socalguy2010

Thanks for the quick reply.

We are boarding the Encore tomorrow in Singapore for a cruise to Dubai (with a shore excursion to the Taj Mahal). Does anyone know which of the 12 docks at the cruise terminal the Encore will be docked at?

Service "above and beyond": not in response to a request, just exceptional service. My wife and I were on a Seabourn Norwegian fjords cruise in 2017. We were on a shore excursion at Gerainger Fjord. As we walked to the boat to tour the lake, we stopped at a waterfall at the entrance to the lake to take a picture. I leaned my cane (without which I am almost helpless) against the railing at the side of the bridge across the rushing stream under the bridge. My cane slipped and fell into the water. I looked at the 6' embankment leading down to the stream and thought that there was no way I could make it down the embankment to retrieve the cane, even if I could find it. So, leaning on my wife, I hobbled back to the tour bus. A few minutes later, a young woman, Sylvia, one of the Seabourn escorts for the excursion, came aboard the bus, held up my cane, and asked if it belonged to anyone on the bus. She had seen it in the water, climbed down the embank and retrieved it. I am eternally grateful to her and thanked her profusely whenever I saw her during the remainder of the cruise. A year or so later, I encountered her on another Seabourn cruise and approached her to thank her yet again. She remembered the incident and was appreciative of my thanks; in the meantime, she'd been promoted to an assistant cruise director. I'll always remember how she saved the rest of our cruise. That's service above and beyond.

wow, thanks for the link, TheCat123. I didn't know about that.

we are winos. we generally bring aboard a "wine suitcase" with 6-8 bottles of our choosing - never had a problem; a sommelier is always glad to open and pour the wine for us. In addition, we have occasionally bought wine in a local wine shop while in port and brought it aboard for drinking in the next couple of days - never a problem with that, either. (I will admit that the last time we bought wine locally and brought it aboard was 2 years ago, but from what the others are saying, it sounds like it's still not a problem.)

Yeah, that's the way I and other web sources read it - no limit on wine. We're using it for personal consumption only (over the two week cruise). (I had also misread the “over 30%” as “up to 30%”, but it looks like there is no restriction on alcohol less than 30% ABV.) That's consistent with another web site: https://lazenne.com/pages/taking-alcohol-on-a-plane-101

My DW and I generally like to bring our own wine (in a wine suitcase) when we cruise; Seabourn has no restrictions on this, as opposed to other cruise lines. We are sailing on the Ovation from Hong Kong to Singapore in January. Are there any limitations on how much wine we can bring with us when landing in Hong Kong?

(We were surprised last January when we sailed from Auckland to Sydney to find when our flight landed in Auckland that we were allowed to bring only 6 bottles into NZ. Fortunately they didn't check.)

we are in Auckland departing on the Encore from Auckland tomorrow. Where should we ask the taxi to take us to board the Encore? Is there more than one cruise terminal?

Thanks all. That's what I expected. We've also bought wine ashore during a cruise (in Bandol and in Bordeaux) and had no problem, but that was just a bottle or two. For this cruise (14 days), we'll probably check 6-7 bottles in our luggage.

We've been on numerous (6 so far) cruises on SB and are eagerly looking forward to our next cruise in another week. DW and I are very much into very good wine and champagne. We find the included wines and the NF champagne mediocre at best. We intend to bring 6 or so bottles of some of our "good stuff" on board with us (in our luggage) for our 14 day cruise and drink it during the cruise. Is there any problem with our doing that? Will the waiters/sommeliers in the restaurants willingly pour our own wines?

Generally, our experience has been that if the dock is not located directly in town, Seabourn will provide transportation to town only if it is listed in the Shore Excursions (E.g., Rome on Your Own) for that port - and they charge a pretty penny for it.

Chairsin,

Yes, we have great memories, but we only brought back three bottles of wine, which we did share with friends on board at dinner. Great times, wine, and memories.

