beckaboo

I asked before we booked onboard in Sept for July 2019 = it's the cosmetics ...  the CC wasn't sure if they were redoing the dining rooms (phew, I hope they leave 'em), but yes, the carpet and soft goods are a good move. 

Hello -

We were on the Cloud last Christmas / NYE and will be on the Wind this year for both... here's how ours worked:

Christmas Eve - Formal, MDR, very extravagant menu

Christmas Day - Extended Brunch buffet that shifted from breakfast to more lunch items as things shifted from morning to afternoon. Cooking stations throughout, ice sculptures, tins of caviar. Fairly mellow dinner after the Christmas Eve and buffet.

NYE - Formal MDR - most smaller groups were placed with a few officers to make more large groups and to manage the flow. Another extravagant menu. Our deck party was shifted to the Theatre due to sketchy weather and it still was a lot of fun.

NY Day - Same as Christmas - another fun brunch and a fairly mellow dinner.

Hope this helps - we had a great time and love to play dress up so yes, the tuxedo and gown were out :)

Channels are limited... There is international CNN, the regular one.

Echoing DT (who we still hope to meet but have been on tour), we have had some odd and uneven service in the MDR but some good ones too. We seem to have been adopted by a few of the bar servers who are keeping glasses from going empty.

Lot of uneven quality tours... The old city Cartagena tour was great. Nassau cigar rolling and Santa Marta Tayrona Park were horribly disorganized. Today's trip to the Veragua rainforest was very good, with rainy Costa Rica showing her stuff.

Looking forward to dinner, and perhaps a deck party if the rain stays away?

Oh, and DT, still want to meet up!

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So I would echo DT... And as a friend of the Cloud what is frustrating to me is the drop in service.... Feels like they are a person short at the pool, La T, etc... Staff seems stressed and I feel for them. Multiple meals we've waited for 10 min plus to be approached by anyone, and had glasses go empty (water, wine, soda) several times... Not quite the same Cloud as Sept 2013. But we do have the best butler ever :)

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We had a noise issue on the Cloud in Sept 2013... Halfway thru the cruise, a rattle developed in the area around our window (deck 4)... Any time the ship was sailing it was there. After one sleepless night, we showed our butler after leaving port... The suggestion was to move us so the head butler moved us to another cabin down the hall (ship wasn't full)... All done while we were at dinner. Evidently they sometimes have to take the wall apart to find the source...

Oh, and we really loved the Cloud... Boarding on 12/22 ;)

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I was on the Wind and can confirm... Cloud, Wind, and Spirit :)

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We've sailed twice on the Wind... Sept 2012 and March 2014. Really enjoyed both sailings (we've also been on the Cloud in 2013 and Spirit in 2011).

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Hello Carefree -

So sorry to hear... How frustrating.

We had a similar situation last year before our Sept cruise... Istanbul (which had the rioting happening), Cyprus (rioting and currency crisis), Egypt (war), Israel (Syria threat)... SS dropped the two Egypt ports in late July and added a 2nd night in Ashdod, plus Marmaris in Turkey... Plenty of time to make an informed decision but the rest were touch and go.

We held our breath... Nothing else was dropped, but the ship only had something like 215 pax (the Cloud)... David the CD kept joking about crew outnumbering pax... Really intimate cruise, and we consider ourselves incredibly lucky to have been able to visit.

Egypt goes back on the bucket list... Sigh.

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We had an issue on deck 4 last Sept where our cabin wall mysteriously started to rattle on the sail from Haifa ... Luckily, the ship was not full... They moved us next evening after it started up again, down across from the launderette while we were at dinner.... Just like magic. Hope they sort out this problem (we are booked on deck 4 again in December).

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I'm Facebook friends with several of the entertainers on the Wind and they are reporting that it was scary as hell ... Tear gas, shooting etc erupted out of a show of force demonstration. No violence there previously... Just erupted today. The ship's security officer was in the main square and the Artists were in a cafe nearby - everyone raced to the shuttle and back to the ship safely. 38 people reported dead in the fighting (no word that everyone on the ship is ok but it sounded like it)

I know Silversea tries to strike the balance between itinerary and safety (we went thru this last year losing Egyptian ports) but I'm surprised they even went to Ukraine... Really feel horrible for everyone who went thru this on vacation or as part of their job...

