cruiseej

@ivyleaguegent No. It can happen when you arrive to check in and find you've been upgraded (which may or may not be an upgrade in your own opinion), but I don't think that happens often. (We experienced this last year when the ship was sailing pretty empty.) But I don't think there's an opportunity to swap cabins after you've already occupied one… unless there's a problem with your suite which can't be fixed. P.S. Please don't post the same question in multiple threads; it clutters things up and makes it hard for people to read and reply.

Yes, Lois, the bus is the only way to see Denali (the park).Unfortunately the one road is only partly open this season due to a landslide that requires significant reconstruction during the short summer season — but that keeps the bus ride roughly half the distance it might have been had you been able to select the full distance option.

Like death and taxes, ever-changing standards are a certainty!

You're right; they have not been very transparent with customers, as is all-too-often the case. What's clear is that the Venture's planned northeast passage voyage from the north Atlantic through the Russian Arctic to Nome needed to be eliminated. And that likely requires canceling some cruises before and after the passage, in order to put the ship in position for viable cruising. But what they haven't been honest about is explaining why this required shifting the Venture to take over the planned northwest passage trip from Greenland through the Canadian Arctic to Nome. Additionally, we've seen reports that passengers booked in the Antarctic 6 months later, in the winter 2023-24 season, have been shifted from the Pursuit to the Venture. Both ships were supposed to be in the Antarctic that season, so when I connect the dots, it points to the Pursuit being delayed by a year. Maybe there's some other explanation, but that's the only one which seems to fit the facts we know. (We went through a similar experience last year on a planned Silversea cruise on the Silver Wind, which they were renovating; the project fell behind, and they merged some itineraries into the sister ship, the Silver Cloud; some people were switched without missing a beat, while others like us lost out and were simply canceled.)

No mystery; it's the CDC change. The markets are always hyper-reactive to any news. One piece of good news and all stocks in the sector soar; one piece of bad news, the opposite. Everyone knows there is some degree of pent-up demand for cruise travel, so the questions right now are (a) how easy it will be to travel, and (b) what impact inflation worries will have. The CDC change makes (a) a lot brighter. It doesn't mean cruise line are out of the woods yet, but it's positive news, allowing the very depressed prices to recover a bit.

@AndieSF Thanks for the hotel info for Santiago. It's amazing to me that they haven't confirmed room blocks now that it's only 5 months out. @goletans If you book through a travel agent, the cruise line will always want all communications to go through your travel agent and not directly to the cruise line. This can get confusing with air problems, I guess, so I think their letter is just an attempt to get passengers to utilize their travel agents as the point of contact instead of flooding their air department directly.

@AndieSF Did SS confirm to you that they are using the Mandarin Oriental as their pre-cruise hotel for Antarctica trips in December? We are traveling to Santiago a day early in mid-December, and although we assumed it was the MO from prior years, SS told my travel agent earlier this summer that they could not yet say which hotel they are using. (Which is crazy, since they have to have a room block well in advance!) I was going to book the extra night on our own, because it was a bit cheaper, until I realized that if we booked it with SS, in combination with using SS air, we'd get the transfer to the hotel included and wouldn't be charged a deviation fee for the earlier date. So we booked the extra night at the hotel through SS, who still hasn't told us what hotel it is. (And MY SIlversea continues to show "Silversea Simply Hotel.") It doesn't really matter, and I'm guessing it's the MO, but I'm interested if you got that confirmed from them.

@Mr LuxuryI agree about deck 6. It so happens we just booked 642 for a cruise next spring; I was happy with the location, but I'm curious why you like 642 versus others in the same area.

I don't know if all Seabourn cruises are doing the same thing, so the best thing to do is check with Seabourn directly, rather than relying on what past passengers have experienced. Some cruises have left from Marghera, the nearby industrial shipyard across the causeway from Venice; some have left from Ravenna, two hours south of Venice. I just looked on a cruise ship port schedule website, and the Encore is listed for Marghera on October 9. For such cruises, you go to the Marittima Cruise Terminal in Venice for check-in and to drop your luggage; they then bus you (about 25 minutes) to the ship. (I'd still suggest confirming this with Seabourn.)

@purpleallyWhat specific cruise were you booked on? Did Seabourn offer alternatives for rebooking?

Hank, what I posted above was that there are no cruises listed on the Seabourn site for Venture beyond May 2023. So yes, all the Antarctic cruises this winter are listed. I don't know who your TA is, or where they are pulling their data from. But on the Seabourn website, if you set no filters and pull down the Ship menu, you'll see that Pursuit is there but grayed out -- there are no voyages you can view for the Pursuit. If you instead select Cruise Type and select Expedition, you will see 23 voyages: all on Venture, none on Pursuit, with the last one on Venture ending in May 2023. I'm sure from the posts were seeing that they are juggling basically everything past next May. They're certainly scrapping the northeast passage cruise, so it makes sense that summer 2023 schedules are being changed. Is Pursuit delayed? Then it would make sense if they moved that trip to the Venture. If Pursuit is delayed, for how long? And why would the summer reshuffling affect the winter 2023-2024 Antarctica cruises, unless Pursuit's delay is a full year?

On the Seabourn website, there are no listed cruises for the Pursuit. Website glitch or changing plans? I also see there are no cruises listed for the Venture beyond May 2023, let alone the winter 2023-2024 Antarctica season — even though the summer 2023 voyages were previously listed. I believe they are not going to do the northeast passage trip because it travels through Russia, so I guess that throws the plans for both ships into flux? But it's odd that they're making changes to the schedule into 2024. If there is a construction delay with the Pursuit, then it's a massive one, since construction began in 2020 and it was scheduled to enter service in April 2023.

