jenidallas

Florida’s governor my be putting the cruise industry in a tough position by trying to make it impossible for businesses to discriminate against non-vaccinated people.

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/948351?src=mkm_covid_update_210330_MSCPEDIT&uac=267013ET&impID=3281862&faf=1

I’m with others who don’t see how we can safely (and economically) return to cruising without requiring vaccines for passengers/crew.  

The Penthouse suites have a lot more room than the Veranda suites including a completely separate bedroom (with a door), a larger closet accessible from both the closet and hallway, a separate room for the toilet and one sink (great if you have guests up to your suite or if one of you likes to take long baths), two televisions (helpful if on slightly different sleep schedules!), and a nice dining set up.

I’ve booked and cancelled a few sailings and never been charged a fee.  I’d agree with others that it’s time to find a better agent.

1 hour ago, zelker said:

The first cruise we have booked isn't until December (Caribbean and through the Canal to LA on Sojourn) so we have several months yet to cancel before the penalty phase starts.  Since we only have to get from Denver to Miami and then back from LA, we're not booking air until we get much closer and a one night pre-cruise hotel in Miami will be easy to find last minute too.  Also, because we've pretty much done all these ports previously, we don't really care if ports are missed or we are relegated to Seabourn-only tours and will be happy floating in warm climes over the holidays rather than dealing with snow and cold in Colorado.  For us, the deal breaker will likely be what Seabourn's policy is for vaccinations and masking ... without requiring both for everyone onboard, we're likely a no-go.

We have the same next cruise and the same plan as you.  We’re already vaccinated but will make an informed decision when we hit the penalty point.  
 

We’re not thrilled with the idea of cruise line shore excursions only, especially since we have friends who live in a couple of the ports that we’d like to spend the day with.  But we are also transatlantic/sea day fans and know that could make ourselves happy enjoying the ship even in a port.
 

This whole idea of having to stick with a cohort gives me a bit of anxiety not knowing how Seabourn is going to get it those together.  Is there going to be some kind of survey about what activities you participate in (trivia, bridge, casino) or what time you prefer to eat and where?  Or are we going to be stuck on a three week tour where we are subject to the whims of a randomly assigned peer group and only allowed to be in the public spaces that cohort is in?  I can see this being a major dissatisfier and I’ll question the value proposition of a Seabourn sailing if it’s not the usual “choose your own adventure” experience.  

21 hours ago, zelker said:

We're on the 32 night version of your holiday cruise through the Canal and if we stick with that, will likely cut it down to the 21 night version.  I hate all the uncertainty as I'm sure everyone does.  

 
We are hoping to extend to the 32 night version but I don’t have line of sight to my work project schedule this far out to commit to the first leg so we decided just to book the 21 day part.  Who knows what will end up happening?!

5 hours ago, zelker said:

Without having to read all 1,200+ posts on this thread to see if it's mentioned, does anyone know if any Seabourn ships wound up with any pax or crew getting COVID?  

 

Asking because going forward in our planning (earliest would be December 2021 or January 2022), we're trying to decide if we think it's a bit safer to travel on Sojourn compared to one of HAL's Vista class ships with the potential of 2,800 people (pax and crew).  The shortest itinerary is 21 days, the longest is 39 days, and include itineraries like Panama Canal, Hawaii/Tahiti, or the first segment of the World Cruise (LA - SYD).  Our "theory" is it seems like a smaller ship with less people onboard would be less likely to contract COVID but are we fooling ourselves in our thinking?

 

Opinions welcome! 

I have searched for that information as well but did not find any final counts that included Seabourn ships.

We are having the same decision dilemma you are.  Granted, we don’t plan to sail on anything larger than a Seabourn ship again but do still worry about safety.  We are currently holding the 21 night Miami to LA holiday Panama Canal sailing for December because we had no skin in the game (an existing future cruise credit covered our deposit) but I put the odds on us taking it at about 25% for a variety of reasons.

On 3/4/2020 at 10:16 AM, jenidallas said:

Still planning to cruise on April 20 on the Quest transatlantic.  Still traveling to visit my hospital clients as normal.  Still getting on planes (and going to Seattle next week).  Still practicing the same common sense good practices around hand washing and the hygiene of touching strange things.  
 

