s) than the original track (often with boosted bass or drums) played by a DJ.
  12. I guess we've never experienced that. It's generally been just the people from the four suites with doorways together, with maybe a quick hello to the people at the next cluster down the hall — and I don't think any of ours lasted more than 10 or 15 minutes of chat. In any case, our three most recent cruises have been block party-free, so perhaps they're a thing of the past. 😀
  13. For what it's worth, there was no Block Party on our Sojourn cruise in the Mediterranean earlier this month, nor on our two Odyssey cruises in the Caribbean last year and the year before. Perhaps Seabourn has quietly retired them? Or perhaps only certain long-time cruise directors do them? In any case, I don't understand making a big deal about them, as anyone who wished not to participate could simply remain in their suite. This would not rank in my top 1,000 questions about sailing on the Venture! 🤣 As of this month, Seabourn has retitled the Cruise Director position as "Entertainment Director", and the Assistant Cruise Director as "Entertainment Manager". (At least on the classic cruise ships.) Who knows why someone in Seattle felt these changes were needed or beneficial, since CD/ACD titles are used throughout the cruise industry.
  14. Well, they're really twisting things if that's the justification! As noted, the trios had contracts for months at a time, just like other performers and crew, so I don't see what the length of the cruise segments have to do with it. Was Handre saying that people who cruise for only 7 days don't care about having live music? And what about all the people who do 2 or 3 back-to-back 7-day segments; why don't they deserve live music? I've never met Handre, but if he's the one who made this decision, I think he made the wrong call. All I can say is that we just got off a 10-day cruise, we missed the trio, and we didn't enjoy the DJ. While I applaud flushing the "Girl from Ipanema"-era focus, we're not disco fans either, and the DJ played almost all disco music — loud! — in the Club when we were there. (We've never had Ross as a CD, and there hasn't been partying on the deck behind the Club on the cruises we've been on.) If they're trying to cater to a younger generation of travelers, those like us — in our mid-60s — are probably in the sweet spot…and we don't all love disco! There's a lot of other music (rock, country, singer-songwriter) from the 70's, 80's 90's and today which not "sedate", is more to our liking, and is certainly viable for a trio. They could simply direct the trios to update their playlists without tossing them entirely. I realize this is the decision they made a few months ago. Our initial impression of this change was negative, and now that we've experienced it on a cruise, it's still negative. So that's the feedback we gave to Seabourn, and we hope someone in management — perhaps someone other than Handre — will receive that feedback and decide to make further changes.
  15. We saw, but did not interact with the captain's wife. But we were very impressed with Captain Elliott. He was out and about a number of times, and he would stop and talk. His announcements from the bridge were concise and informative. He is indeed personable and a pleasure to sail with. We hope to sail with him again in the future.
  16. Yes, it tends to be busy and louder. For some reason, I enjoy that energy, so we often go there pre-dinner. There is a guitar player in the Club at that time (rather than the former trio). The DJ comes in later, and also replaces the trio for some of the poolside events.
  17. We sailed on the Diamond twice. As @labonnevie mentioned, the coolest thing was coming back on a tender to the ship at anchor and having the tender run under the ship. Our second cruise on the Diamond was in late-spring 2005, the very last cruise before Radisson handed her over to the new owner to take to Hong Kong. One of our best cruising memories was the day they were grilling lobster tails on the deck and encouraging everyone to eat as much lobster as they wanted because they needed to empty out the freezers. I can neither confirm nor deny whether I had four lobster tails that day!