Don

We (my wife and I and another couple) hired Alain Roux (dionysos.bordeaux@free.fr) to give us a full day tour of chateaux/wineries in Bordeaux in September of 2014. Alain met us at our cruise ship (the Seabourn Legend) at 9:30 a.m. with a mini-van, which comfortably seated all four of us plus Alain as driver and guide. Alain had organized the tour and, through a series of e-mails, gotten our preferences, level of experience and knowledge, and arranged for us to visit two chateaux in the morning, followed by lunch at a brasserie, followed by two more chateaux in the afternoon. He chose the four chateaux to represent different appellations and styles of wine. He had arranged our arrival times at each chateau and kept us on schedule with no pressure. The day was outstanding. We visited Chateau Haut-Brion (Premier Grand Cru), Chateau Castelneau, Chateau Soutard, and Chateau Beauregard. The brasserie he took us to was excellent – so good and so much that we cancelled our dinner reservations. Alain also took us for a brief driving tour of St. Emilion, which is charming. He was always willing to stop for photo opportunities, including a number of which he pointed out to us. He pointed out chateaux, churches, castles, and ruins as we drove along. He was very knowledgeable about Bordeaux in general and specific sights in particular. The four chateaux we visited each conducted its own tour; Alain accompanied us on some of these and not on others. He speaks very good English (and French with my wife who is fluent in French). He is very friendly and got along with us well. On the way back to our ship, there was a downpour, and Alain let us out at the bottom of the gangplank. He even arranged a beautiful, intense, full-arc double rainbow to cap off the day . Overall, Alain and the tour were excellent. Highly recommended, and we hope to hire him again when we return to Bordeaux.

As a small counter-example to the boorish behavior of groups who take over cruises,I was on an Amazon cruise in March on Aqua's M/V Aria. It's a ship with only 32 passengers total. There was a group of 10-12 Japanese on board with their own guide. They spoke little or no English (other than the guide) and pretty much kept to themselves. But, being such a large % of the passengers, they tended to take up a corresponding block of tables and chairs at meals, lectures, etc. However, if they saw that another passenger outside their group wanted a better seat or a table to sit with others, the Japanese voluntarily gave up their seats/tables, places in serving lines, etc. They were very quiet and caused no disturbances or disruptions. At the end of the cruise, they even made small, colorful origami swans for all the non-Japanese passengers. I think it demonstrates, along with other comments in this thread, that it's not so much the size of a group as their boorish behavior (or, in the case of this Japanese group, lack of boorish behavior) which is a problem.

We just got our prelim docs for our cruise on the Legend sailing from London on August 27. The docs say that sailing time is 3:30 p.m. and to board no later than 2:30 and no earlier than noon.

Mr Luxury,

I agree with you - I am quite willing to pay for laundry. But DW doesn't want to spend what she considers exorbitant rates for laundry. (Of course, I generate most of the dirty laundry and do most of the laundry.)

jjs217,

We'd never heard of a Code Red before our Feb 2013 South America on the Sojourn either. Turns out Code Red is what the ship declares when there is an outbreak of a gastro-intestinal virus (including the Norovirus). If enough (I think they said > 10%) of the passengers and/or crew exhibit symptoms, they declare a Code Red. I'm sure for the crew it's a big problem, but for the unaffected passengers on Seabourn, it wasn't a huge deal. Some of the measures taken were: closure of the self-serve laundromats and free ship's laundry instead; no more self service at the buffets - service by ship's staff only; staff did a thorough job of disinfecting tables and chairs in the dining rooms as soon as you got up from a meal; voluntary hand sanitization at the entrances to the ship, dining rooms, and public areas became mandatory; frequent announcements over the PA system admonishing you to frequently wash your hands.

Don

The Odyssey and Sojourn (and, I presume, the Quest as well) have 2 laundromats on deck 5. Each laundry has 2 washers and driers. On our last cruise on the Sojourn (Buenos Aires-Valparaiso in February 2013), there was a Code Red situation for most of the cruise, so they closed these self-service laundromats and gave everyone free ship's laundry; it was about the only benefit of the Code Red (although the Code Red restrictions were very minor for the passengers).