spinnaker2

Enjoy Dutch Harbor. Lots of history there. Look up the book “when the wind was a River”.

6 hours ago, Silver Spectre said:

His is a big change instigated by RCI since we were on the Spirit in Feb.

Mr Silver, I am following your posts. We noticed many changes onboard our last several cruises. So many that we cancelled a long cruise. We did also write to Silversea corporate but have heard nothing. Are you of the opinion that RCI will listen to the pax who have voiced their dismay over the changes? 

Love the Rosemary garnish/swizzle stick/environmentally conscious/herbaceous add

WOW dr Ron!!!!!

Safe and enjoyable travels.

Looking forward to the foraging.

Perhaps leave a few bread crumbs for a trail back to your suite…

Have a wonderful time aboard.

When we were on the Dawn a few weeks back most pax ignored all of the sanitizers and the hand washing stations in La T. No effort from crew to direct pax to wash up. 

This is in sharp contrast to the cruises immediately post Covid when pax were directed to wash hands. 

1 hour ago, vistaman said:

I left in Civitavecchia as well and I decided not to come back to SS 

The Arts cafe was indeed very good by Iulia and her friendly team 

Poor presentation of the lunch and breakfast buffets  - poor cold cuts and cheeses cut in pieces the same every day 

poor breakfast pastries and croissants !!!

It was a full house and when several tables were ordering special wines  especially in La Terrazza  the sommeliers were drowning  1 for 120 guests   -  my 265 $ bottle was served

extremely bad  no special glasses " tulip style " for top rated Champagnes  - i informed the chief sommelier 

one cabin meal : 50 minutes waiting time  and cold ( not lukewarm ) 

a lot of alcohol but poaring measures were too small - i did ask for several  double GT   - glasses too small for a real long drink

 

SALT  : local cuisine but no local purchase  I went to food market in Sète , Monaco , St Tropez and Livorno - no sign of somebody from the ship to buy something 

poor fruits as well : white melon  yellow melon water melon   and caned fruits 

I went to buy strawberries , blood oranges  those french red apples French cheese  and a few slices of home made ham at a local butcher store

Duck liver terrine by Rougié removed from Atlantide menu obviously to deviate guests to La Dame 

poor flower garnishments   pots with green small plants ???

Invisible captain , lady hotel director not approachable ,  and very obnoxious cruise director  - SS deviate the very good one to the Muse 

Endured a few bad cocktails as well  - sent back 2 and took another 2 "to my cabin " otherwise said into the sink 

bed linnen was very ok but towels were overused thin and not soft anymore  - cutlery also overused full of scratches 

 Newly appointed CEO can continue with the economising ...😝

Back to "my "Europa 2  asap  😀

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vista I was waiting to hear about your experience on the Dawn. Thanks for posting. I am sorry that your experience seems to be consistent with ours, days earlier.

We too are looking elsewhere. After years of sailing with Silversea, the handwriting is on the wall. 

I think there are many crew and Silversea personnel who would go to Crystal right now. We are looking at Crystal. 

2 hours ago, DavyWavey70 said:

Let’s hope they don’t waste the cardboard ones. Could they use them as coasters for a while?

I think they already did

1 minute ago, Capt.F said:

You can expect that Barbara will be moving to a brand that needs love and care.

This has been in the works for a while.

Changes to the Silversea brand as many of us have been fortunate to enjoy was inevitable with Royal Caribbean calling the shots. 
Bottom line, onboard spending to increased revenue is the RCG corporate culture.

To those of us who have enjoyed Silversea for putting guests first always shouldn’t be surprised to be seeing changes. 
We wish Barbara well and fully understand why the difference in corporate culture and its incompatibility to that of the former Silversea team came to this.

 

Yes all the best to Barbara. 

Hair dryer by Bentley! Kid you not.

This was not an instant thing. Been in the works for awhile, announced today.

