Alaska SilverSea Nova Cruise

[Lookingtocruise42]

I know that a lot of folks have had various questions like mine, so I’d like to answer a few:

 

 

Demographics - the demographics on the Alaska Silversea cruises (or atleast the one I was on) average a good 20 yr younger then the other Silversea cruise we hopped on the tail end of, averaged 65-80 for guests; whereas the Alaska trip is quite a bit younger. (Not young by any means, closer to prob about 45 average)

 

Dress Code - It was not strictly followed at all. The only place to strictly follow it was La Dane; and even that was a bit open to interpretation.

 

Excursions - Book third party. A good 30% cheaper for the same activities. If not more so (private whale watching boat is 4K through Silversea and $2,500 direct for the same exact yacht for example). Booking through Silversea also results in tours being moved all over the place and an attitude of “tough *****” when they decide to move a tour the wrong direction. (We found this out less then 24 hours before our tour was to begin)

food - Breakfast is absolutely terrible. Lunch is passable. Dinners are decent overall. I’ll go into more details when I make a longer post trip post.

Daily planners are attached:

Day 01 - 9 May Vancouver - Embark.pdfDay 02 - 10 May Day at Sea.pdfDay 03- 11 May Ketchikan.pdfDay 04- 12 May Juneau.pdfDay 05- 13 May Skagway.pdfDay 06- 14 May Sitka.pdfDay 07 - 15 May Hubbard Glacier.pdf

Edited May 15 by Lookingtocruise42

[GrumpySushiBear]

Thanks for posting all those chronicles! Following this thread for your full review.

[agape01]

I am wondering whether by any chance did you manage to take some pics of the room service menu? 

I am just curious what is on it.

Thanks

[readyalready]

Thanks for posting your impressions!

 

What did you think of the Otium Suite?

[drron29]

If you had breakfast in La Terraza I fully agree.

On the Muse class ships we enjoy a light breakfast and coffee in the Arts Cafe.

If we feel like something more substantial then we have it in Atlantide. It might not be the best breakfast around but definitely terrible.

[agape01]

Just now, drron29 said:

If you had breakfast in La Terraza I fully agree.

On the Muse class ships we enjoy a light breakfast and coffee in the Arts Cafe.

If we feel like something more substantial then we have it in Atlantide. It might not be the best breakfast around but definitely terrible.

Oh....

Please do share so that those of us that are going to be on the Nova can get a good heads up.

[drron29]

1 hour ago, drron29 said:

If you had breakfast in La Terraza I fully agree.

On the Muse class ships we enjoy a light breakfast and coffee in the Arts Cafe.

If we feel like something more substantial then we have it in Atlantide. It might not be the best breakfast around but definitely terrible.

Sorry didn't notice that I left out an important word whilst the edit function still worked.

So brekkie in Atlantide is definitely NOT terrible.

And this refers to the Muse class ships not Nova.

[Lois R]

6 hours ago, drron29 said:

Sorry didn't notice that I left out an important word whilst the edit function still worked.

So brekkie in Atlantide is definitely NOT terrible.

And this refers to the Muse class ships not Nova.

I figured you had left out that word. I love a breakfast in the Arts Cafe🙂...smoked salmon and cream cheese pannini.....I have always found it delicious. Some yogurt and either a cup of tea or coffee......nothing terrible about them at all. Actually, just the opposite. I love them.

[drron29]

Most days I also had the smoked salmon and cream cheeses pannini. I also loved it.

[Lookingtocruise42]

10 hours ago, agape01 said:

I am wondering whether by any chance did you manage to take some pics of the room service menu? 

I am just curious what is on it.

Thanks

I'll post pictures of all menus, but here is a screenshot from room service and otium menu (which is just a fancy name for second room service menu...as it was available in the veranda suite we started in before moving to otium suite)

 

 

We have really liked the layout of the Otium suite and used the hot tub on a daily basis. Unfortunately, all the various other challenges we have had will make us likely never use Silversea again. I'll go into those in depth in a bit, just have not had time to write any of it up.