  18. @Techno123 Well, in the interest of accuracy, or at least complete reporting, it turns out that the newspaper story posted above has been refuted by Zendaya and her assistant. The assistant said their group simply changed their mind about where they wanted to dine. "[The story] this is a bald head lie. We never got denied anywhere. We walked into the building [and] realized we ate there before when we seen the stairs. The same stairs Zendaya slipped on last year and posted about. We all wanted to try a new restaurant and went somewhere else to do so. We actually never went upstairs and interacted with anyone. We talked amongst ourselves in the downstairs lobby. This whole story is a lie." Zendaya also made fun of the rumor on Instagram by posting an illustration of a person asking "Source?" along with the response, "I made it up." So the search for a dress code enforcer goes on… 😉
  19. I wasn't objecting to frozen fish, as I know the technology works well. But there is actual fresh fish on the ship at times, depending where it is sailing, ports, budget, etc. We've seen the chef bring on fish on some cruises, and on our recent Sojourn cruise, the chef told us all the meat is frozen but some of the fish is bought fresh in various ports. I just think if they are going to label it as "fresh" on the menu, it should be actual fresh (recently-caught) fish. If it's frozen, that's fine; just don't call it "fresh" on the menu. 😀
  20. Well, that's baloney Handre is peddling. The band or the trio can be directed to play more "modern" music, and or music in more modern styles. (I had a drinking game with my wife that required a drink when they played The Girl From Ipanema or Beseame Mucho. 🤣) A trio can play music by any singer songwriter from James Taylor to Ed Sheeran. It's not disco music, which is mostly what the DJ seemed to play, but it can certainly be modern/more contemporary music. That seems like baloney, too. Are we really supposed to believe that a DJ gets paid the same as three musicians (plus the cost of an extra cabin and food for two additional people)? That doesn't pass a simple logic test. I don't know if there were technical improvements. The music the DJ played was much louder, which drove us over behind the glass and closer to the bar and made conversation more difficult. But if there were other "improvements" they were lost on me. One time when the room was pretty empty and the DJ wasn't there, I went over to the jukebox machine and punched in a few requests (rock and roll!) ; a little later, a waiter came over to apologize that the system was set to pay from the DJ's computer instead of the jukebox. We spent less time in the Club than we ever have on any prior Seabourn cruise.
  21. So if I'm in a restaurant and I ask, "is the fish fresh?" and they answer yes, it can mean the fish is fresh or the fish was frozen. You may be right, but it just seems wrong. 😀
  22. So are you saying that all fish can be frozen and yet described as "fresh"? As apposed to what... fish which sat around for days before it was frozen? 😉
  23. Well, if the dish is "Fresh Alaskan Black Cod" then they actually need to have just purchased fresh cod. Whereas you could potentially get "Alaskan Black Cod" (defrosted from the freezer) upon request. 😀
  24. We were recently aboard the Sojourn for a 10-day cruise from Barcelona to Monte Carlo, May 27-June 6. It was my goal to try to pick up on @shark b8's excellent on-board commentary, but I was so busy enjoying the trip that I didn’t have time to post much while we were onboard — so I’m posting now to offer few reflections and random observations on the cruise. This post is aimed primarily at past Seabourn cruisers who, like me, read somewhat regular posts here or on the FB forums about various things which have declined or are slipping. I’m not going to do a detailed review of the ship, nor a daily travelogue, but I’d be happy to answer any questions. This was our third post-Covid cruise with Seabourn. The other two had been in the Caribbean, the first of which had only 130 passengers aboard, and the second with a half-full ship. This cruise was a completely sold-out. We had enjoyed immensely the “private yacht” cruise shortly after cruising began, but it didn’t quite feel like normal because the ship has been so empty. This cruise felt completely normal, and with one small exception, having a full ship didn’t cause any problems. All aboard. Our cruise began as the World Cruise travelers (mostly) departed in Barcelona. Seabourn had sent an email that boarding wouldn’t begin until 1 pm, undoubtedly due to the large turnover in passengers, luggage, crew, and supplies. We arrived at the cruise terminal — after passing a Disney ship where passengers were queued outside the terminal and wrapped around the outside of the building! — shortly after 1 pm and had our