sananda

There are alot of things to consider. We may even start to consider Holland America.

I would definitely consider Holland America. I have cruised to Alaska on all three lines you have mentioned. Holland America does Alaska the best. They were the first to go to Alaska and have been "grandfathered" in for many things. Simply put, Holland America is allowed to go to places and show you things in Alaska that the other cruise lines are not allowed to (for environmental concerns and other reasons).

Away from Alaska, Princess, Celebrity and Holland America are of similar quality, each with their strengths and weaknesses. In Alaska however, I would only cruise with Holland America.

We participated in the chef's table dinner on the Regal last month. It was a great dining experience.

However, signing up for the experience left a lot to be desired. As soon as we boarded we requested a reservation. They are unable to confirm a reservation, but promised to let us know the day before the Chef's table dinner would take place. They also can't tell you which day(s) they intend to have the dinner and we saw two occur before ours took place. We were actually informed the morning of the dinner. This made planning our daily schedule difficult, because we also wanted to dine in the specialty restaurants. Our turn at the chef's table occurred on a day that we had already made reservations at the crown's grill. This was our loss because there were no other available reservations left at the grill for the remainder of the cruise.

Also, the head waiter or maitre' d was aware that we wanted to do the chef's table dinner. Instead of facilitating this, he kept trying to push us into a "wine connoisseurs" dinner which cost $45 compared to the $115 for the chef's table. The menu didn't seem as exciting and we could tell that if we took the wine connoisseurs dinner, we would be excluded from the chef's table. We decided to hold out and were glad that we did.

The price does include gratuity, as Iron Maiden's No1 fan stated before.

My wife doesn't drink alcohol. I had the all inclusive package, but my wife was not required to have any package at all. My eldest son had the soda n more package, but my other son is a health nut who only drinks water and took no package. I think it is nice that Princess doesn't force everyone in a family (group) to take the same beverage package. This is not the case on a number of other lines that we have sailed together (NCL, RCCL, & Celebrity for sure).

Was on the Regal 4/10/16 - 4/17/16 out of FLL.

We do not like buffets, but were unable to eat in the MDR on embarkation day. The reason was that we were unable to get on the ship before lunch in the MDR closed. We were at the pier and in line before 11 A.M. Princess didn't actually let anyone on the ship until 12:30. The lines to check in were absolutely awful. Princess does not have a good system to process that many people onto the Regal.

The following Sunday, we were dreading disembarkation, but much to our surprise, at 8 A.M. we walked off the ship with no line, collected our bags and cleared customs in about 15 minutes.

We were on the Regal 4/10/16 - 4/17/16 for a western Caribbean cruise.

I would describe our family as "foodies". Overall, the food was fine. There were some really good dishes and some that were terrible. The good news is that the staff was amazing and they were very willing to bring you as many dishes as you wanted. We used this extensively to try everything that sounded interesting and to replace a lot of dishes that were not good at all. The one consistent trend we noticed was that the dishes tended to be very mildly seasoned and we often found them bland or "flat".

Some notes from our experience:

My wife really likes soup. She was very pleased with the variety of soup available. She thought some were very good, and overall declared Princess as her favorite line for soup.

We are not buffet people. We did try the buffet a couple of times because the MDR was closed, or because of excursion scheduling. While there certainly was a huge selection, and we never noticed much crowding, we were not impressed. To our taste, the dishes seemed to be the most lackluster examples we have ever tried. This was especially true of the ethnic foods.

The Chef's table was an awesome experience. Be forewarned that you need to pace yourself. I am ashamed that I wasn't able to finish it all, and only had room to pick at the cheese course and the desert.

Our meal in Sabatini's was excellent. The notable exception was the calamari. It was tough / rubbery and tasteless. The garlic aioli that accompanied the calamari was very bland, it was really just unseasoned mayonnaise. Some people at other tables complained about value and commented that most of the dishes were available on other nights in the MDR. While I agree that some dishes were available in the MDR, the Sabatini versions were much more flavorful and none of the signature dishes were ever available in the MDR. Also, the atmosphere in Sabatini's was superior to the MDR.

The Crown grill was superb, top to bottom.

Within the MDR, the Curtis Stone selections were the same every night. We never tried any of them until the last night because there were always other things that sounded more interesting. They were ok, but they seem to be trying to jazz up lesser ingredients with this celebrity chef's menu (eg. Curtis Stone offered a flank stank, but there was always a NY strip, tenderloin, filet mignon, or prime rib offered at the same time).

Our favorite dishes in the MDR were the lobster thermidor, prime rib and escargot.