 

[agape01]

8 minutes ago, Lookingtocruise42 said:

I'll post pictures of all menus, but here is a screenshot from room service and otium menu (which is just a fancy name for second room service menu...as it was available in the veranda suite we started in before moving to otium suite)

 

 

We have really liked the layout of the Otium suite and used the hot tub on a daily basis. Unfortunately, all the various other challenges we have had will make us likely never use Silversea again. I'll go into those in depth in a bit, just have not had time to write any of it up.

 

WOW!!!

Thanks so much.

[BBGrace273]

6 hours ago, Lookingtocruise42 said:

Unfortunately, all the various other challenges we have had will make us likely never use Silversea again. I'll go into those in depth in a bit, just have not had time to write any of it up.

 

 

 

 

 

Sorry to hear this. I'm interested to hear what went wrong for you too.

Quick question. I read through the first Daily Chronicle that you posted, and I didn't see anything about the pool. Is it open at all? Is the hot tub? (I am SERIOUSLY jealous of your Otium Suite personal hot tub!) Thanks for posting all this great info for the rest of us.

[Lookingtocruise42]

2 hours ago, BBGrace273 said:

Sorry to hear this. I'm interested to hear what went wrong for you too.

Quick question. I read through the first Daily Chronicle that you posted, and I didn't see anything about the pool. Is it open at all? Is the hot tub? (I am SERIOUSLY jealous of your Otium Suite personal hot tub!) Thanks for posting all this great info for the rest of us.

Yes, the pool and hot tubs have been wide open. We saw some people in the pool today right after the Hubbard Glacier (which we had very clear skies for).

 

Here is a tour of the room: 

The review will be coming, I'm working up categorizing things now.

 

 

[BBGrace273]

Thanks, @Lookingtocruise42, for letting me know about the pool! I love to swim, even if it's brisk.

[GrumpySushiBear]

Tangent: your youtube name "IgnorantCumquat" is excellent 😆

[Port Power]

5 hours ago, Lookingtocruise42 said:

Yes, the pool and hot tubs have been wide open. We saw some people in the pool today right after the Hubbard Glacier (which we had very clear skies for).

 

Here is a tour of the room: 

The review will be coming, I'm working up categorizing things now.

 

 

 

I might not ever leave the suite! 

[Lookingtocruise42]

Here are all the menus we took photos of:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-GWfZmQfPRCnPXuq5ARCQwiAZ97tGYY7
It’s possible we missed some, also of note several changed part way through the cruise. (The upload jumbled the order, but they are in numerical order if you sort them)

 

I’ll put the review up once I hear back from Silversea on it, I sent it over to their guest relations email address.

Edited May 18 by Lookingtocruise42

[pasca]

Hi,

We're on this cruise in August.  Sad to hear you found it unsatisfactory in many ways. I'm really hoping you will post a longer review with details, as it will help us and others with what to do and what to avoid.  Thanks!

[Lookingtocruise42]

I’m waiting to hear back from them before I post it… not sure how long it takes them to get back? I sent the email in 2 weeks ago with absolute radio silence since.

[dawntrdr]

2 hours ago, Lookingtocruise42 said:

I’m waiting to hear back from them before I post it… not sure how long it takes them to get back? I sent the email in 2 weeks ago with absolute radio silence since.

I've never heard of someone sending a review to the cruise line before posting it.  Will your decision to post it depend on how they respond?

[alainciao]

We were on this cruise and the return from Seward to Vancouver.  I thought the breakfast in La Terazza was fine.  Lots of choice but I normally ate scrambled eggs plus bacon and sausage with hash brown patty or croissant.  There were many other choices which I did not try.  The Arts Cafe on Nova is very crowded in the morning and they have to wait on each customer individually.  Overall this was a nice cruise with great service and generally good food.  Nova’s outside spaces are great but in Alaska you may not be able to use much.

[Lookingtocruise42]

Atmosphere of boat:

- Nice, very reserved yet modern. Furniture is quite firm throughout the boat. Very few "plush" spaces to sit.

 

 

Room:

- The first room we were in, a Veranda, was large for a base cruise ship room; we just found we don’t personally like those.

