rols

Good news indeed, although it'll take a while to roll through the fleet. We were never a fan of the whole TK diversion and have dined at Earth and Ocean in preference to other venues many times and love the concept. 

yeah all back again now - as I thought they had to go reset all the pricing after the latest event. Prices not that different from before and they'll have another event in a few weeks. 

Can't always time our booking with Seabourn's desire to sell so we book when it suits us. 

here's some fun and games. 

If you start at the Seabourn home page here and try to select departure month at least for me there are none in November and December has just two. However if you start at this homepage you will find all the cruises listed although as I said most of them are 'call for pricing'. I don't think Seabourn wants to sell any cruises this weekend. 

2 hours ago, billichka said:

Last week nearly half the suites on our upcoming New Zealand cruise in December were available…. Today that cruise, and another NZ one in December, had disappeared.

 

Hope it hasn’t been cancelled!

 

No. Something weird is going on. I really think it's something to do with the end of their sale because it all happened at that time. I guess all the cruises which were discounted for the sale now need to have prices re-entered or updated and in the interim they are just missing.

ah but there is more to it. Most of those cruises, in fact all I think EXCEPT the few I found earlier on the Asia site, are marked "call for price" and selecting any suite type says "unavailable". And that's not just the sold out ones, it's most of them. So I feel Seabourn is still working things out after the end of its sale. I can at least see the dates and itineraries and can call the TA if need be. 

1 minute ago, rols said:

thanks SLSD. I've tried chrome, safari and firefox on two different machines and an ipad. Let me try a VPN into the US, wonder if seabourn knows I'm not a local. 

 

Ah.. that's it .. I'm georestricted. Hit up a US VPN and I get all the things I had the other day. Thanks very much. 

thanks SLSD. I've tried chrome, safari and firefox on two different machines and an ipad. Let me try a VPN into the US, wonder if seabourn knows I'm not a local. 

We were looking a couple of days ago at Nov/Dec 2023 cruises. There were many, including a 14 night asia holiday cruise in Dec and .. all sorts. Yesterday they all disappeared. Hitting the webpage now shows ZERO cruises in November and TWO only in December. Coincidentally this sudden disappearance of all cruises coincided with the end of whatever event Seabourn just had. I'm pretty sure they didn't, in the last 6 hours of that event, sell out every suite on every ship on every cruise in the whole world for the last 2 months of this year. Am I being punished for not booking during the sale event? 

Does anyone see anything different? This is with NO filters applied at all, not length, not destination, not anything. 

wow. That's sad. I've become a cycling since covid started and I remember this thread VERY well and had planned, the next time we cruise, to take one of my bikes with me and cycle around the ports in much the same way. That's is SO SAD that Seabourn now ban them. I wonder if it is possible to get an exemption .. this was on my bucket list. 

Also it's odd that this was just posted. I haven't been to the boards much in the last couple of years, ever since that fateful post about "a new disease which has been seen in China". Today I got my credit card statement to find that our last two on board cruise deposits had been refunded and indeed it was 4 years. So I jumped back on the boards to look for posts about getting extensions (there are none). So no 5% and no bikes .. I may put off my return to cruising for a little while longer. 

On 1/12/2023 at 11:45 AM, shark b8 said:

The First Mate and I frequently have a back-and-forth about which dining venue to choose for dinner each night, as I’m sure everyone does.  There’s one hard-and-fast rule though…….if the Colonnade has Indian Market Dinner, that’s it, no further discussion, decision chiseled in stone.

 

Per tonight’s Herald - tomorrow:

 

 

 

 

I think there's a reasonable chance if you miss the Indian Market Dinner this time that you'll see it again .. oh about 19 more times. To be fair, the Indian one is my favourite of all the colonnade specials. 

13 hours ago, jjs217 said:

 Boy, would I have felt stupid if I had paid the offered upgrade price.

well you wouldn't have done as if you'd paid the offered upgrade price you'd never have known you were going to get an upgrade for free. 

On 11/21/2022 at 11:57 AM, phillipahain said:

Yes in the ship and on tours ...Captain ordered it 3 days ago saying it was required by NZ 

cannot find a source for NZ (or Australia) requiring it. Only articles like this which says it's Carnival doing it "out of an abundance of caution". 

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/mask-mandates-return-on-cruise-ships-in-new-zeland-and-australia/JHERKBOFSVETRC3OTZZUVPG7UE/

does anyone have a link to anything which says that this response is mandated by either of those two governments? 

We were getting tempted by the twice-daily mails entreating us to book another cruise. Clearly we need another year before the randomness abates so I think we'll hold off more. 

On 4/2/2021 at 9:18 PM, Kayak lk said:

In my opinion SB is raising the 2022 price because many of us have the 25% premium on our canceled cruises deposits/fares that must be used 2022 or forfeited. It will be interesting to see if these fares will sell.

