Meet & Mingle

[duct tape]

How's the Serenity, we will also be on that segment. I just went to the Roll Calls and found one from Melisa from May 16. I signed up. I didn't see yours. As stated above, very little of the SS sailing population knows about CruiseCritic and even fewer make use of the RollCall .(IMO) since it is a relatively new feature. Welcome aboard the CC boards and see you in NYC!

[lindacat9319]

Hi,

Sailing on the Whisper July 12th on the Baltic cruise. We have a tripe cabin and were notified that we met the minimum for a meet and mingle too!

Looking forward to meeting fellow world travelers~

St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Tallin, Copenhagen here we come!

:)

[Hows the Serenity]

Thank you Rosepark and Duct Tape,

I feel much better now, I really did think I had offended by maybe being too forward in my enthusiasm. I did not know that the roll calls were a new innovation.

The URL for the roll call I instigated is below

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1610402

Thank you again Guys

Chris

[Stumblefoot]

Very pleased to report that Cruise Critic confirmed via email that our June 9 voyage aboard the Cloud has met the 6-person minimum for the Meet & Mingle. Looking forward to experiencing this nice gesture!

Odd... One week after receiving confirmation, today received an email saying that our voyage didn't meet the minimum requirements with no further explanation. Looks like a bug in the system to me. But, maybe someone cancelled out after receiving the confirmation email.

[wagwag22]

Dear How's

Please dont feel either rejected or concerned about the lack of a response to your roll call request.

The vast majority of Silversea guests have never heard of Cruisecritic, never mind knowing what a rollcall or meet and mingle are. Those of us who post or lurk here form a very tiny cohort of travellers on any particular voyage. Most of your fellow passengers will, therefore, have absolutely no idea that they could link up with (possibly) kindred spirits before getting a foot wet

Silversea guests are tremendously sociable, as you will find out when you linger in any of the bars or lounges on board for more than a nanosecond. Meeting people is one of the main attractions on a SS voyage but this takes place in a fluid and rather natural way on board.

Do also bear in mind that on other cruise lines, one of the big attractions of a meet and mingle is that free drinks may be on offer. This is simply not relevant on a Silversea ship.

There is no correct or incorrect manner in which to approach rollcalls, you are not yet within the 120 day final payement period for your cruise I think, so once this has passed and bookings have been finalised, you may find more people signing up. But if not, it is not indicative of standoffishness or snobbery.

You will have a super time I am sure and what a great choice for a first cruise.

Kind regards

Rp

 

We set up a Roll Call for SS Capetown RT on the Wind for a late January 2014 departure and have had the same lack of response , as cited by Rose in a prior post. As 1st time SS cruisers, but long time cruise critic.com posters/users, this is disappointing - maybe it s a function of thr reasons you cite in your reply, coupled with the smaller # of passengers on a ship such as the Wind ?

 

Hopefully, we will get to know fellow cruisers, as we more closely approach the sailing date ? We second your comments on this being the best way to socialize before sail away.

[NJ Jim]

We signed up for the meet and mingle on our recent cruise, and were told the minimum was met and it would be scheduled. That was the last we heard about the gathering - no notice while on board. I've no idea whether it went off and we missed out, or whether it failed to be scheduled.

[Stumblefoot]

Very pleased to report that Cruise Critic confirmed via email that our June 9 voyage aboard the Cloud has met the 6-person minimum for the Meet & Mingle. Looking forward to experiencing this nice gesture!

 

Odd... One week after receiving confirmation, today received an email saying that our voyage didn't meet the minimum requirements with no further explanation. Looks like a bug in the system to me. But, maybe someone cancelled out after receiving the confirmation email.

 

The Cruise Critic Meet & Mingle system is definitely buggy. Just received the following message below after CC had previously confirmed, then cancelled, our Meet & Mingle.

 

"Welcome home Stumblefoot:

 

We hope you had a wonderful time on board your Silver Cloud cruise, and that you enjoyed meeting your fellow Cruise Critic members at the Meet & Mingle party. Please let us know if you have any suggestions or feedback; we're always interested in what our members are thinking!

 

Laura Sterling

Sr. Manager, Community

Cruise Critic / Independent Traveler / Family Vacation Critic

Interactive Travel Communities"

[WesW]

Hi Stumblefoot,

 

Have energized Silversea to fix (now Frank Sansone (senior SS exec), and Ellen Bettride (President of SS/Americas) Exec Assit is working on the fix from the SS end.

 

Received the note below from Laura earlier when I informed CC of the problems with the execution of the meet & mingle once on board despite the CC system alerting you that you have met the six person threshold for a M/M. In the meantime, will go back to my own organization of our Cloud M/M next month. If there are M/M invites in our suite on board then will deconflict the time I have organizaed (July 18th, 6pm) with what the Cloud cruise consultant (person on board responsible for organizing the M/M's) has set up.

 

Hello Wes:

 

 

Seems the person handling this over at Silversea "left". I'm now in contact with someone new and everything is back to normal.

 

 

 

LauraS

Senior Manager, Community

Cruise Critic

http://www.cruisecritic.com

[harbormaster]

Got the same email and we did not have a Meet and Mingle on the Shadow either.