 

- The second room we were in, an Otium suite, was a beautiful room. Well furnished and decorated. In great condition with only two mechanical issues the whole time we were there: 1. Controls in MyCruise and tablet didn't work for the curtains in the room, 2. drying line in shower was stuck.

 

Wine:

-If I'm being blunt: The free wine on board was bizarre. It seems to be whatever $20-30 bottles of wines they happen to load on board. There is no list, and only one of the Sommeliers (Precious in S.A.L.T) seemed to know anything about them. That said, most of the time (aside from La Dame, strangely, where he completely ignored our preferences) they gave us no problem saying "We would prefer a Bordeaux vs this Petit Syrah" or similar)

 

 

Butler Service:

- To put it bluntly: Our first Butler was not particularly useful. He offered us to setup a steam shower and kept forgetting. He then offered a movie night, and left two popcorn buckets covered with plastic (and did nothing else). It would also take him 12+ hours to get an answer to anything we requested.

- Our second butler, Nes: She was fantastic and did whatever she could to improve our stay. She fought for us when we had issues, although it was clear she was not given the power necessary to fix those issues all of the time.

 

 

Entertainment:

- Dr Jay Wolff, the guest lecturer, was absolutely superb. Incredibly interesting, great cadence for his presentation, and obviously was passionate about what he presented. We wish there were more than just three presentations.

 

 

Unfortunately, the above is mostly where the good ends:

 

 

Technical challenges:

- Multiple times throughout the stay, the tv would switch into "Interactive tv system basic mode". This prevented us utilizing anything on the TV.

- The syncing on videos on the TV was atrocious. We tried to watch 3 different movies and couldn't watch any of them as there was anywhere from 1-4second audio delays between the audio and the video.

- The Mycruise website is just painful. I don't understand why it only works on the intranet (onboard WiFi only) and not internet. Royal Caribbean group has apps(that don’t require intranet), so why not Silversea which is under their umbrella?

--The Mycruise website went down about 4 times during the cruise to where we could not use it for hours at a time.

- The Phone lines routinely did not work to reach butler staff. This was such a large issue that the butlers from both rooms notified us that it was a routine problem that kept occurring.

- Hot tub on our balcony could not hold its temperature on a consistent basis; some days it was fine and others it lost 15 degrees in just a few hours. We ultimately ended up having to have the Butler have housekeeping cover it while we were out of the room. That then became an annoyance, and we started having to lift the cover and take it off on our own a few times per day.

 

 

Reception:

- In the first room we were in, we realized pretty quickly we didn't like the size. We tried reaching out to reception 4 seperate times, each time being told we would hear back on buying an upgrade. Eventually, we had to ask for a manager to get an answer (all upgraded rooms were booked for those 3 days, so we had no options, but just being told that one of the 4 times we called would have been nice) 

- Reception accidentally handed us back our passports at check-in, when they actually needed them for Vancouver. They called us up, and were quite rude. Demanding I come down immediately one evening to give it to them. I eventually told them that we were busy and would do it when we could, they begrudgingly sent over an employee to collect them from us. The employee was quite rude when he came to the door.

 

Shore excursions:

- Shore excursions changed prices from when I booked and I had a hell of a time getting the team to honor the original pricing.

- The shore excursion assistant manager refused to work with my Butler and made her talk to a random employee when we had an issue with scheduling and pricing.

- They moved my excursions on Sitka such that I was double booked. They did not notify us about this, either. This meant we couldn’t do the free one and could only do the paid. Their response? It was first to blame me for double booking. Then when I pointed out the original times I booked it they basically said “tough *****, we can move things as we see fit”.

— The more frustrating part about this was there was another group in the first departure for our moved excursion that had reached out to them that wanted to swap to our excursion. If they simply connected the dots they could have made two groups happy.

— I was told that the assistant manager would talk to me about recompense on shore by himself. However, he never talked to me on shore. When I brought this up to Anita, the primary manager, she blamed me for it. While trying to resolve the issues here, all of her logic was quite circular and had a “blame the passenger” attitude. In all honesty, this guaranteed I would never book paid excursions through them again. All of my excursions I booked on my own honored their original times, and were cheaper.

