Silver Spectre

Today we are in Kagoshima. Visited the Sakurajima volcano and this afternoon we were treated to a view of it without clouds.

Captains welcome and rain day, St George’s and pub lunch

An interesting day in Shimizu yesterday, with our tour completely rescheduled. We visited a Buddhist temple, followed by a shrine. We lastly went to a volcanic beach for an iconic photo stop to see the elusive Mt Fuji, which was covered with clouds and invisible. At Team Trivia we came joint first.

Actually SS’s only Norman of note, Rafleson.

6 hours ago, highplanesdrifters said:

Norman the sommelier?  If so, he did an amazing job on Cloud last month for us!

🤣🤣🤣

A parting gift from Tokyo

Finally onboard at 1:30. A quick lunch at La Terrazza and a big hello from Gilbert, Jason and the crew. Bumped into Norman who has just joined. Stopped by Reception to say hello to Begonia and Flavio. It’s great to be back home!

Room with a view

1 hour ago, mysty said:

 

We actually got lucky and we were docked at around 7:00 pm.  I made it through all 8 courses! 😁  The food was delicious!  Very substantial helping of waygu!  😋  Taking a sea day today!

 

Folks embarking today.   No idea of how many.

18 from the Yoko Westin

Made it to Tokyo, in the Westin Yokohama by 1am

About to join our Qatar flight to Doha, Q suites here we come 

About to start a long journey to Tokyo to meet the Shadow WC, thankfully not flying Emirates this time.

We are staying in a D2D SS hotel in Tokyo next weekend, originally scheduled and priced as the Conrad Hilton, it’s now the somewhat cheaper Yokohama Westin. As usual with SS these days, the hotel bookers decided to move everyone there and left the poor London consultants with no option than to apologise.

Well RCL only parachuted someone with bean cutting experience into SS some 3 or 4 weeks ago. Since she has left with immediate effect it sounds like she either got the push or fell out with him or the board pretty fast. IMHO this is just another nail in the coffin for the Silversea that many of us have loved for years and which is dying slowly from a thousand cuts.

At the moment SS is charging for a 6* product and struggling to provide much over 4.5*s. Understaffed by new, undertrained or uninterested crew, huge supply issues and a complete lack of interest or understanding from shoreside. And a tin ear from senior management.

If the cruise line aborts the cruise then they should be responsible for getting people home. SS have failed their guests who didn’t book D2D.

4 minutes ago, Roborab said:

Just been notified by TA, this cruise has been cancelled. Anyone else had this letter from Silversea? Noticed that all Silver Spirit sailings into 2025/26 have gone into "waitlist" status.

 

Seriously annoyed about this!

Maybe it’s going to be sold. After our recent experience onboard it might be sensible.

Quite frankly this along with the new fare structure accelerates the race down to the mass market lines.

4 hours ago, ak1004 said:

So this is what I read:

 

 

For people who sailed on the Nova, is this enforced? I know that even with the current dress code, people would still have dinner in the Grill without a jacket, but if I want to go to one of the lounges or see an evening show, will they turn me down?

Not on the Spirit recently!

1 hour ago, southerngoose said:

How can they just dump you at another port and say "figure it out"?   I mean, if they told me to get off in Paris instead of London, I could figure that out.   But leaving you in Mahe instead of Dubai?   Depending on when the planned departure from Dubai, maybe you could fly Mahe to Dubai.   But hey...why doesn't Silversea fly you Mahe to Dubai since they dumped you in Mahe.   Don't they have an obligation to get you to the place where they promised to get you?   I mean, the airlines will make an effort to get you to your ticketed destination.   I don't know how a cruise line doesn't have an obligation to get you to the destination.   Plus, there's the loss of the cruise that you paid for... But if they could at least get you to where you need to be on the proper day without extra cost, that would be nice.

That only works if you booked air with them. If you only booked the cruise then they apparently don’t care or feel they are under any obligations other than to pay for a small rowing boat or maybe an economy flight that doesn’t exist.

I just saw this and was truly appalled. Apparently the HD is new on the ship and doesn’t appear to have had any training. If this was done off her own back, then hopefully she will be gone soon. If it was authorised by corporate then SS needs to change all their marking asap and ‘own’ this.

Should just be a back pack

It would seem there is still a deafening silence from senior management at SS. All this does is mirrors the appalling handling of the early Spirit GV ending. It looks like a pattern is appearing.

Good to see that this is starting to get some press coverage, even if it doesn’t really cover the guests ire