Emperor Norton - Setting aside Pepin because you didn't like the food on Oceania, I still think there are a lot of celebrity chefs on cruise lines that have been successful. You can start with the previously mentioned Nobuyuki Matsuhisa, who has translated very well on Crystal or Jean-Pierre Vigato from the world renowned Apicius who's signature menus aboard Paul Gaugin are spectacular. Disney has Arnaud Lallement a Michelin rated chef for their Remy restaurant (no idea if it's any good). NCL has Geoffrey Zakarian and the seafood at Ocean Blue was very good.

More to the point, I think that Carnival corp is completely committed to celebrity chefs on their lines.

1. Carnival has Guy Fieri and his burger joint.

2. Cunard has Todd English and his restaurants aboard the Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria. Really enjoyed my meal here.

3. Holland America has Craig Hopson of Le Cirque. You can get Le Cirque's most well known dishes in the Pinnacle Grill and they were excellent.

4. P & O has two Michelin rated chefs, Marco White and Atul Kochhur. I really liked the modern Indian at Sindhu.

5. Princess has Curtis Stone and his dishes in the MDR have been delicious.

By almost all accounts the Thomas Keller dishes have been a poor pairing with Seabourn. I think Carnival is capable of bringing celebrity chef cuisine aboard their lines. It's puzzling why Seabourn has failed to make Keller's cuisine a delightful pleasure for its passengers.

I had a balcony cabin on Marina deck beneath the Horizon Court. It was AWFUL! Initially, I thought, "Couldn't be bad because there's carpeting and sound insulation." Wrong! Starting at 3:30am every morning, the sounds from above were like they were in my ceiling. I can't imagine how bad it would be beneath open deck but I have no desire to find out. Maybe it's just poor sound insulation on the Royal (and, I assume) the Regal but it was so bad I'd rather not cruise than have a cabin that's not beneath another cabin. And that's saying a lot.

I wholeheartedly concur with Pam.

dmdiver- I would be worried about the location of your rooms. They are below the pool deck very near the Trident grill. The layout constricts the walking path to be right above your rooms. I would expect a lot of noise during the day. At night, it will depend on how heavy footed your fellow passengers are.

Our most memorable tour was the Mayan ruins at Chacchoben that we took on our honeymoon Princess cruise, oh so many years before.

The first thing that made it memorable was our bus guide Joel (pronounced hhhhuh-o-well). He sounded like a caricature (like that slow mouse from Speedy Gonzales). He proceeded to talk non-stop for the entire bus ride to the ruins, which would have been great if he had anything informative to say. His dialogue consisted of pointing at things out the window (mostly plants) and then rhetorically asking if we knew what it was (eg. Over there are Yucca plants. Do you know what a Yucca plant is?) He would then immediately say "It's like this, or that, or something." It would not surprise me if he said "It's like this, or that, or something" more than 1,000 times during the bus ride. To this day, my wife or I will mimic Joel's "This, or that, or something" and we'll still find it amusing.

The second thing that made the excursion memorable was the ruins. We had already seen Tulum and Chichen Itza on other trips. These ruins were highly commercialized when we went. Chacchoben was completely the opposite. The site was so new, the port-a-potties hadn't shown up yet. We also had a new guide for the ruins who was an archaeology student from the University. She was very knowledgeable. It was amazing to see everything while they were still in the process of excavating the site. Many "hills" were actually more pyramids covered in jungle growth that they hadn't got to yet. Best yet, nothing was off limits, nothing was roped off. We got to climb up and down all the pyramids, go inside anything we wanted to and touch and closely examine everything. So much more enjoyable than the highly developed sites.

All things considered, we had a fantastic time.

I have never stayed in this particular cabin, however, I have stayed in a mini suite on the Marina deck. The cabins I chose were more towards the front, with only other passenger cabins above them.

I would avoid M428 myself. I like quiet and privacy, and the location of M428 scares me. You see, the Lido deck is directly above the Marina deck. M428 is directly below the pool area, near the main elevators, and near the entrance to the buffet. All of these things will make the room too noisy for me. Lots of scraping chair noise. To top it off, your balcony is below the Seawalk, so a lot of people will be looking down into your balcony, or at least, noisily discussing the incredible view while you are out on the balcony.

My two cents. I am sure others will disagree.

I am not really sure that I understand the obsession with the meat quality. The USDA rates beef as select, choice and prime. This is a very subjective rating system, and it is not unusual for ten different trained agents to have very different opinions about the same meat. Given your business, you might be better than the average person at eyeballing cuts of meat and guessing their USDA rating. However, I guarantee that guessing the USDA rating after the meat has been cooked is impossible. USDA prime that has been stored poorly, handled poorly and prepared poorly will easily taste worse than select that has been stored, handled and prepared well.

