cruiseej

If there's something you want for the birthday, ask for it! Don't wait to see if they delight you and risk disappointment. That said, I'll celebrate one of the milestone birthdays next year on a cruise with a number of friends, and I'm not sure what I'd expect or want them to do to make it more special than a day aboard a great ship surrounded by friends. 🙂 Cake in the room? We've had that before, and we're always so full from our meals that we can barely touch it. A bottle of wine? Unless it's something truly special, I get all the wine and alcoholic beverages I can consume every day, so more is not necessarily special. I'll have to think what there is I can ask them to do! 😉

@BuckGood Just to clarify: you can send out items to the laundry "a la carte"; you don't have to fill the $50 bag. The bag generally is cheaper than a la carte if you have small/lightweight items (underwear, socks) and things you can roll/fold tightly (t-shirts). For dress shirts, pants, heavier dresses, etc. you might prefer to do them a la carte rather than trying to squish them into the bag.

I think all the luxury lines are experiencing similar problems, from difficulties in hiring trained and exceptional staff to soaring inflationary prices for everything from fuel to caviar to billions in debt from the Covid shutdown. I follow the Seabourn and SS boards here and on FB, and the comments are very similar: while some say "good as ever" others note declines and snips in many places. We had two great SB cruises last year when guest count was way down; we're looking forward to our next SS cruise in December and hoping we aren't constantly conscious of cutbacks. Both SB and SS started as independent luxury lines which now are part of large cruise conglomerates. Will we need to look to some of the new start-ups to recapture past glory? Is there an affordable way to provide the luxury experience people seek from 20 or 30 years ago? (Just think about how the experience for flying has diminished over the decades!) Will loyalty perks keep longtime customers loyal to their primary cruise line? I think it will take a few more years post-pandemic to get a feel for how things will shake out.

Will do; thanks. (Of course, this depends if we're actually at the MO, which we still don't know!)

@broker1217 Thanks for the thoughts. My MacBook Air weighs only slightly more than a tablet. I store all my pics on the laptop, and prefer it to a tablet anyway, so for the extra pound or so, the laptop stays. 😉 I guess we'll need to abandon our normal carry on and use backpacks. I hate to take two backpacks when SS will give us two small ones when we get to the ship! I wonder if they allow a CPAP machine as an additional carry on? If that has to count as my wife's sole carry on, we're really in trouble with capacity! I''ll have to weigh my camera bag; with all I cram in there, it's probably at capacity for a 17-pound carry on. That would leave us with nothing for a day bag. I pretty much live in jeans, but I hear you... I'll probably wear a pair on the plane and maybe pack one. (We have a lot of sea days with going to South Georgia Islands.) No sweatshirts, but a fleece is my go-to- for instance warmth, and it's both light and doesn't can be scrunched in less space than a sweater. But we'll certainly need to take fewer changes of clothes than we're used to on cruises to meet the weight limits and include our cold weather gear (boots, gloves, hat). Fortunately base layers and hiking pants are light. But my size 13 shoes are not. 😉

Thanks for that information. Our cruise is about two weeks behind yours, so maybe they'll let us know one of these days. 😉 You have a night in Santiago at the end of your cruise? Did you add this on? Ours ends with the charter flight to Santiago in the morning, and our flight home late at night; unknown what they will do with us for the 8-9 hours in between! But there's no overnight. Is this is you're booking your room independently? We're there for two nights prior to the cruise through SS Air, so I'm guessing we'll get a standard room. I doubt there's a way to pay an additional fee to get a Club room, right? What does that get you? Are you staying overnight at the MO after your cruise? We're flying home that night, and I have no info about what they will do with us between the charter flight and getting us back to the airport at night for our flight home.

Thanks for the recommendations. (Keep 'em coming.) @highplanesdrifters I think we'll be at the MO, but of course SS is not sharing info on the hotel until close to the time of departure, so it's hard to plan. Since you'll be there a month before us, I'd appreciate any tips you have after your visit!