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I've been vicariously reading (we were on the Wind last month and visited many of these ports)... We were lucky enough to be on a magical sailing last Sept from Istanbul to Israel to Greece and loved David's prayer... Which I totally forgot about until now...Funny and touching all at once. Now I have to go upstairs to my travel memento box to fish out my copy!

Thanks so much Col. Wes, David, et al for sharing!

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Because in the minds of IT leaders, they always make the math work to build rather than license... Even if it has to be rebuilt to fix the inevitably deficient initial release (I deal with this kind of silly thinking all day every day).

That being said, on our March sailing, they encouraged everyone in a note in the embarkation Chronicles to stop in to La Champagne to confirm reservations... Which was made a bit easier since I had printed out the summary page from the website. No line for us and we were able to adjust times as needed, and there wasn't an issue with booking La T more than once online at reconfirmation time (but this may be because we were on a 12 day sailing).

We also reconfirmed spa treatments in person... And had to chase down shore excursion tickets, which were delivered to the wrong cabin (not a website problem!)

I suspect too that it's a request system at this point, with a target of making into a "real" scheduler in the future...fortunately, they aren't too difficult to build - assuming the $ are allocated to do so ;)

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Hopefully I can help... We have sailed 5x on SS including two in the Caribbean.

- SS does a deck BBQ that we really enjoy... Lot of fun unless it is a cold evening like last month in Casablanca, but several food stations and elaborate display. Fun to chat with the kitchen folks who man the stations and who aren't in the public areas much.

- Excursions are similar in pricing to other lines but SS does a nice job in terms of limiting size (buses are usually half full at most). We have been to Bequia twice on SS and it seems like there were four or five excursions... Both times we went to Mustique and that was a lot of fun, although not cheap, it did include a day at the Cotton House. SS usually has a couple of cultural or other unusual excursions for each port (cooking school, art tour, etc).

- Tendering ... Typically two at a time back and forth, and I've never waited more than a few minutes.

- Dress... Unless it's a casual day, men are expected to wear a jacket to dinner on the main dining room. Even when it is warm.

- Balcony furniture is the stuff you see everywhere... At least everywhere in California ... Black woven "wicker" and seems like decent quality. I'm always amazed it doesn't fly overboard in high seas ;)

Enjoy... We just left the Wind and are booked on the Cloud's holiday cruise!

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I found the new booklet very handy and practical on the cruise we just disembarked... Perhaps I'm the only one, but I have plenty of luggage tags already, and never liked the clunky big plastic doc holder, which was donated to Goodwill each time I received one and never packed. The many bits and pieces were overkill. I like having one concise package (which fit well in a small handbag) and really like the size (boarding passes and receipts from other portions of the trip fit right under the front/back cover flaps). The port writeups and pictures were also nice (even though I research a lot on my own).

I like the suggestion of adding tear-out emergency contact info (although we don't use as our contacts are not local, it was handy when they were... I now do screen grabs and email).... And a few blank pages for notes would be helpful as well.

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Irons are available in the laundry.

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Beckaboo, it was nice to meet you on those shore excursions we shared and at our neighbors private birthday party. You missed our cruise director “Mike” closing the Motown show wearing Bruce’s (our next door neighbors) “loudmouth” clothing line. Hope your finding your way home OK. We toke the high speed train to Madrid and are staying in the hotel Hospes. Silversea set this up as a post cruise stay. It has a perfect location but it is a two story room with very contemporary furniture. The upstairs bedroom has two clear glass skylights and I guess we will not be sleeping in... Also the cooling is not working but the staff is very friendly.

Carefree, sounds like fun - we have made it home and are back at work :( ... but at least it's a warm 80 degrees here! Pleasure meeting you both as well.

We actually snuck into the Motown show right at the start (India had told us that the CD had a surprise) and saw him in the suit - I think my DH Mike has pictures ...

All in all we really enjoyed - was a different experience to not be on a warm weather cruise - and it's probably only 2nd overall to last year on the Cloud... we are hoping to be on the Cloud in December (fingers crossed!)

Busy days in Morocco so let me catch up....

The new chef has only been on board since last week but everything has been excellent. He is out and about so I will try to speak with him to learn more.