I would have less skepticism towards your review if you had said the beef was tough and tasteless, or if you had said the desserts tasted processed and were so uniform they appeared factory made. Although you maintain your review has nothing to do with money, it is clear that you are bothered that you paid $800 more for the Princess cruise than the Celebrity cruise you really wanted. Mentioning low-rent passengers, USDA Choice and Sysco (all things associated with cheapness) further highlights how important cost is to your happiness.

I wish you the best of luck finding better value on your future cruises

At the beginning of my post, I gave you the source for the wine prices. http://www.wine-searcher.com I also said that Amazon is cheaper than wine searcher but has less of a selection. Look for yourself, nothing was intentionally deceptive.

I find it humorous that the thread is veering away from the real issue by focusing on the accuracy of the prices. The real issue is how can Seabourn serve $8 bottles of wine and claim to be luxurious with a straight face.

I firmly believe in the old adage "You get what you pay for." So I decided to look up the current price of these wines in wine searcher. This is a good source because it shows prices from brick and mortar stores. You can get better prices with Amazon, but wine searcher will find more unusual things. So here it is:

WHITES

Santa Margharita Pinot Grigio ( Italy) $10.99

Gruber Roschitz Dry Reisling (Austria) $11.99

Wingspan Sauvignon Blanc( NZ) $6.70

Oyster Bay Sauvignon Blanc (NZ) $8.47

Frontera Sauvignon Blanc ( Chile) $4.98

Stags Leap Chardonnay ( USA) $17.99

Pascal Bouchard Petit Chablis ( France) $22.99

Chateau Saint Armand Sauternes( France) Unavailable

RED

Jamieson Ranch Pinot Noir ( California) $8.99

Castello Banfi Chianti ( Italy) $4.01

Bodegas Lan Rioja ( Spain) $6.60

Tall Sage Cabernet Sauvignon (Washington State) unavailable

Domaine Sas, Du Plo Corbieres ( France) $8.58

Zolo Malbec (Argentina) $9.95

Constentine Zinfandel (California) unavailable

Kendall Jackson Avant Cabernet Sauvignon (Caslifornia) $16.24

Penfolds Koonunga Hill Shiraz/Cab ( Australia) $6.78

Goose Ridge Cabernet ( Washington State) $10.99

BLUSH/ROSE

Beringer White Zin ( California) $3.57

Barton Guestier Cote du Provence ( France) $5.99

Centine Banfi Toscano ( Italy) $4.01

CHAMPAGNE /SPARKLING

Nicholas Feuillate ( France) $10.86

Cantine Maschio Prosecco ( Italy) $3.99

Average price per bottle of Seabourn's wines = $8.25

Wow! What "luxury". Aren't you glad you paid extra for an all-inclusive experience that provides such low end wines?

Able Seaman - I didn't ask anyone with Seabourn to open the MDR at 3 AM. When I boarded the ship they gave us a bunch of paperwork describing the various dining venues and their respective hours of operation. I only wanted them to open the MDR during the hours of operation they provided me. Re your second question, it's funny you should ask, because I did ask them to deliver room service to me inside the MDR as a compromise, but they refused. They said that other passengers would see me eating there and think the MDR was open and want to eat there as well.

The point I was trying to make with the hotel service examples is that true luxury properties have exceedingly well trained staff. This staff also has the leeway to think for themselves and the power to make any reasonable guest request happen. When the hotel operates the kitchen 24 hrs a day, getting some food any time of day and allowing me to sit at a proper dining table is not unreasonable. The contrast between the staff at an Aman resort and on the Sojourn and Odyssey was tremendous. I don't know how Seabourn was able to pull together such a collection of dejected, disinterested, merely going through the motions group of people. They clearly didn't want to be there.

So yes, I have spoken with my money. Seabourn (Carnival) will never get another cent.

Jenidallas, I completely agree with your post 331. Based on my experiences with Seabourn the list of things they failed to deliver upon is much larger than yours. I was hard pressed to find anything that met the level of superlative Seabourn presents in the marketing materials I received. I came away feeling the line was the most over-hyped experience that I have ever witnessed. Given the numerous things you have noticed are absent from an actual cruise, don’t you feel cheated? The victim of a well-orchestrated bait and switch marketing campaign?

But back to the original topic of this thread, I just can’t equate a buffet meal with a luxury vacation. Buffets are more suitable to the cattle crowd who are more interested in their all-you-can-eat nature and are willing to overlook the unsanitary serving conditions, the lack of any presentation as the manhandled food is slopped onto your plate, and most importantly, the decrease in food quality and quality of preparation when compared to a made to order dining experience. Not to mention the decreased quality of service and noisy, unrelaxing atmosphere.