Well, this is not the news I was hoping for. I wonder why Silversea made it a point to highlight new, increased luggage limits if it was a lie? But thanks for the info, @Tex1, @sherylc , @safarigal and @Dover Duo. I'm not concerned with the look, but I just can't imagine wearing these warm high-rise boots for 15-16 hours of travel from home to hotel! Now an interesting thought might be packing the boots when we travel Santiago (when we have a 70 pound weight limit) but wearing them for the charter flight to Puerto Williams. No first class lounge involved here, but more like 6 hours from hotel to ship. I might try to wear mine around the house one day to see if I can tolerate them for many hours at a time in warm conditions! But I already have a carry-on bag and a camera bag, and my wife has a CPAP machine to carry on. I doubt they'd allow another carry on each? But wearing the parka just to go from the terminal to the plane shouldn't be too much of a problem. Even the 17-pound carry-on is problematic; our normal carry-on bag weighs about 8 pounds, and we usually load it with electronics (laptop, Kindles, cords and chargers) and a change of clothes — way more than 17 pounds. I hope my camera bag would count as a "backpack" and not a carry-on. Seems like we're going to have to take a bit less clothing than I'd prefer for a cold-weather cruise. I know we can make do with less, but we'd like to have more options than it seems we'll be able to fit.

To close the loop on one of the topics earlier in this thread, we were just ticketed for our American flights today, October 20, for flights on December 15 — 56 days before departure, 58 before sailing. That's consistent with what @caradara reported. Now that we finally have confirmed flights, I can focus on what to do in our two days in Santiago. Any recommendations for things to see, tours to take, or restaurants to dine in would be appreciated. ---- Chocolate cake: we did a hike a few years ago at Lake Louise in Banff National Park. The hike we picked, to the tea house/chalet was a bit longer and steeper than what we normally do. My wife got tired, but she was determined to make it. The payoff for reaching the tea house was a very basic lunch (all the supplies are flown in only once a year) capped with their high-altitude chocolate cake. Each time she wondered whether she could make it to the top, I called out "chocolate cake!" It kept her going. 😉 We made it, and the cake was quite good (although hardly the best in the world). Ever since, we have faced any challenge on a journey with a cry of "chocolate cake!" as encouragement to make it to the end.

Has anyone been able to find out what the luggage limits are for this winter's trips to Antarctica (specifically those departing from Puerto Williams)? When Silversea announced the change to home porting in Puerto Williams this year, one of the bullet points was "An exclusive charter flight to Puerto Williams: an upgraded, personalized flight experience, including extra legroom, greater luggage allowance…". Since we are flying to and from Santiago in business class, we have the option to take a third suitcase, or stick with two suitcases and load them up to 70 pounds. We're taking our own boots, which add weight and bulk, a CPAP machine, a camera bag, and it just adds up. If you feel we don't need to pack so much for a 21-day trip, please don't lecture me on that; I've read many posts about what to take and not to take, so that's not what I'm asking. 😉 I just want to know what the weight limit is for pieces of luggage and/or the limit on the number of pieces of luggage, under Silversea's promoted "greater luggage allowance" for the charter flights to/from Puerto Williams. Has anyone been able to find this information? Thanks!

Well, let's keep this in perspective. Many hotels don't even load booking inventory two or three years in advance, so you often can't book your own hotel that far in advance. Also, if the cruise line is including a hotel, as is the case in the question above about a Grand Voyage, it often isn't necessary to know the hotel years in advance. If you're particular about a hotel you want to stay at, and the convenience of having the cruise line provide a hotel and transfer is less important to you than the hotel you'll be staying at, then by all means book your own when the time is appropriate. But if it's just a matter of curiosity which hotel they'll have you in, then in this era of jumbled travel planning, it may just be that more patience is necessary. 😉 It could be something simple, like the hotel they're using in 2025 has a convention, wedding, or other event booked for the specific date needed in 2024. Or perhaps the hotel has some scheduled maintenance in that time and doesn't have a full room block available.

But the question is why they didn't have the hotel locked in far before that. If they were truly still shopping for hotels a week prior to arrival because they were hoping to find vacancies and get a good deal, that seems an illogical way for a luxury travel company to be operating. Two years from now? Many of us are traveling within the next two months and don't know what hotel Silversea is putting us at! 😉

@caradara Thanks! So that's 57 days before departure. We're at 60 days out before our cruise, so hopefully we'll see ticket numbers issued within the next week. @FlyerTalker Of course, schedule changes are always possible. But as noted in that American Airlines video you previously linked to, the significant changes occur when the "placeholder" schedule gets locked into a "published" schedule about 90 days out. Our schedule changes took place at that point; when we get ticketed now, less than 60 days out, schedule changes are still possible but much less likely. Another thing everyone should note: don't rely on what you see in My Silversea to know if you have any schedule changes! My Silversea is still showing the original flight numbers and times for our four flights on American; I only found everything had changed when I logged into my American account today and saw the current schedule. I have no idea when (or if) My Silversea will catch up to the revised flight information.