I did restock on individual sanitizing wipes and bought a box of medical gloves (great for touching things in public in an outbreak).  We also restocked our freezer just to have food on hand when (not should there be) a community outbreak hits our area or I find out I’ve been on a flight with someone who has been exposed.  
 

I talk to medical professionals every weekday and they are not having the same panic that the media is.  As one said to me yesterday “Jen, we’ve got at three cases of coronavirus in our hospital right now... it’s just not THE coronavirus strain that everyone else is taking about, just the same one we’ve been treating for years.  If you want to be scared, be scared of the flu or of staph infections.  The reality is that you are probably going to catch this eventually... so you just have to practice common sense as usual, eat healthy, and do all the wellness things”.

This post did not age well... except the part where we stocked our freezer.  That was fortuitous.

On 2/26/2020 at 3:16 PM, jenidallas said:

 
Whereas in the flip side of that equation, I bought back 100 shares of CCL stock today after having divested at a profit last year.  I have had good luck investing in other travel stocks at times like this but at minimum, I get a shareholder on two cruises coming up this year.

Narrator:  “She would come around quickly to regretting that decision.”

“Happy” (slightly belated) one-year anniversary to this thread.

In some ways, I can’t believe an entire year has passed by since we first started discussing a troubling virus in China possibly affecting a few sailings.  In other ways, I can’t believe it has only been a year... in some ways it feels like a decade.

I bumped just because I thought a Saturday night read might help me reorient to how we got here exactly.  🤪

3 hours ago, Ragnar Danneskjold said:

Haha, at this point I would do a “cruise to nowhere”, with everyone on the ship having been vaccinated.  Especially a ship with a “toys” platform and zodiacs, in a tropical setting 🙂

Us too.  We have the 21-day holiday Panama Canal on hold for December and have already discussed still going even if it ends up being mostly onboard time (it’s already something like 13 sea days) because right now we are excited by the prospect of leaving our house and having someone else look after us for a bit.

Given the expanded capacity for those ships, I’m guessing they are waiting to have more information about when some countries will reopen to tourism before they position them.  It has seemed that they’ve kept one of the larger ships on the Indonesia - Australia - New Zealand circuit much of the year (pre-pandemic) and likely need to see what may be occurring with border reopening to determine if they can fill those sailings.

Thanks for clarifying that Cruise Critic is taking responsibility for ensuring that they are not assisting in the perpetuating of fraud. I have no doubt that the forum understands the legal liability of giving official voice to someone impersonating an official spokesperson so will let them assume that mantle.

Given the data breach and all of the matters where Seabourn could have been front and center with positive PR, I’m certainly disappointed that they chose this as the way to make their grand entrance on Cruise Critic.  I have always leaned toward being a Seabourn cheerleader, but still find it highly bizarre and will be withholding my trust until I see other interaction from their social media rep. I certainly won’t be giving out my personal information to rebook based on a call that I did not initiate.

3 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

Can person #1 in effect create two logins to their Internet account, one pointing at the unlimited internet package and one pointing to their free 900 minute perk? That way once Person #2's minutes have expired, he/she can then log onto Person #1's "second" account which is pointing at their 900 minutes. Just curious how it would work.

Yes, that is exactly how it would work.

I’ve done exactly this before because I’ve needed minutes for work (that I planned to expense) and did not want to use my free internet for work purposes.

4 hours ago, Ken the cruiser said:

We might wind up doing that if we can't get a reasonable discount for an unlimited package when we first board the ship. We've kind of gotten spoiled with having unlimited service on the other cruise lines we sail with as both my DW and I enjoy using the internet for a wide variety of reasons when there is nothing fun going on around the ship.

Since the $400 package only allows for one device log in at a time, in addition to purchasing that, we will also save our minutes for the times that we both want to be online.

I had a few preconceived stereotypes about Crystal based on my interactions with them in pre- or post-cruise hotels or private shore excursions or during air travel.  They struck me (as a general group) to be more prone to name dropping and trying to size up the relative value of those around them.