[WesW]

Kathy, my take after hearing from SS leadership and CC leadership (per laura's note above) is that the SS person in charge of coordinating (CC's M/M info/data) with the ship's point person (e.g., cruise consultant) left, and SS had no backup. We'll see first hand in July if the new SS & CC meet & mingle program is working. Hope others now on board SS or who will board in next month also report back on status of their meet & mingles set up with CC.

[Stumblefoot]

Thanks Wes! Glad to see CC is working with a new individual for voyages forthcoming in the next few weeks.

[duct tape]

I think it would be Frank Sansone who has picked up the VS after Mark left.

[WesW]

Heard back from Wellseasoned (now on board the Cloud) this morning that the Cloud's Cruise Consultant Karl has received instructions from SS Headquarters that he will get the Meet&Mingle information from them from now on. Carl has now organized the M/M for Wellseasoned's current voyage. Am comfortable Silversea has now got the Cruise Critic and Silversea meet & mingle program back on track.

[NJ Jim]

We interacted twice with Carl on our recent Cloud trip, including dining with him one night, and I would think that having someone like him organize the M & Ms makes sense. I don't know if it is intended, but he has a good reason to join the gathering. He is, however, sufficiently restrained from promoting future trips that the event won't be distorted from its intended purpose of enabling CC members put faces to names. Assuming there are similar minded cruise consultants on other ships, and there is continuity of communication from CC to SS, this should work. Nice effort, Wes, in righting the M & M ship!

[oregon50]

Assuming there are similar minded cruise consultants on other ships, and there is continuity of communication from CC to SS, this should work. Nice effort, Wes, in righting the M & M ship!

 

That would be a poor assumption. It's a sharp drop from Carl to second place and he is light years ahead of the bottom.

[gdlamberth]

As an aside to all this and not meaning to highjack the thread:o; I wanted to share an observation I posted on our "Roll Call" thread.

 

Between now and the end of October the Shadow only has two M&Ms scheduled (12 September sailing (ours) and the 29 September immediately following). While we have 17 and the 29 Sept cruise has 14 folks signed up, the cruise immediately preceding our has only 5 (and that's just one family/group) and no other cruise in that time frame (on Shadow) even has a single person signed up.

 

I would think having these events only every now and then would make them hard to institutionalize.

 

That said, the question I asked on our Roll Call thread is: "Why are we different?" Are other ships seeing M&Ms on most every cruise? Do sign ups vary a lot by ship? Itinerary? Length of cruise?

 

These are all pretty superfluous questions; but, I couldn't help myself.

 

As Ron White said: I had the right to remain silent........but not the ability!:D

 

Greg

[Older Party]

As an aside to all this and not meaning to highjack the thread:o; I wanted to share an observation I posted on our "Roll Call" thread.

 

Between now and the end of October the Shadow only has two M&Ms scheduled (12 September sailing (ours) and the 29 September immediately following). While we have 17 and the 29 Sept cruise has 14 folks signed up, the cruise immediately preceding our has only 5 (and that's just one family/group) and no other cruise in that time frame (on Shadow) even has a single person signed up.

 

I would think having these events only every now and then would make them hard to institutionalize.

 

That said, the question I asked on our Roll Call thread is: "Why are we different?" Are other ships seeing M&Ms on most every cruise? Do sign ups vary a lot by ship? Itinerary? Length of cruise?

 

These are all pretty superfluous questions; but, I couldn't help myself.

 

As Ron White said: I had the right to remain silent........but not the ability!:D

 

Greg

 

It was a year a half ago when I was on the Shadow so maybe things have changed, but I asked every person I met, including VS members, if they read or posted to CC and not a single person even knew what Cruise Critic was. Had there been a Meet and Greet policy during my cruise, there wouldn't have been a single person sign up for it. My hunch is that the majority who sail with Silversea have no interest in the internet, blogging, etc. This form of communication is not a part of their daily lives so any Meet and Greet is probably going to continue to have low turnouts, that is until the younger set who are just now discovering Silversea starts cruising more.

[gdlamberth]

It was a year a half ago when I was on the Shadow so maybe things have changed, but I asked every person I met, including VS members, if they read or posted to CC and not a single person even knew what Cruise Critic was. Had there been a Meet and Greet policy during my cruise, there wouldn't have been a single person sign up for it. My hunch is that the majority who sail with Silversea have no interest in the internet, blogging, etc. This form of communication is not a part of their daily lives so any Meet and Greet is probably going to continue to have low turnouts, that is until the younger set who are just now discovering Silversea starts cruising more.

 

The low turn outs didn't surprise me at all. The thought had occurred to me that there aren't really as many CC members out there as we'd like to think:rolleyes:. That would seem to forecast low turnouts across the board. What did surprise me was the large turnout (I consider 16-17 "large" for a ship the size of Shadow) for two specific cruises. So, what phenomenon resulted in 17 for one cruise and 16 on the next but little interest/awareness on either side? Chance? Mathematically, that's a stretch. I still think there is some demographic related to ship/itinerary/time of year, something, that causes this grouping. On our Roll Call thread one idea put forth was that these two cruises (Vancouver to Tokyo and Tokyo to Shanghai) attract a more adventuresome traveler and that this demographic might be more likely to be a CC member in the first case and more interested in meeting their fellow travelers than the average cruiser.

