PACruiser5

Expeditions are a different animal from more main stream cruises. Attire more LL Bean than fancy. Black pants and a nice sweater will do fine.

BaBack to the South Georgia appeal. It is, as was said earlier, jaw droppingly beautiful, and teaming with wildlife not seen anywhere else. Photos do not do it justice. At our first stop we landed on a beach covered with penguins, fur, seals, elephant seals... much more crowded than these photos. Curious penguns and seals will come right up to you like the pup in the photo. It is overwhelming. I asked fellow passengers why they had selected this trip in the first place and at the end what was the highlight. South Georgia Island was both the reason people chose the trip and afterwards the near unanimous highlight. Antarctica is amazing, do not get me wrong, and I would have enjoyed the chance to see more of it than we did, but if given a choice (and of course those on the venture were not) not at the expense of S Georgia.

Agree it is a personal tolerance issue, with no absolute right answers. BUT, for any of you who have South Georgia on your itinerary, if they are not going to promise that I would cancel. In early December we completed the Falklands, S Georgia, Antarctica trip on Ponant. Almost everyone described South Georgia as the highlight of the trip and would not have missed it willingly. My 3 cents...

As to the food... I had read comments disparaging the food on Ponant so my expectations were a tad low. BUT, on our recent Great Austral Loop on Le Boreal we found the food definitely superior to that on Seabourn's brand new fancy Venture a few months back. And that on a sailing with Seabourn's President and top brass aboard. Service better on Ponant too. The various cruise line forums are filled with complaints that the food/service/wine whatever is not what it use to be. I suspect its going to depend on individual ship personnel and provisioning. And FWIW, I am a food and wine person and I also found the included wines just fine. At least equal to those found on Seabourn and Silversea. They had some particularly good ones on gala nights.

There is a taxi kiosk after you exit the departure area. They will take US dollars, cash only.

Thank you so much! We will be following you on Le Boreal, flying to Buenos Aires tomorrow, so the info on logistics and such is much appreciated.

Lots of information here but back to the original question from Korimako, will you or anyone else like a particular cruise line? The only reasonable answer is "it depends": Where you want to go being the most important one. Many cruisers are loyalists to a particular line, there are certainly benefits and perks to that, as well as gaining familiarity to ships, staff and amenities. And there are some general characteristics you will read about if you scroll through the various line specific boards, things that people really like or don't. Others move around, often based on the itinerary. Some lines have a specialty in an area, Paul Gaugin (part of Ponant) for example in the south pacific. We chatted with a cruise director on Silversea, who had worked on several lines, who was very candid that Silversea did this or that really well, but if you want to go to x, Seabourn (or whoever) does that better. And as Fletcher points out, there are some places you can only go on the small expedition ships, and yes you will not have some of the things you find on bigger ships. We are going to Antarctica, the Faulklands and South Georgia island on Ponant next month. You can't do that on Oceania (which I agree has great food). I know that the ship will be smaller and the cabins tighter than what we found on a recent Seabourn Venture polar cruise. We picked Ponant originally because they have a great reputation in the Antarctic region - they have had numerous ships in those waters for years. Other lines do as well for sure, but the French cuisine was a positive! We will go with an open mind and are looking forward to the penguins and spectacular scenery. Which is why you go there anyway. Will let you know how it goes.

It was an outstanding trip! hope you enjoy it!

That is absolutely correct! Too the picture from the TV feed of the bridge cam!

Thanks all for the information. From the Seabourn threat it sounds like the Venture NW passage trip was also plagued by some of the same paperwork issues and weather cancellations. But it sounded from the Facebook and CC posts that service at least held up. We are on Boreal Nov 22nd for the Great Austral Loop and hopeful that Ponant will be back on their game by then.

We were on the Aug 21 sailing from Reykjavik where we were joined by a big crew of folks from corporate in Seattle including President Josh Leibowitz. I didn't notice any smoking by the sky bar, but that does not mean it wasn't happening. Folks onboard gave Josh and the team plenty of "feedback", will be interesting to see if anything comes of it other than the smoking thing. They held a Q and A one evening- I asked what they had learned from their onboard experience that would cause them to make changes. Josh turned to one of the senior guys on the stage with him and said- we clearly need to improve communications and handed over the mike. That is indeed a weakness, will be interesting to see if anything happens.

For others onboard, please chime in! It’s the second full day onboard. Big corporate contingent from HQ including the big boss Josh Liebowitz himself. Glad to see they are experiencing the product firsthand. Josh and a few others from the leadership team were on our excursion to Vigur Island this morning. Dressed like everyone else trying to blend in. So far we are enjoying the ship, small things that could be improved but in the big picture it is fantastic. Will post more later but here is a photo from night one.