I’ve very rarely run into Crystal aficionados on Seabourn but I do recall meeting one couple onboard their first Seabourn sailing after many cruises on Crystal.  They shared that they were having trouble settling in onboard because they just could not figure out “who their people were”.  Silly me... I thought they were perhaps shy and having trouble meeting others and offered up a few suggestions.  But no... it turned out to be an issue of what they thought were “wealth indicators” that they were having trouble spotting - obvious designers, insignia from private clubs, name-dropping - whatever they thought would help them identify people they thought were on a socioeconomic tier equivalent to or higher than their own.  The husband commented that people made it very difficult to tell their net worth.  That revelation was so exhausting to think about but seemed on the level with my own observations about the line’s passengers.  And who wants to be exhausted while on holiday?  Not this gal!

On 8/12/2020 at 5:06 PM, FlyingScotSailors said:

We are booked on the Sojourn for the end of 2021, maybe we will meet then.

Holiday Panama Canal?  That’s the one we are seriously considering.  Hubby and I, that is.

2 minutes ago, SLSD said:

However, my husband commented several times during our cruise that he thought Seabourn would be retiring the Sojourn.  I wonder now if that is the new plan.  

It would seem odd to retire Sojourn before Odyssey since that ship has been in service longer.  

Sojourn is only 10 years old although I’m sure it felt older to you having sailed on both of the big sisters first.  Odyssey is 11 years old and Quest is 9 years old.

They had the little sisters for between 20-25 years before selling them.

We proactively cancelled our December Sojourn sailing last week.  Now it seems like great timing to have done so!

We are going to sit out on any more bookings until we’ve got a better idea of what a return to sailing looks like.  Tonight will be 154 in a row in my own bed, something I had not done in decades prior to this.  Right now our idea of a big voyage is donning a mask to pick up groceries or get a haircut.

I miss cruising and long to be back on Seabourn, but not quite yet.

23 minutes ago, hoya68 said:

I guess one can hope that the Venture will not be ready on schedule and they will pull Quest for another year.

Isn’t there a new regulation for cruise ships in Antarctic waters that will make the Quest no longer permissible for those sailings after this Antarctic season?

Someone mentioned in a Seabourn-related Facebook group that they should be sharing their resumption strategy today so I suspect we’ll know more sooner than later.  
 

So far what I’ve seen from other lines has been mostly around health/safety precautions and not hard/soft changes to the passenger experience so I don’t know if we’ll really learn much until passengers sail and give us first-hand accounts.  And I can’t say I’d be enthusiastic about being one of those early reporters... not at normal fare premiums anyway!

I’ve done both routings and really the deciding point for me would be timing as I like the ports on both.  I’ve been personally missing Istanbul though so I’d probably lean toward that.  Venice, Athens, and Istanbul are three of my favorite food cities.

It’s interesting to begin to speculate on what cruising will look like when it resumes. I think it will be difficult for the industry to mount a proper comeback without both a vaccine and widely available cost-effective rapid testing.  I say comeback because I doubt we see a full return to what 2019 levels looked like in the coming decade.

I think that buffets are over with the exception of perhaps individually packaged grab & go snacks.  (I could reasonably see individually wrapped pastries, jars of yogurt, and containers of fruit available for an early risers breakfast, for example.). The Colonnade may go on but not with self-service.  I would not be sad to see that happen... I’ve observed some gross behavior at cruise buffets, even on Seabourn.

i think social distancing will be a real thing for some time to come.  The upside for Seabourn is they already have a good amount of this built in - tables in dining venues are not on top of each other, seating in the theatre and lounges is already spread out, cabins are spacious and not tightly clustered.  
 

I anticipate expanded dining times to accommodate less tightly clustered onboard activity, more outdoor dining seating (perhaps this finally kills The Retreat on the larger ships to make way), and more emphasis on spreading passengers out with things like staggered embarkation/disembarkation times, popular events spread across multiple venues (the way the Captain’s welcome Is distributed across several venues on the bigger ships - we might see Trivia offered in the theatre, Rock the Boat in 2-3 venues, safety drills in shifts), longer port stops (to allow for staggering of movement and necessary health screenings), and more thorough contingency plans (like the quarantine and repatriation plans in the EU guidelines).

