uktog

It is now public knowledge via her professional profile Heike Berdos has resigned from Explora and gone to Silverseas. That is a huge loss for Explora - she totally understood what the hotel operation of a higher end cruise ship should be.

I am onboard Explora now I knew she had left before we boarded and the absence of her influence is marked. We are feeling the impact of head office poor decisions eg the ship ran out of rose wine 7 days before the end of a 14 night cruise

Tricky one - certainly not the Afternoon Tea in the Explora Lounge! Actually we find that whole anfter tea experience mediocre, wrong scone cream and over pretentiousness in the serving. Much prefer the Viking tiered stands which emulates all the good hotel afternoon tea experiences in UK where the concept originated Crema is marginally better and at least try and adjust but the water is lukewarm. I’ve found the best is what I make in the room albeit sometimes using two bags but boiling water. . Likewise the coffee in the Emporium Fils Rouge, Med Yacht etc is so weak and cold. For breakfast we go via crema and take a to go, in the evening we move there for our end of dinner coffee. The coffee maker in the room is useless. At best it gives you half a cup, the water presets are all wrong!

I have always been aware of the limitations of cruise line excursions. However there can be reasons to use them. I would agree that whilst we find the food to be great, overall this is not the line for us. It had such potential but there is too much not hitting an appropriate spot for the per day costs. Today we are in Bodrum. The shuttle went to a commercial shopping area every hour. We went a walk in the opposite direction- very pleasant but nothing special

Trouble is if you have obc or in our case it’s possibly a walk to connect to the viator operator. If they can’t run a decent shore ex operation they should just stop it totally

With Scouse, Brummie and Geordie accents 😂😂

Such a shame the 125 travel agents get tours arranged for them whilst the paying guests get their trips cancelled and left to fend for themselves. Our cruise experience certainly isn’t being helped by the cancellation of pre purchased excursions (not to mention losing out on the exchange rate calculation applied to the refunds). And I hope these agents behave better in the show and restaurants going forward than they did last night - many are British and certainly had the “it’s our party, it’s our freebie” mentality some of our fellow country folks can adopt. I do not know the definition of “large” but the Asian contingent must have been well hidden during the at sea day yesterday as there are only a handful of Asian guests - there were more the previous seven days including at least one group of 8 so perhaps the wires are crossed with the information

Facts from embarkation day, Sakura was NOT open for lunch - as guests who booked a 14 night cruise who found it was 2 7 night cruises we would have preferred if it had been. The only places open were the Emporium and the menu in the Explorer lounge. There has been a rotation between Sakura and Med Yacht on port days

We wanted to do pottery class in Rhodes. It seems only the basic sightseeing is running in each port. As we’ve been to most ports before we were looking for something more and like hands on things like cooking, craft etc. Looks like this cruise may have a large travel agent group onboard- first time I’ve ever seen people reserving groups of seats in the show lounge 🥲

Another excursion cancelled- they really haven’t got on top of this issue which was a huge turn off on our first cruise.

There is usually an area you can drop off your carryon once on the ship and they deliver it to the room immediately. They frown on guests heading to rooms before the general announcement around 1330 - all rooms are “released” at the same time. Azamara is very much a classless ship though you of course have suite benefits- breakfast in Aqualina is a really nice one

It serves all the way through to midnight or so

More importantly it should soon be back on the menu without this stupid 24 hour subterfuge that makes others who didn’t know of the *nudge nudge wink wink* schemes not feel like second class guests

This was in February the weather was pretty good though you have to recognise it’s either Drake Lake or Drake Shake. No way of knowing what it will be

Did you steal that from the pile of bottles the authorities impounded yesterday 😂. No chance of any rose wine until late tomorrow and only if the next port authorities agree.

I do actually because I saw part of the drama unfolding. I do however agree that something could have been set up with MSC yesterday

Evidently they didn’t have the customs authorisation so although they bought it, according to the beverage manager it got impounded. You couldn’t make it up! So it will be two days at least before we see a change 🥲🥲🥲

That’s one of my room service favourites! It’s excellent. My reporting on drink availability has been based on my experience in Fil Rouge and the Emporium and in each case the F and B manager has tried to source wine for us. We hope the port customs authorities did allow the rose onboard this afternoon as we understood it was purchased this morning

Maarten Smeets

They certainly wouldn’t have! She is not onboard

Whilst I agree the food and ship are great there’s too much not right after a year for me to continue to advocate for Explora. it has emerged they knew four days ago based on the rate of consumption on various wines they would run out. They initially made no attempt to obtain alternative supplies choosing to print a truncated wine list instead. The General Manager wasn’t straight about it when guests challenged them claiming to be unaware of the problem. We know from others the decision to print a new list needed leadership authorisation Yes they are going to try and buy more wine today in Istanbul but there’s no guarantee they can get it and find something drinkable and if they do when will it run out again? The way staff (ok they were probably to some extent doing as they were told) made up stories and led guests to believe the wine bring served last night was far superior to what they had earlier in the cruise (or for those guests joining then that they never served the missing wines) left a nasty taste in our mouths. All this fluff about hosts - well I like my hosts wherever I am to be honest and not treat me like an idiot. I saw several restaurant hosts in a new light last night some of the stories they spun were awful. That memory will stick!

Only if it’s got a baked Alaska parade

Likewise cold soup says to me kitchen stuff up 😂

Spoken to him, he claimed he did not know there were issues.

Fair assessment The groups are ruining guest experiences all over and managers do nothing about them except in some cases banter with them in their native language. I would add several crew are like overachievers desperate to grab your plate the minute you lay your fork down or snatch away a glass before it’s empty- speed not quality is how I’d describe it. The English language skills of some are very weak. Let’s see how wine gate progresses 😂😂😂