— The “resolution” they finally offered for the trouble? They would honor my original pricing I had proof of…

 

- The on shore excursion staff might be some of the rudest, most combative and belligerent service industry staff I have dealt with in a long time. It was clear they expect guest to just take whatever they say and don’t care about follow through at all. 

 

 

Spa:

- Honestly; this was the worst spa I have been to in years.

- They gave me the wrong treatment for one of my treatments(I requested a regular massage and they opted to give me the $399 Otium treatment for a second time); when I brought attention to that a second time, it turns out the spa manager had never been informed. She told me she could do nothing to resolve it.

- There was no preparation . They literally take you into your treatment room to change. There are also no couples rooms. We were not shown a single relaxation area, or anything in the three times we went (we had several more originally scheduled and cancelled then after getting frustrated with them giving us the wrong treatment one time) (Harr Travel’s videos that were filmed on the same cruise we were on show a relaxation room they apparently just never used)

- While they had some nice snacks in the waiting area, in my last treatment the entire area was empty for some reason. When I asked about it the masseuse just shrugged.

- The skills of the masseuses both my husband and I had were below what we have gotten at any resort we have been to in years. They couldn’t control their pressure evenly, and focused on really weird areas that made no sense. Further, they shorted us 20 minutes on the second treatment.

 

Food:

- Portions often made no sense. We would be given about a teaspoon of Hummus one day, and half a cup of it another.

- When we ordered the grilled chicken sandwich at the grill, it took a good 5 minutes for the waiter to understand it. We had to ultimately order a “Silversea burger made with chicken” because chicken was an option under hamburger. (The actual piece of chicken was very overcooked and inedible)

 

- We should point out that Kaisiki was quite tasty.

- The Bartenders in SALT offer a “Master Class”. Great, right? The problem is this is not on the schedule. Why do I need to know the secret handshake to ask the Bartenders at S.A.L.T. to join it? Why did I have to keep checking with them for new classes? They wouldn’t even let my butler register me, and demanded I do it on my own. When I got there? They only had space for 1 of the 2 of us…

- Room Service breakfast was basically unusable. Two of the nights they never picked up the paper, so we did not get breakfast. The first morning it came, everything was ice cold. On top of that, while my husbands entree was correct, mine was wrong. On the final morning when we got it, the eggs were in such poor shape that our butler refused to serve them and had a new batch created for us…

- The matrie’d at La Dame was incredibly rude to us. Our butler let us know that they told her it was fine for us to show up for our 7:30 at 7. When we showed up, he argued with us that we were early and that they “may not service us for some time”. The kicker? There were only 6 tables sat that night. The total time for dunner was over 3 hours at La Dame. 

- Difficulty ordering the wine pairing at La Dame, it took four servers to understand that my husband was ordering a $90 pairing, this included literally pointing at the pairing line on the menu.

 

- The Sommelier argued with me over my (non paid) wine pairing at La Dame. I let him know I preferred my wines to be sweeter(less dry), and he totally ignored this feedback and just gave me the standard pairing. He also couldn’t explain the up charge wines in my husbands pairing. This really isn’t excusable for the charge at the restaurant. Enchante on the Disney Wish, at the same upgrade price point, ran circles around La Dame. (We did a trip on the Disney Wish in the Wish Tower and had a much better experience overall)

- It took us 5 days (of our 7 day trip) to get the Chefs table menu. Our butler kept providing updates to us on her continual asking for it, the food service team was just not responsive.

- It was not unusual for us to need to call 4-5+ times for room service to pick up. Usually when this happened, we also had trouble reaching our Butler.

- There was not a single time we walked through the hallways on our floor without food carts stacked with dirty plates sitting in the pathways. I get it that it may happen occasionally, but this was every single time, and they were just parked there without any employees. Sometimes 4 or 5 of them. It made walking through the halls feel like we were at a Holiday Inn.