luggage promptly checked in and our boarding passes issued. No one asked to see our pre-printed boarding passes (which I continue to print on the off-chance that we’re asked to see them one day!) It couldn’t have been more than two minutes until we were on the escalator up to the waiting area. A staff member gave us a small paper boarding group number; we were group 8, and waited perhaps 10 minutes until called to board the ship. We stopped in our suite for a few seconds to drop our carry-ons and went to the Colonnade, where we secured two tables on the back deck and happily settled into cruise mode after several active days in Barcelona. We were traveling with 5 other couples, which we’ve never done before on a cruise, and I’m happy to say our large group was not an issue for any aspect of the cruise. (Well, some of our fellow passengers didn’t seem too happy with us when we won at trivia twice in a row, so we stayed away after that!) The captain came on the PA system to inform us we’d be departing an hour late because supply loading was taking a long time, but that it wouldn’t affect us arriving on time at our next port. We watched from Deck 9 as the local handlers worked to load pallet after pallet of supplies aboard. As the Hotel Director remarked while we were observing, the ship was “basically empty” after the World Cruise and its last segment sailing up from South Africa. As the clock advanced, more and more Seabourn crew members, from deck staff to senior officers, appeared on the dock to help with loading. We gasped a little when one of the manual pallet jacks got stuck — there were 50 cases of Prosecco at risk! — then we cheered when someone cut the shrink wrap and the crew members formed a bucket brigade to pass each case down the line and onto the ship. About two hours after our scheduled departure, the last pallet was loaded onboard and we finally slipped away from Barcelona. Fine dining it was. That first night in the Restaurant was our one meal where things didn’t go quite well. We were seated at two tables of 6 but then no one came to take our orders for a long time. Bread never arrived. Wine glasses ran empty (oh, the horror!). But we understood the turnover day was taxing on the staff and hoped things would calm down going forward — which they did. With some of our friends new to Seabourn, we hoped they wouldn’t form any negative impressions from the off-kilter service. As the restaurant manager said to me the next day, “the Restaurant staff was tested mightily, to the breaking point, the first night.” By Day 3, one of our friends said, “yup, we’re sold on Seabourn; everything is fantastic!” After that, things settled in and it was a Seabourn cruise with all the nice touches, excellent service, and incredibly friendly crew we’ve loved in the past. Our first day, I had gone with a few friends to the Thomas Keller Grill to see what they could do to get us in. We had tried booking online months ago, but the best we could cobble together was three tables of four on different nights. Within a few minutes, the manager was able to secure us the one table which can seat 8, and an adjoining table for 4 on the same night — better than I expected. For the Restaurant, although someone told me the first night that they didn’t hold tables, by Night 2, two adjoining tables of 6 had a small “reserved” sign on them, and a reservation showed up for us in The Source every day. Perfect! We played musical chairs each night to rotate who ate with whom, and by Night 3, the manager said those tables were ours and we didn’t even have to check in at the desk, we could just sit whenever we arrived. More perfect! Oh, and we had the pleasure of having Fabian serve us nightly; he was friendly, funny, knowledgeable about the food on offer, and on top of his game even on nights when the Restaurant was nearly full and it was clear the staff was hustling. One member of our group has significant food limitations, and each night he would quietly meet with her to go over how they could tailor that night’s food to meet her needs; she was delighted. Most perfect! I won’t go through each meal, but our food was uniformly great — and nothing I’d consider to be a step back from past cruises, pre- or post-Covid. Because the food and service was so rock-solid, we didn’t venture away from the Restaurant other than our one night the the TK Grill. Towards the end of the cruise, one night was the Chef’s dinner, with limited choices of a multi-course menu. I read the menu in advance and it didn’t wow me, but I have to say this was one of the best meals we’ve ever had on a ship; an unexpectedly excellent dinner experience. Oh, I know the subject of The Restaurant being open for breakfast and lunch is of interest to some… On our cruise it was closed 9 out of 10 days, and open for breakfast and lunch only on our one sea day. It