I think a heavy emphasis will be placed on personal safety with mask wearing and frequent hand washing encouraged.

Carnival-partner Princess has already patented and implemented a cardless smart system for passengers that can suggest activities based on where there is less crowding on the ship.  I would not mind scanning a pass at a kiosk to see where I could find a quiet place to read or which restaurant had less people in it at a particular time.  

Cruising will evolve - it has to - and it has before.  (I still watch old Love Boat episodes and try to spot all of the things that were okay then but would not be considered safe by 2019 standards... glassware in the pool, streamers tossed at sail away, candles on tables, self-serve poolside buffets.)

I am hopeful that we get back to safely cruising sooner than later.  We are still holding our spots on the Sojourn holiday cruise, just in case.  I think Seabourn’s smaller size will make it easier to implement necessary changes quickly.

16 hours ago, rkacruiser said:

 

May I ask what your job description is?  (If you choose not to do so, I am OK with that.  It's just that I am curious.)  His former post as CCL's Chief Strategy Officer is what I don't understand.  How does that qualify him to be President of Seabourn Cruise Lines?

 

 

Easier to refer to a great piece from Harvard Business Review on this very question “what does a chief strategy officer do?” as I think they explain it well.

https://hbr.org/2007/10/the-chief-strategy-officer

In short, a CSO has a high level of familiarity and experience in many functional areas (which sometimes comes from years of management co suiting for a specific industry) and is charged with driving organizational change from the top down and ensuring that strategic plan execution is at the forefront of every decision.

The CSO should be the person in the room that prevents other executives from making rash or whimsical decisions that take focus or resources away from the goal at hand.

As an example, if Seabourn has a strategic plan goal (and they very well might have such) of maintaining status as the premier luxury cruise line in the world and the CFO comes to the table with the idea of cutting costs by eliminating complimentary caviar and champagne, the CSO is going to work with the CFO to reframe that decision If it’s out of line with the strategic vision.  

From what I do on the consulting side, we often work with clients to help develop the framework in which they make these decisions (and help them gather the data they at need to properly evaluate them).  Using the example above, often the CFO has evaluated how much the line spends on caviar and champagne and has thus concluded that be eliminating them they can save X dollars per year.  A CSO or strategy consultant would reconsider that as a larger framework - what are competitors doing, what differentiations are actually strategic advantages, what additional revenue might be realized/lost by changing the status quo, and how the decision compliments or contradicts the strategic plan, mission statement, and other service promises of the organization.

I see having a former CSO in charge of Seabourn as an assurance that any bean counting will be offset by someone asking “but WHY are we doing this and WHAT does it do to advance our strategic plan”?

I wouldn’t place a lot of stock in the antibody tests meaning anything because:

* There is no proof having antibodies prevents you from testing positive again.  I know someone who was hospitalized in March and later tested clear after being discharged who contracted it again in June. (And yes, that story was all over the news a couple of weeks ago.)

* There are numerous reports of patients who were positive in March who have been tested for antibodies and have none (particularly asymptomatic infected)

* The virus has already mutated into strains and there is some thought among immunologists that there could be seasonality to this, like the flu, but it will be a couple of years before that is known.

6 hours ago, adoctor said:

Why is a corporate strategist with limited commercial or operational experience leading Seabourn? Carnival divestment of Seabourn maybe.

With two decades as a partner at McKinsey in Miami, I don’t doubt he knows his way around  the industry from past engagement work before joining Carnival (very likely with Carnival) and how to assess operational and financial performance.

I think (and I may be biased as I’m also a strategy consultant) that he’s what the brand needs right now.  For a line like Seabourn that is heavily vested in providing a socially integrated luxury experience, figuring out how to deliver that safely in a post-Covid world is going to require a very strong strategic vision.  I am glad they brought someone in who is familiar with the Carnival portfolio as he’ll at least have a good operating familiarity with the shared services within the portfolio that may need to be leveraged to adjust operations to safely deliver a luxury experience.