 

- We were turned away for dress code enforcement at Salt. The outfit we wore on our second visit to salt was the same exact one we wore the first time without issue. The tops were one of these in each white and grey: 

https://taelor.style/products/ted-baker-grey-basket-weave-lentic-crewneck-sweater-16258?variant=45615597420757

It’s fine if they are consistently enforcing dress code (even though I don’t subscribe to the idea that a polo is any nicer of a shirt then these). My problem is not being turned away, it is that they were inconsistent with it between two nights, and proceeded to let other (older) guys in with the same style sweaters (no collar) and even hoodies after they rejected us. It felt arbitrary and felt like we were singled out for either our youth  or being a same sex couple since they let others in with sweaters. It was such a bizarre situation coming from the San Francisco area, where neither of those matter at all.

- I need to point out that S.A.L.T bar had great bartenders. They loved making up random drinks and doing various liqueur tastings with us. Definite shout out to Andre
- On the last day they cancelled our Silver Note reservation that we had confirmed. When I tried to call about it, we spent 10 minutes calling silver note and our butler with zero response. I ended up having to call reception to reach them. Once we could reach our butler, she was able to fix it, but this never should have happened.

- We explained to our butler that our plan for the evening was to grab a steak at the grill at 7 since we really enjoyed that then go for tapas at Silver Note. However when we arrived at the Grill the manager there argued with us that it was not possible to have two reservations in one night. Despite the grill being completely empty (we were the first ones there) and still only being 1/4 full by the time we finished he insisted they were full and wouldn’t be able to accommodate us. He eventually gave in but it left us feeling very unwelcomed. This is not the kind of experience that should ever happen at any “luxury” facility.

 

- On more than one occasion, room service dropped off our platters, left covered, with the tablecloth folded on the trays… *****? (Whenever Nes, our butler brought it, she would set the food out quite nicely

- Example pictures of poor food quality: The fish clearly came from a sous vide bag, which is fine (we use sous vide at home), but should never LOOK like it came from a bag (it was also very very overcooked):

 

 

Housekeeping:

 

- The materials on the balcony were not folded or cleaned a single time. The blue towels stayed rumpled on our chairs the whole week

- The blanket we took outside there stayed a mess all week

- All of our clothes were jumbled together into messy piles (not even folded) when we moved rooms. This included mixing both mine and my husbands clothes up. We ended up spending several hours reorganizing as a result.

 

 

 

The train ride from Sward to Anchorage was not what we expected. The seating was configured as 4 people to a tiny booth for 4 hours. We were sitting across the table from a couple who argued with each other the entire time. It was incredibly awkward and uncomfortable. You sell this as a luxury experience but it felt like we were on public transit. We were expecting something similar to Napa Valleys “Wine Train Vista Dome” where it is 2 to a booth with a half sized table and a nice feeling of seclusion.

[Observer]

9 hours ago, alainciao said:

  The Arts Cafe on Nova is very crowded in the morning and they have to wait on each customer individually.  

 

So true, sadly.  Many guests (like me!) want only a cup of regular coffee.  But we have to wait while custom coffees are prepared.  A few years ago, on Spirit, on the counter there was an urn of regular coffee brought up from La Terrazza.  One could serve oneself and not have to request a cup of brewed Americano from the staff.  I believe that self-service morning coffee has been the model on ships without an Arts Cafe.  Why cannot there be a self service coffee station in Dolce Vita or Panorama (perhaps even with pastry) for those who are so inclined?

[jollyjones]

2 hours ago, Observer said:

 

So true, sadly.  Many guests (like me!) want only a cup of regular coffee.  But we have to wait while custom coffees are prepared.  A few years ago, on Spirit, on the counter there was an urn of regular coffee brought up from La Terrazza.  One could serve oneself and not have to request a cup of brewed Americano from the staff.  I believe that self-service morning coffee has been the model on ships without an Arts Cafe.  Why cannot there be a self service coffee station in Dolce Vita or Panorama (perhaps even with pastry) for those who are so inclined?

There is a self serve coffee machine in the Observation lounge. 

[Observer]

26 minutes ago, jollyjones said:

There is a self serve coffee machine in the Observation lounge. 

 

Quite true.  Thanks for reminding me of that,  However, I regularly found it to be out of order or out of coffee,  Moreover, the portions are small.