Very sad to see her go because she was responsive to the pax and had the brand in mind.

3 hours ago, Gourmet Gal said:

A people have been worried that any relaxing of the dress code would erode the luxury experience.  Lately, many posts would indicate that SS is doing a good job of eroding the experience in so many other ways.  Really disappointing.

The Silversea experience has been deliberately and systematically eroded by the management. By penny pinching, profit taking and metric splicing,  the Royal people have eliminated the little and big touches that made Silversea seem special, and a luxury line. The product has been dumbed down so much.

Relaxing the dress code may make the pax look less elegant, but the Silversea bears the brunt of the blame for what has happened. Frankly, I do not think the management cares. The older and wiser Silversea pax of old are not valued, after all they are expendable just by virtue of age. 

1 hour ago, RetiredOnVacation said:

Hope that you are able to treasure your good memories from that TA cruise despite the small misforgivings. 

Just a thought about those fellow guests you saw on deck 5 - is it possible perhaps, that they had requested a 'day room' for a 'late check-out' and as deck 5 wasn't going to be used on charter, that SS allowed this? Just a thought! 

Not sure about the pax on deck 5.

After much thought, we have decided we cannot throw good money after bad and have cancelled our cruise on the Spirit for September - October.  We have 448 days on Silversea at the present time. We can accept change when it is for the good and the concept doesn’t change. The Silversea product has drastically changed in our opinion. 

Not on the Dawn crossing March 19- April 2.

15 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

Trip Insurance is actually very complicated and the policies vary widely so there's no simple answer.  Some companies don't require you to insure the entire trip, others do.  Call Steve at tripinsurancestore and he will educate you on the best options for your particular trip [the two times I've called him, the best policy was different each time – and he explained exactly why].

Agree about Steve and his help. Invaluable.

22 minutes ago, drron29 said:

They don't accommodate people on B2B cruises if a charter is put into the system in our experience. We had a B2B booked next year which became 2 separate cruises with 6 days in between and we were told we had to make our own arrangements for those 6 days.

I know. That is why I am wondering how they pulled this off. 

3 minutes ago, Port Power said:

Perhaps they had booked back to back, or B2B2B, so still had to be accommodated?

I tried to book the following cruise and was told no, it was chartered. 

Perhaps they became insurance salespeople?

18 minutes ago, lincslady said:

Let's hope the charter group are not going to be too fussed about seeing someone in her curlers then!  That is something I have never seen, and wouldn't wish to.  Or is she with the group?  If she was a Brit, I would guess a star of one of our soap operas, set in the northwest of England.

 

Nope she’s not a Brit. From the colonies. If the pax on the crossing weren’t bothered then…

I would guess that the charter group, who are from an insurance company, will be too busy with imbibing and foraging (from what I have been told).

Today is their last day or maybe tomorrow. 

Hope we hear from Vistaman.

Home sweet home. Decompressing from the cruise and the return travel. 

We booked nothing onboard for the future. There was a time when we would always have a future cruise booked onboard.

Processing final thoughts. 

Some trivial information: We had been told while we were aboard that decks 5 and 6 would have no passengers on the charter following our cruise and all the silver suites and big suites were booked. Less than 400 pax for the charter. As we left the quay we looked back and saw several pax on their verandahs of deck 5, including a couple who had occupied a silver suite near ours on the crossing. We recognize the couple because they make themselves known at every venue, she frequently wears curlers in her hair to lunch in la T. I guess some pax who were not in the charter group were able to book the cruise. Not sure how one accomplishes that.

We have arrived in Lisbon. The Grimaldi's are here too.

The quality has been reduced. The food quality is mediocre to poor.

We never had any fruit bowl in our Silver Suite. We had but one soap when we arrived. 

So many cut backs, too numerous to list.

Running out of fresh food mid cruise. Running out of many wines mid cruise. There were ports we stopped at but no effort to restock anything.

And the attitude of yes has been replaced by nope.