Yes, thanks, for sure. Once we obtained the record locator numbers, I added our American Advantage numbers to the flights, so I just need to log into my AA account to see that the flight record is still there. So far, so good. 😉

That's the general wisdom, but I make no promises! 😉 That's scary. Note to self: check our air bookings every week from now until December to make sure they haven't been changed without notice. (Edit: With heart pounding a little, I just checked: so far, so good; no changes to our flights PHL-MIA-SCL and back.) From everything I've seen, this is a home run win for you. The Endeavour is a spectacular, new ship. I know the 33 year-old Explorer has her fans among longtime SS travelers, but I think you won the lottery with this one! When I saw SS was buying the Endeavour, I was hoping they might substitute it for the Cloud, which we're scheduled to be on for the December holiday cruise. That would have probably been too many moving pieces, so it makes sense they swapped it for the Explorer. It gives them a slightly larger ship to sell (slightly over 200 versus 144) for these popular Antarctica trips.

Glad to hear you're not losing your farewell voyage on the Explorer, Wes. The "polar focus" will be interesting to see, since bth the Cloud and Wind are scheduled to be sailing Norway/Iceland/Greenland next summer. Are there enough people to fill a third ship in the same region? Or will they do extensive (and expensive) northwest passage trips? With the other ships' cruises already on sale for quite awhile, it's a little late to add a new ship and fill it with customers in less than a year. It will be interesting to see how quickly they announce Endeavor's spring/summer 2023 voyages. And equally interesting, how much more they will charge per day versus the Wind and Cloud. 😉

After a 9 hour stop in Gibraltar today, Venture is on the move again, in the Atlantic and headed for Rotterdam at nearly 18 knots; it is scheduled to arrive there Friday morning. From there, it's a 3-day sail to Tromso.

The sense I get, from our trip planning and other traveler posts, is that the back office operation remains a mess, but the SS experience onboard is (generally) not. Hopefully you'll get to judge for yourself in a few months. 😉 I do think this is a case where having a travel agent to advocate on your behalf is worth a lot. When our original flights were assigned, I balked to my TA, and within a few days, she got SS to straighten things out and get us the flights we had wanted. It's too late to change to a TA now, but it's worth keeping in mind for the future. Are you sure of that? We're on the December 17 cruise, and we go into 15% cancellation penalty in two days (July 20) — at 150 days before the cruise. So if your cruise is two weeks before ours, are you sure you aren't already into the penalty?

That's interesting, and a little odd perhaps? Is Explorer still cruising in the south Pacific this fall? And then will it sit idle somewhere during the Antarctica season, with many of the crew shifting from Explorer to Endeavour? Will Endeavour then sail to the South Pacific doing the existing Explorer cruises in March-May. And then what? Will the Endeavour go idle as the Explorer resumes operations in Australia? Will there be a new set of itineraries for Endeavour after Antarctica? More questions yet to be answered… 😉

I'd rather say they take responsibility for your travel problem. They may or may not be able to get you to the ship, depending on the duration of the cruise and the ports involved. Hopefully they could get you to wherever the ship will be on the 2nd day, so you only miss one day of your cruise. But with air travel so tight right now, if your flight is canceled, it could take 2, 3 or 4 days to get you to your destination. If you have a 7-day cruise, and they couldn't get you there until day 4, you'd likely just cancel the trip and they would refund you.

It looks like Venture is scheduled to stop in Gibraltar tomorrow. Perhaps offloading some workers who needed another couple days onboard, or picking up some provisions or crew that didn't make it to Malta. The trip voyage Gibraltar to Tromso should take 7 days if she cruises at 18 knots.

Cloudy Bay is a roughly $30 retail wine in the US; that's above the price point for included wines on SS. (On Seabourn, we often have its poorer cousin, Oyster Bay!)

@margbem You might try posting your question over in the CC Caribbean forum as well. I suspect many Seabourn cruisers who have started or ended cruises in St. Maarten (as we did in March!) may have spent a day or two on the Dutch side, near the airport and cruise port, and not rented a car. The other forum might give your question wider visibility.

Sounds cool to me… but I'd also caution anyone thinking of booking this cruise not through Playbill Travel to be aware that a large charter group like this is likely limit your access to various public spaces on the Odyssey, as there will be private performances and events. (If Playbill Travel charters the entire ship, then there's no problem.) We were once on a cruise in the South Pacific on the Paul Gauguin and there was a partial charter with a jazz music group. Fortunately because that ship was so small, there weren't enough spaces for private performances, and we were able to attend the evening shows, which were outstanding. (Sitting on the back deck of the Paul Gauguin, sipping drinks under the stars sailing the South Pacific, while listening to the various jazz performances is a mental "happy place" my wife and I return to often!) But we've seen on a slightly larger ship like the Odyssey where the theater, Club or restaurant just get blocked for a "private event". EDIT: I just looked on the Seabourn website and don't see this cruise listed, so perhaps it's a full charter — which is better for everyone all around! Although Playbill Travel's charter prices are more than $1,000 per person more than the identical Seabourn cruise two weeks before…

As other have posted in the other thread, that means 50% loss of fare paid. Would you just give up tens of thousands of dollars without a peep?

It should be able to get from Valetta to Tromso in 12 days at a moderate 12 knot speed, 10 days at 14 knots, or 8 days at 18 knots. (Venture can supposedly do 22 knots, but I imagine that would be a rough ride unless the seas are very smooth!) I'd guess there is still a flurry of finishing work going on, and they want to get as many workers off the ship as possible, rather than having them stay on to Norway and need to be flown home.