Well, it's good to know SS actually has a hotel for Santiago travelers; I've been wondering if "Simply" might be a tent in a city park. 😉 Our trip is mid-December, like @alithecat, and we're still showing "Simply" on MySS. For anyone traveling in the next month or so, and who has air booked through Silversea, can you share if/when your air booking was actually ticketed? Although we've had our flights booked for many months, as @FlyerTalker reminds us, things aren't certain until the cruise line actually tickets the flights. We're now at 60 days out, and we're not yet ticketed. I'm just wondering how far out SS is ticketing flights these days. Although American recently changed all the flight times with their updated schedule for December and January, our flights till mercifully exist, but I won't feel relaxed until I see they flights have been ticketed.

Kangerlussuaq is not a typical commercial airport., and your cruise certainly includes a flight back to Reykjavik. I'd also note for anyone looking at cruises beyond 2023 that the Kangerlussuaq airport is scheduled to close in 2024, as part of its runway is sinking into the melting permafrost. The airport in Nuuk (Greenland's capital city) is being expanded to be able to handle large planes and international traffic. I don't believe the exact date of the switchover has been announced yet, other than "mid 2024".

There is a rental fee ($90) and a security deposit ($100) for boots; the latter is returned after the cruise, but the rental fee is not. Or should not be; if you got all your money back, consider yourself lucky for an administrative error in your favor. 😉

I do exactly the same as @Mauzac: I bring my insulated water bottle because I like my water cold. I refill it from the refrigerated bottle in our room refrigerator, along with some ice. Mine is from Hydro Flask. It's a little heavier, because it's metal instead of plastic, but easier to carry and definitely easier to drink from.

But you can request them anytime; simply talk to the maitre d' a day in advance. I've ordered the Grand Marnier ones, but for us, it's a chocolate soufflé request on every cruise.

@SLSD So sorry to hear you were felled by Covid! We can all take common sense precautions, or even extreme precautions, and it's still a crapshoot who will get it and who will escape untouched. We're certainly hoping our third post-coved cruise will continue our lucky streak.

We're on the same cruise as you — and we will join you in staging a mutiny if there's no lobster aboard by then! 😉 Of course, that would provide futile, as I don't think there would be much opportunity to resupply after leaving Chile headed for South Georgia and Antarctica! Too bad the Cloud is crossing the southern Atlantic en route to the Antarctica season; if she was doing a north-Atlantic crossing, she could stop in Bar Harbor and fill up on the best lobsters! @wren2 Apologies for the lobster digression. Please let us know how things are aboard the Cloud, and how your trip progresses (as time allows). 🙂

We love the Seabourn goat cheese soufflé. It occurs to me now (but never while onboard!) to ask if anyone has ever gotten the recipe from Seabourn?

😂😂😂

Since it's still 10 months from the scheduled first cruise, I think it's unlikely for there to be news at this point (unless things fall drastically behind). On the plus side is that it's being built at one of the most technically advanced shipyards in the world, which turns out ships much, much larger than Nova in not much more time than the schedule allotted for Nova; on the flip side, it's a significantly new design, which has greater potential to run into some delays. Unfortunately, unless you have personal contact inside to top ranks of SS or Meyer Werft, you probably can't find out whether they are on schedule or ahead or behind. Seeing the various delays in ship completion over the past year due to Covid & supply chain issues, I think you have to figure there's some reasonable possibility the first cruise won't sail as scheduled, and factor that into your planning. Can you be flexible? Would you still travel to Europe to visit with family if the cruise is canceled? If you feel you are absolutely dependent on this cruise taking place, and can't come up with a viable Plan B, I wouldn't book it because there's no way to eliminate the uncertainty. Yes, but that's in the past. In the current environment, things have been more unsettled. Seabourn pushed back the inaugural sailing on its newest ship, the Venture, four separate times, and its sister ship, Pursuit, was quietly dropped from Seabourn's schedule for a while, until it quietly reappeared (no announcement) with its first sailing six months later than originally planned. Virgin, Ritz-Carlton and other brands have had similar delays in the the debuts of new ships this year. Whether schedules can catch up by next summer, or will continue to slip is only known to those in the shipbuilding industry. Since the Dawn schedule was only released last December, it's certainly possible the delays had already been factored in, and the July 15 cruise will take place as scheduled.

Sorry, someone went out and put a book and magazine on two of the sedan chairs at 6 am to hold them for the day, so even though we haven't seen anyone in them all morning, there's no chair available for Mr McGillicuddy; maybe check back later this afternoon. 🤣

@ColdCruise Don't go investing in new photo gear yet; the bear pic looks like it was from an image projected on a screen. 😉