This is exactly what I think and this was predicted a year ago when they started handing out 125% credit. They've just moved prices to cover the 'credit' in the near term although I still think they'll try to keep them higher than previously longer term too. I think all the current fares will 'sell' as there's a lot of people with credit they have to use plus a lot of pent-up demand to cruise. We're not expecting to even look at cruising for a year or two until supply and demand level out. 

12 hours ago, wesport said:

I don't think the old way of cruising will ever come back completely. 

..... Testing daily. Masks. Social distancing etc. 

In that case we have taken our last ever cruise. 

On 3/3/2021 at 3:33 AM, SLSD said:

I recognize that we are still in the conjecture corner, but I am curious.  When do you think Seabourn will resume cruising? 

Maybe you have inside information, a better understanding of infectious disease science, or just a hunch.  As an add on question--when will YOU personally feel safe to cruise?  As for Mr. SLSD and myself, we are both now fully vaccinated (him Moderna, me Pfizer) and we are looking forward to cruising again.  Our inclination is to let others, who are very anxious to cruise very soon, go first.  There are some things to consider.  Would you be willing to cruise if you still had to wear a mask in all public venues?  Would you be willing to cruise, if a number of ports still would not allow the cruise passengers in their ports?  Would you be willing to cruise if you could not fraternize with fellow cruisers and congregating in the Observation Lounge was discouraged and dining with others was not an option?  I'm interested in all of your responses.  We are all in the same boat, so to speak, but have different perceptions of what is safe or what we could enjoy if there were limitations imposed. An addition, do you think vaccination would be required for all passengers.  

Don't know when they'll re-start cruising. 
I would have felt safe cruising at any point since the whole thing started because I've felt that the risk to us at our ages were negligible. I take more risk cycling on the roads here. I would agree for many people who are older than us it's a legitimate concern. The only 'risk' which would have bothered me is being stuck on the ship due to docking limitations, not from the disease
No I would not cruise if I had to wear a mask. Since that became mandatory here in Singapore I've barely left the house (except to exercise) as I loathe wearing a mask. I cannot imagine enjoying a cruise or any other leisure activity having to wear one of those things. 
If ports wouldn't let passengers disembark I wouldn't expect a cruise line to go to them.
Nope if I couldn't fraternize with other passengers I wouldn't cruise and if dining was just the two of us every night that would remove one of the main drivers for cruising which is to meet people from around the world. 

As the world begins to open up we will take vacations to the first places which don't impose mask, social distancing or quarantine restrictions (and when we can return home without similar quarantine issues). That to us is what will make leisure activities actually enjoyable; when cruises are like that, we'll be back on a ship the next day. 

Don't know why they bother with the V1, 2, 3 .. they should just call them $, $$, $$$ and $$$$

3 minutes ago, fudge said:

We are looking to book a cruise around the Greek Islands in April, on a scale of 1 to 10 what are the chances of it going ahead do you think?

2

On 12/23/2020 at 1:36 PM, cruiseej said:

Seven days or less reduces the chance of someone developing symptoms and becoming acutely ill during a cruise. Seven days or less likely means not being too far from a major port, where a ship could go if a passenger requires shoreside medical attention. Seven days or less likely means less disruption if a cruise needs to be cut short due to COVID onboard. Seven days or less make it easier to deal with if they need to clear passengers from the ship and make sure the crew is virus-free before starting another cruise. Seven days or less means if the virus is passed on a ship, there's a good chance an infected passenger might have returned home before developing symptoms and/or infecting other passengers.

All those are plausible suggestions, although as suggested by a previous poster they seem more geared to hoping nobody gets sick during a cruise than nobody gets sick as a result of a cruise.

I still feel that having few people in total be together for longer periods at a time reduces the overall expected number of people who catch the virus as a result of cruising. Mix more total people, add more chances people catch things. 
Since we're constantly told that the virus can spread asymptomatically and that 14 days is actually quite long and the majority of people get sick long before that, if someone gets on a ship with covid the best I can come up with is that in 7 days they only infect the first round of people and you don't get 2 or more generations of sickness. I do believe that if someone does get on the ship sick but before the virus can be detected, in most cases they'd be infecting others long before the week is done. 
I'm definitely of the view that you shouldn't mix groups on ships, the cohort which gets on stays on until the end of the cruise and you don't have a mix-it-up turnaround day in the middle, I remain unconvinced that restricting the length that group is together to 7 days actually reduces the total number of people expected to get sick by virtue of the fact they cruised.

On 12/20/2020 at 10:56 AM, avalon1025 said:

Sure,  for most the 7 days are over and you’re off the ship before your display symptoms.  Then the cruise line doesn’t have to say you caught it on the ship

yes that was one less-than-charitable thought I had. That it's not really about stopping the spread, it's about ensuring it happens somewhere else. 