was a port-intensive Mediterranean cruise, so I understand not opening the Restaurant to serve what is likely to be only a handful of people on days when many/most people are off the ship and/or want to eat outside. But I know this bothers some cruisers who do not like the Colonnade or Patio for breakfast and lunch. About those breadsticks… As others have reported, the breadsticks are not made the same as they used to be. They’re still good. Just not as addictively great as the old recipe. Also as previously reported, the much-loved Grandma’s Cake was absent from Seabourn Square. Nonetheless, I did not have any problem satisfying my sweet tooth on the occasions I wanted a snack. Several in our group went from lunch to the Square daily because they liked the baked goods in the Square more than the Colonnade or Patio selections. Ain’t it grand to have choices! A whine about wine. The one knock on the food & beverage service would be the included wines, and particularly the red wines. There was a preponderance of South African wines served (white and red); I don’t know if they were using up what they had purchased when the ship was in South Africa a few weeks earlier or because SA wines offer them best value at the moment. We’re all wine enthusiasts, but not to the degree that we bring our own wines or even buy nightly from the reserve list. We’ve always been able to find palatable wines on the included list. Most of the included wines seemed to be bottles we could buy in the US for $9-$15. This isn’t suddenly new; things have been trending this way for years. But it’s not good for a cruise line which touts its included “fine wines.” One of the two areas I’d most encourage Seabourn’s new president to improve is the level of included wines. Everyone in our group agreed that if there was a way to have a slightly better wine package — $20 wines instead of $10 wines — we’d jump at the chance to pay a little extra for that; more practically, if Seabourn increased the cost of its cruises by $5 to $10 per person per day and put that money into better included wines, it would make a marked difference. Hark the Herald… Seabourn has experimented with doing away with the printed Herald delivered to each room every evening. I guess they got enough complaints about it that the printed Herald was back, without any need to request it. It’s in a smaller format than before, so it’s half the paper it used to be, but that seems a fair compromise to me; it had the information we needed — daily activities and restaurant/bar hours — in a format I think most cruisers prefer to The Source app. (But the USA/England/Australia News flyers each morning are gone for good.) While I'm on communication, I should mention that Internet service seemed remarkably… not bad. While links to a few websites didn't work, overall speed in checking email and reading websites was quite acceptable, and better than many prior cruises. Some of our friends used WhatsApp and FaceTime for calls and didn't experience problems. I don't know if they have improved bandwidth, or if the Mediterranean is just a sweet spot for their Internet service, but it was a non-issue during this cruise even though the ship was full. Now if only they'd get rid of the one-device rule so I didn't have to click to connect each time I switched between my phone and my laptop, things would be grand. (Yes, I know you can buy this for a hefty fee.) We don’t need no stinking’ tickets. We did several Seabourn excursions, and several with private guides. Longtime Seabourn cruisers may recall that you used to get excursion tickets in your suite and/or at their Destinations desk. That went away a few years ago as they pushed everyone to use The Source app for up-to-date bar-coded electronic tickets. Some people complained about not wanting to carry or use their phones or tablets when going ashore, and I guess Seabourn adjusted, because we were never asked to see our tickets (in the app) on any of our tours. For the tendering ports, we checked in at the theater as in the past, and once our names were checked off the list, that was all that was needed. Even in one of the ports where we were docked, we just got on our assigned bus, the guide counted that we had the correct number of people, and off we went. (It may not be that way in every port for every excursion; I’m just reporting on our experience.) That’s entertainment? My second wish for the new Seabourn president would be to reverse the decision to eliminate the trio and replace them with a DJ. In the Club at night, and on deck for one or two events, we had a DJ where the trio would have once performed. No insult to any DJs out there, but I can listen to recorded music every day; when I come aboard a Seabourn ship, we love having live music, and this change has cut that down. To be sure, the Seabourn band is still alive