 

I really have no idea what the answer may be, that's why I was asking what turn outs folks are seeing on other SS cruises. My limited experience on "mass market" lines is that these bigger ships turn out 40-50 for the CC M&Ms (sort of a 1-2% number, assuming a full ship). The two Shadow cruises with M&Ms are up in the 4-5% of pax capacity range.

 

The numbers just struck me as odd to the point of a causal relationship might exist.

 

Greg

[WesW]

Greg, our experience with Meet & Mingles on Silversea or Regent in last two years has been good. Turnout was based on the activity level of your respective roll call, M/M organizational skills (Ship leadership's participation as well). For example: at our April Spring 2013 Spirit fall crossing our CCr/s and some SS leaders smiling faces (we had 20 folks attend a half dozen that missed the M/M for the enrichment lecture):

 

 

We now have 14 CCrs that RSVPd for our July 18th Meet & Mingle (our RSVP system), 8 signed up for SS/CC Meet & Mingle system. We have 22 signed up for our Spirit Fall crossing using CC/SS meet & mingle sign up system, over 30 on system I use. . Bet we get over 20 CCrs to attend the M/M for our cloud voyage in July (will post pix) and over 30 CCrs for our Fall crossing M/N on the spirit.

 

Recall, this new program is just over a month old and will take time for CC posters to learn of this new program & sign up as they post on the roll call. Do note other roll call members are gently reminding folks to sign up for this new CC/SS Meet & Mingle on numerous roll call threads.

 

Thus, our experience on both SS and Regent the last two years has been about 25CCrs attend these M/M. For our April 2012 Athens to Istanbul cruise on Regent's Voyager we had about 25 Ccrs:

 

 

On our last December Mumbai to Bali voyage on Regent we again had over 25 CCrs attend our Meet & Mingls, few pix:

 

 

 

A wonderful second order effect of these CC meet & mingles is the cruise friendships that blossom on board (shared pre dinner drinks, trivia play, sharing excursions, and many shared dinners). The fabulous third order effect for Ida and I is the truly lasting friendships we have made with SS CCrs (Wellseasoned/Dieter & Debbie; Dougburns/Doug and Lynn, EnglishUSA/David, bsrkent/Barb & Steve--we have even spent weekends at the home of these CCrs long after our first cruise. All of these CCrs (and RachelG from our Spring Spirit Crossing) have also booked future SS cruises together---the big win for SS for sponsoring the M/M.

[duct tape]

Greg, as Wes said, it is new and will take time. Also agree that many SS cruisers never heard of CC. Previous M&Ms have always been initiated by a CC poster. I also am not a fan of splitting SS discussion boards and Roll Calls. I fought it for a long time but lost the battle! I think people get lost in the transition. Go Navy!

[WesW]

off topic but methinks y'all Navy fans need a separate thread on the Goat forum board :)

[Hows the Serenity]

Hi,

As a new cruiser (Oct our very first cruise), how does one know how many people sign up for the meet & mingle on our particular cruise?

Chris:)

[WesW]

How's the Serenity, Kudos for booking your first cruise, but prepared to be spoiled and then addicted to Silversea. Since the Whisper will be your first cruise, you may want to look at this thread, "Our tips for first timers:"

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1826226

 

To find out how many CCrs are signed up for your meet & mingle, please try these steps:

 

1. Click on Meet & MIngle link at top of the Roll Call thread

2. Click on hot link in red at bottom of page, Silversea Meet and MIngle.

3. Use drop down menu, Register for a party, select your ship (put the Whisper in this menu)

4. At bottom of this new page look for this: and put in your sailing date, current #'s for your meet & mingle when show up at next page (pls see last below)

 

Hope this helps

 

Search for a Meet & Mingle

Wondering how close you are to a Silversea Cruises Meet & Mingle party? Select a ship and sail date and see how many Cruise Critic Members have already signed up.

Ship: Silver Spirit

Sail Date:

Silver Spirit - 11/09/13

The following Cruise Critic members have signed up for this Meet & Mingle party:

critics0001 # in party: 2

Colonel(Ret.)Wes # in party: 2

Emtbsam # in party: 2

Wellseasoned # in party: 2

AtMaui # in party: 3

dougburns # in party: 2

spinnaker2 # in party: 2

Dr. P # in party: 2

greygypsy # in party: 2

Delilah21 # in party: 1

bsrkent # in party: 2

The current party tally is 22. If the party reaches a tally of 6 Silversea Cruises will hold a Meet & Mingle party onboard!

[Hows the Serenity]

Thank you Wes,

I found it and we have 6, a quorum me thinks........

Counting the days

Chris

[mrscrab]

I heard via email today that there are the required 6 passengers for a M & M. We are on the TA crossing from Barcelona to Barbados on the Cloud October 25.

It didn't take very long once I had registered. Hope to see more there.