We made reservations online... On embarkation day they just recommend that you reconfirm and have a desk set up in La Champagne with one of the restaurant guys, and we adjusted a few.

Dinner in La Terraza last night was lovely... Not rushed. They are flipping between a couple of menus every few days (I confess to be a menu checker!) We usually do Hot Rocks first night but did on the night we were docked in Funchal... Biggest prawns ever! We dined at La Champ with two other couples so it was a record breaker... Almost three hours. Christopher, the chef for LC, came out to chat and is a young guy from the UK... Refers to LC as "his baby." Really nice meal from all aspects.

The BBQ was fun as always - moved to our docked night in Casa - right when the dancing started the skies opened up (we joked that evidently it was a rain dance!) so the whole performing and dancing part went to The Bar on 5 and was quite lively!

The one dining glitch was on the first night when we were still jet lagged and definitely wanted to dine alone - upon arrival at the MDR, we were told we would have to dine with others as the ship was sailing full. I truly was surprised and stood my ground... We were seated at a four top and told they would "try" to keep us alone. Two minutes later they moved us to a table for two.... Little stuff but the dining room wasn't full and usually the answer isn't a flat NO. Ugh...

Another interesting note... Crew keep asking if this is our first time sailing SS (it's our 5th)... Maybe it's because we are in a younger demographic ( usually I thought this was posted with the photos and all the other stuff they profile us with?)

Anyway, Gibraltar awaits. Venetian Society tonight ;)

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Apologies for the delay in responding... We had really high seas to Funchal, spent loads of time sightseeing there, and shuffled itineraries due to a gale warning (Agadir out, extra day in Casablanca). And a sea day stuck in as well. Captain's reception essentially cancelled due to the high seas so I'm still trying to figure out who's who.

Despite this being our 5th on SS, most of these folks are not familiar to me... But all seem nice enough.

Captain - Gennaro Arma

Cruise consultant - Asta Buckiunate

Exec Chef - Chris Albersdorfer ( just boarded in Las Palmas)

Hotel Dir - Flavio Gioia

CD - Mike Witte

Restaurant director - Hedi

Maître D- still trying to figure out but I believe it's Alves, who has been #2 on a few sailings.

Seeing more smiles and a few familiar faces among the crew... Seems like they may have been in transition mode (new artists, new chef, lots of new crew). And lots of concern about safety due to the sea conditions.

Quick notes... Service has been excellent in all public areas. Our butler is actually the best we have had. Mike the CD seems nice, but there's just a chemistry when Colin or David is the CD... Food great so far... We have had our hot rocks dinner, and La Champ last night - BBQ on deck tonight! We are sailing full and have a lot of people on board since Cape Town. Nice friendly group and more Americans than expected...

Please let me know what else I can help with!

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We joined the Wind on 3/24 ... For anyone who is interested we can provide info on a lovely hotel in Maspalomas. As mentioned elsewhere the chef is new... But looks familiar to me from another SS ship and I'll try to find out more.

After Lanzarote, we sailed to Madeira... But had very rough seas and many were cabin bound for formal night #1. Today, seas calmed before we arrived and Funchal was lovely!

Wind looks lovely... But I have to say that there is something a bit off. There has been a lot of recent turnover, and despite this being our fifth SS cruise, perhaps the chemistry is evolving? Certainly different from last time in 2012 on the Wind and 2013 on the Cloud.

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Just received ours... I had already looked at the PDF version of the travel journal on the new "My Silversea" ... I really like the new presentation. Lot less waste (those vinyl doc wallets!) and the port writeups are actually useful.

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Silversea was very proactive with our Sept itinerary last year, dropping the two days in Egypt a couple months before the cruise rather than last minute. We were disappointed but it happens! This was a Med itinerary so we didn't have the issue with a lot of sea days, which would be a big negative- we had an extra day in Ashdod and went to Marmaris (Turkish Riviera). Someday I am hoping we have the opportunity to do the Suez / Egypt / Sinai ... When it's safe.

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Loved her "Life on a Cruise Ship" lectures... We heard this sad news from a few pax on our Istanbul to Athens cruise last Sept but I hoped it wasn't true... So sad, she is so young.

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