On 12/17/2020 at 12:48 AM, robertmartha said:

assume everyone saw - is aware?

 

 

https://www.cruiseindustrynews.com/cruise-news/24044-seabourn-changes-2021-alaska-season-to-7-day-cruise-program.html

Can anyone explain the rationale behind limiting cruises to 7 days? You put a group of people on a ship and if 1 is sick it's going to spread, ok I get that. How does changing that group every 7 days reduce that risk? Seems to be it would increase the likelihood of eventually getting an outbreak, more total people, more chances one is ill despite the pre-boarding testing. Conversely if you board a group of people and nobody is sick, keeping them all together for as long as possible sounds like a good idea. 

I would understand not selling pieces of cruises so you don't have guests arriving and leaving at different points thus increasing the mix, but having one group on for 2 weeks sounds like a better plan than having 2 groups on for 1 week each. 

On 9/1/2020 at 5:46 AM, geoffieg said:

Interesting that the Ovation is still planning on its January 3 voyage which is from Hong Kong to Singapore.  Most foreigners are not currently allowed entry to both of those without a 14 day quarantine.  That could change before January 3 but given the way the US is handling COVID who knows.

As one currently imprisoned in Singapore I wouldn't get your hopes up for any changes in entry requirements here in the foreseeable future, by which I mean perhaps H2 2021. Singapore has managed to hammer out reciprocal travel arrangements for dignitaries to about 4 different countries with a list of preconditions which would make your head spin and it's possible, just possible that some kind of tourist bubbles with other Asean countries might happen late this year or early next (Malaysia probably the most possible as it's the closest); but I don't see general tourism restarting here any time soon. 

HK I don't know about. They kind of have less reason to open up to the world as they aren't so reliant on tourism in the first place. 

I'd give a Seabourn cruise between HK and Singapore in Jan 2021 about a 1% chance of happening. 

13 hours ago, Jane21 said:

They are talking about only having 50% occupancy on a ship 

That's a number which has been suggested however there's no actual proof that I've been able to see at this point that says that's true. Seabourn already has low passenger density, they may have to make some adjustments but I'm not sure it will be that bad. 

I think prices increasing are indeed, as someone already wrote, because of supply and demand. The demand is from the huge number of passengers who have future cruise credit and need to use it up by a certain date. It was predicted back in March/April when they started offering 125% FCC with a limited term that cruise prices were going to rise to reabsorb some or all of that 'free money'. I expected to see just-before-sail prices a full 25% higher than they were the last few years. 

6 hours ago, rkacruiser said:

 

I admire your post.  Thank you for your thoughts.  I am not yet where you are.  I must internalize your last two sentences.  

 

Slowly, I think, I am getting there.  Went to my favorite local donut shop on Monday which had closed when Ohio shut down, re-opened as my State began to re-open, but then had to close for 2 weeks because an employee tested positive for Covid.  After having to wear my "hated" mask, I survived and am enjoying my donuts.  Maybe that will help me to have a bit more courage to try another "adventure" that has been forbidden/discouraged for months.   

Perhaps I wish I were more like NorthByNorthwest but I haven't gotten there either. I also particularly hate wearing a mask and since wearing them became mandatory every time you step out of the house our routine has adjusted to avoid stepping out of the house any more than necessary .. which proves to be not very often. The fact it's 90F and 100% humidity here every day probably doesn't help there much, it's quite unpleasant. 

so we'll start cruising, or going to the cinema, or eating out or any other leisure thing when the adjustments made for 'safety' don't basically ruin a large part of the experience. Some of the suggestions I've seen for what the new cruising might be to me sacrifice a lot of the fun of it so we'll be taking a wait and see approach to what actually happens. 

Masks are a particular bug-a-boo for me, perhaps way more than other people, we all have things we're more or less concerned about; but let me ask, if the new cruising required you to don a mask as you left your suite in the morning and wear it around the ship whenever you are in a public space, sunbathing by the pool, at trivia, lectures, on any and all excursions, only removing it when you were sat down eating .. would you still cruise? I wouldn't. I feel like a lot of people wouldn't but I could be very wrong about how much other people find it annoying. This isn't a question by the way about whether people think they are effective and should be worn, only a question about whether having one on all waking hours would affect your enjoyment of the vacation.  

We'll only be waiting until restrictions on travel are lifted, rolling lockdowns are a thing of the past and we can vacation without masks by the pool or a ban on dining with people outside your 'bubble'. That applies to any vacationing, not just cruising, but at soon as going away is possible and actually likely to be fun, we'll be on the first plane or ship. 

Currently that feels like it might be a way off yet when even visiting a shop or having a meal out is a miserable experience .. but that will eventually change.