So when Seabourn arbitrarily forced me to eat in the Collonade for breakfast I had a problem. When I asked them to open the MDR and they refused I had a problem. When I complained to the director and pointed out that they were not delivering the experience they hype on their website, including the MDR serving all three meals, and they did nothing but say sorry, I had a big problem. This is a luxury vacation? Not only were they providing an inferior product, but Seabourn’s service was far below industry standard on other main-stream cruise lines.

To illustrate what I deem to be high quality service worthy of a luxury establishment, let me relate my experience with hotels. I travel a lot for business. Often, my internal clock is completely out of whack with local time. It is a somewhat common occurrence that I would like to eat in the middle of the night local time. I do not like room service and want to eat in the hotel’s restaurant. It doesn’t matter why I don’t like room service. That is not the point. Consider two very different service experiences.

I frequently stay at Hyatt hotels. I have the highest level status possible in their rewards programs. I repeatedly stay at the same properties where almost everyone knows me by name. When I ask them to open the restaurant for me at 3 A.M., there is much hand wringing, explaining of the difficulties for them to re-open the restaurant and lots of apologizing. In the end, the answer is a very polite no. The best I can get them to do is to deliver room service to the lobby.

When I vacation with Aman resorts, it is often my first time at the property and nobody knows me by sight. I am just a simple customer. When I ask them to open the restaurant in the middle of the night, a litany of excuses doesn’t spew forth from their mouths. The answer is always “Yes sir. Right away sir. We are so sorry we didn’t anticipate your need to make use of our restaurant at this time of night.” And then they somehow make it happen.

This is the very real difference between the high quality service of a true luxury property and that of a property that is only luxurious in its marketing materials. Seabourn is clearly luxurious in name only.

It is not a matter of starving or not.

It is a matter of getting what you paid for. It is a matter of getting what Seabourn advertises as your cruise experience and then fails to deliver. It is a matter of meeting minimal industry standards. If HAL can somehow manage to operate the MDR every day for every meal, why can't Seabourn manage? If bottom of the barrel cruise lines like Carnival can afford to operate their MDR for every meal, why can't the wonderfully stupendous "luxury" line Seabourn?

Name another major cruise line that routinely closes the MDR for any meal. What a joke of a company.

If Seabourn regulars don't push back and push back hard, who knows what else they may decide to cut. Worse yet, these terrible decisions may carry over to other cruise lines when their bean counters see how much money was saved.

It has been amusing to see how all the Seabourn cheerleaders and apologists have tried to downplay this issue. Pointing out the various alternatives to the MDR that one has at breakfast and lunch.

Simply put, it is laughable to claim any cruise line is luxurious when they are too cheap to provide breakfast and lunch in their MDR. Even though all their marketing materials clearly state the MDR is open for all three meals. Shameful, really.

But frankly, not at all surprising. Any objective person can clearly see all the over the top cost cutting Seabourn is engaged in. It won't surprise me in the least if breakfast on Seabourn soon becomes a granola bar and a bottle of water as they usher you to your "luxurious" shuttle bus excursions.

If I may summarize the general sentiment expressed in this thread:

Only someone hopelessly naive, dopey and witless would fall for such an obvious marketing ploy. Cruise line organized excursions are inferior to what I can plan on my own and the new breed of "free" excursions will be even worse than the current offerings. These excursions will be included in the price, making my cruise experience more expensive, especially since I don't plan on participating.

I don't disagree with the general sentiment. What I am struggling with is how most of you wholeheartedly embrace certain aspects of an all-inclusive vacation, but are up in arms about one more thing (excursions) being diluted by an all-inclusive experience. My own experience has shown me that all-inclusive vacations do not have the same quality as a la carte pricing. More to the point, I can choose to spend my money on things that are important to me.

The included wines on Seabourn were abysmal. The food was not as good as what I am used to when I dine out. Etc, etc. Is the convenience of not having to sign for purchases worth suffering through a vacation with lower quality items? Not for me. And things have only become worse as more of the cruise industry has shifted towards an "all-inclusive" experience.

I find this whole thread laughably ironic.

Well, I do not. Anytime I have to shell out money onboard for a drink or wine or bottled water it is not a luxury experience. Even Windstar does not describe itself as a luxury line.

I don't see why paying for drinks constitutes a non-luxury experience. By this definition the Four Seasons is not luxurious. With Seabourn, you still payed for your drinks. You just did so up front and have limited your choices to the included list.

Thanks for the info Seabourntraveller. I didn't get an e-mail though. What's your e-mail? I might have to white list you to get through the spam filters.

We have booked and paid in full for a cruise leaving April 6 on the Sojourn. We are first time traveller's on Seabourn and I only discovered this thread today. Is it too late to use a referral coupoun if I have already paid in full? If not, I would be grateful if someone would like to share one with me. My email is sananda at wisc dot edu

Thanks for the help