and kicking, accompanying the shows by the staff singers and dancers as well as some guest performers, and performing in the Club late at night. Yay! We love listening to musicians perform live music. We just wish the change to DJ’s would be reversed, and they’d go back to a trio for additional music onboard. I understand the economics — it’s one person to pay and house and feed instead of three, and DJs might even get paid a little less — but this is a cutback we felt, and regret. That said, the singers and dancers and the live band were up to their usual excellent standards. I was pleased that two of the three production shows were new to us. (Yes, jolly old Sir Tim Rice is still kicking around, in a third version of the show of his music; we missed that show because it was packing night, so I can’t comment on whether it felt truly refreshed or not.) Oh captain, my captain! The senior staff onboard was uniformly great. Perhaps this was because of a carryover from the end of the World Cruise, or perhaps because Seabourn doesn’t have many duds. The captain was Hamish Elliott, who was personable and out-and-about quite a bit. The Hotel Director was Harry Ter Horst, and he seemed to be everything everywhere all at once. If we were leaving for an excursion, he was at the gangway; at events on deck, he was always present; at the theater before or after shows, there he was. And I could say the same for our Cruise, er, Entertainment Director Jan Stearman. (Yes, Seabourn inexplicably made a change at the start of this month to eliminate the titles of Cruise Director and Assistant Cruise Director and replace them with “Entertainment Director” and “Entertainment Manager”; why they considered this necessary/desirable/good thing is beyond me.) I know she’s a longtime Seabourn veteran who goes back to the beginning of the cruise line, but this was our first time sailing with her. Her somewhat loose and carefree style suited us nicely. And I don’t want to forget Executive chef Karl Duffel, who stopped by our table a few nights and led us on a galley tour; he seemed to have his staff humming at a very high level (which reminded me, in a lower-key way, of the long-departed Chef Jess, who impressed us on our first Seabourn cruise). “No member of a crew is praised for the rugged individuality of his rowing.” The crew of Sojourn, as is true of most Seabourn cruises, works like a well-oiled machine. A happy well-oiled machine. From the deck staff getting us on and off the tenders, to the unseen laundry workers who produce the most beautiful laundry at sea, to the ever-present always-cheerful and efficient room attendants, to the smiling front-of-house servers and bartenders, anyone who is a repeat Seabourn cruiser knows it’s the crew that makes Seabourn shine. I won’t list a bunch of names here (we did on our evaluation), but we had no disappointments on this cruise. Speaking of evaluations, I’d note that there seem to no longer be mid-cruise evaluations to fill out and return. Instead, there is a Feedback tab on The Source app, and passengers are encouraged to submit feedback (good or bad) contemporaneously during a cruise rather than waiting for a fixed point in time to seek feedback. That seems like a good idea, assuming people use it. We had no complaints or suggestions for in-cruise adjustments, so we never submitted any feedback except in our post-cruise survey. * * * * * To sum up, we had an excellent cruise. Our friends who have cruised with Seabourn before and those who were newbies were all happy. A few things have changed, but our three Seabourn experiences since summer 2021 don’t have us feeling that standards are significantly declining (except the two issues noted above). And we can’t wait to be back on our next Seabourn cruise. Well, we have a Regent cruise (first in a decade plus) coming up late summer, and a Silversea expedition cruise early next summer — but the onboard offer of 35% off any expedition cruise (!!) was too good to resist, so we added a booking late-summer next year to try to Venture in Greenland and Canada.
  25. I understand why some people prefer to avoid the buffet in the Colonnade, but I find you miss out on a lot by doing so. For lunch, the meat (or fish) they are carving is often quite good, as are some of the daily pastas, and we enjoy getting a caesar salad (not TK Grille level 😉, but still made-to-order) — and none of those involve touching any serving utensils used by other guests. Even with a completely full ship (as was the case a week ago on Sojourn), the line is almost never long or slow moving. Eating outdoors, sipping wine or a cold beer just can't be beat. And it seems even just a little better on embarkation day (unless the ship is in a heavy industrial port, or it's cold/rainy) while adjusting from travel hustle to shipboard relaxing mode, 😀
×
×
  • Create New...