Live from the Spirit for a special family celebration

[boblerm]

Our 1:34 flight is now scheduled for 9:06.  Gotta love Jet Blue.😩

[jpalbny]

Sorry about your delay. Bummer of an end to your fun vacation. I was sad enough that your trip was over but this really stinks. Hope you can find some way to pass the time.

 

BTW. A côte à l'os is just the French name for a bone-in steak. Fancy...but it rough translates to a "side [of beef] on the bone" I think. 

 

 Yum! Now I am craving one. Was it good?

Edited February 22, 2019 by jpalbny

[liptastic]

Bob thanks to you all for a wonderful happy live thread. A pleasure to read each day with your lovely family sharing a special cruise. Hurry back for the next cruise . Thanks again and safe travels home. Hope the flight delay doesn’t get longer.    Jean.

[Got2Cruise]

Bob, your photos tell it all. Look at those smiling faces. Thanks for sharing. We’re beach people also and that itinerary looks awesome. Happy Birthday to Jeannie!  

[TLCOhio]

On 2/17/2019 at 2:30 PM, boblerm said:

Today we are in St Barts.  Noah enjoyed the tender ride in, looking at the "b-i-i-g boats!" 

We walked to Shell Beach, a pleasant walk of perhaps 20 minutes from the tender pier. Less most likely if one is not pushing a baby in a stroller, and no one in the party obsessively compulsively stops every 30 seconds or so to snap photos. But there is a large sandy area

 

 

Appreciate all of these nice visuals and details from your family "adventure" in the Caribbean.  Liked seeing these visuals from Shell Beach on St. Barts.  This brough back nice memories from our visiting there four years ago.  Some of your other locations are on our future "to-do" list.  Wonderful sharing from your fun trip. 

 

THANKS!  Enjoy!  Terry in Ohio

 

Amazon River-Caribbean 2015 adventure live/blog starting in Barbados. Many visuals from this amazing river and Caribbean Islands (Dutch ABC's, St. Barts, Dominica, Grenada, San Juan, etc.).  Now at 62,963 views:

www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2157696

[boblerm]

23 hours ago, jpalbny said:

BTW. A côte à l'os is just the French name for a bone-in steak. Fancy...but it rough translates to a "side [of beef] on the bone" I think. 

 

 Yum! Now I am craving one. Was it good?

jpalbany, it was very good, and very large, whoever orders it can give everyone else at the table a sample.  I think we all agreed, however, that the filet mignon was the best of the steak selections, certainly the most tender.

 

2 hours ago, TLCOhio said:

Appreciate all of these nice visuals and details from your family "adventure" in the Caribbean.  Liked seeing these visuals from Shell Beach on St. Barts.  This brough back nice memories from our visiting there four years ago.  Some of your other locations are on our future "to-do" list.  Wonderful sharing from your fun trip. 

 

Terry, I appreciate your remarks, I always love following your reports and great photos.

 

22 hours ago, liptastic said:

Bob thanks to you all for a wonderful happy live thread. A pleasure to read each day with your lovely family sharing a special cruise. Hurry back for the next cruise . Thanks again and safe travels home. Hope the flight delay doesn’t get longer.    Jean.

 

3 hours ago, Got2Cruise said:

Bob, your photos tell it all. Look at those smiling faces. Thanks for sharing. We’re beach people also and that itinerary looks awesome. Happy Birthday to Jeannie!  

Thank you, Jean  and Got2Cruise, well we finally made it home at 2 AM, a mere 9 hours later than expected.  But the good news is.....we missed the rush hour traffic!

We were fortunate that there was a Priority Pass lounge in our terminal, so that at least we were able to pass our time in relative comfort.

[boblerm]

Summing up

When I do a trip report, I tend to emphasize the positive, and normally do not dwell on any little glitches, missteps and foibles that are likely to be experienced on any cruise.  This is because when I am cruising, unless there is a significant problem, I try to let any negatives go.  I don’t want to waste one minute of precious cruise time to allow something relatively insignificant bring me down.  And I think this is reflected in what I write.  However in the interest of being and honest reporter, I would like to give an honest assessment my entire cruise experience. It goes without saying, but I’ll say it anyway, that what follows is our opinions only, which are not any more or less valid than anyone else’s opinion.

First, let me say that I and my entire family had a wonderful time on this cruise.  It was a perfect way to celebrate Jeannie’s special occasion, and if I had to do it all over again, I would have chosen this exact cruise to take.  That being said, here goes.

 

Ship

The Silver Spirit is a lovely ship.  It is not glitzy or glamorous; I would characterize it as “understated elegance”.  It is a very pleasant environment.  It is also super easy to navigate around, this may be the first cruise that I have taken in which I never actually got lost!

The public areas are all very nice

I found it unusual that on the pool deck, there are almost no lounge chairs in the shade, the shaded areas are all pretty much reserved for chairs and tables.  There were no days at sea on this cruise; perhaps it is different when there are.

 

 

 

Accommodation

We found our Deluxe Veranda Suite to be very comfortable.  It is of good size, and there is adequate storage.  The bathroom is a bit on the small side, but not bad.  The bathtub is cavernous.

This was a perfect suite in which to bring a little one.  The veranda curtain and the curtain separating the living area from the sleeping area are completely black out, so that when closed, it is almost like being in separate rooms.  The TV is in the living area where the crib was placed, so whoever was babysitting sat in our room next door, we used a baby monitor to watch Noah while we relaxed there.  Having a net placed over the veranda rail was reassuring.

 

 

Dining

This, I think, is Silversea’s strongest suit.  All of our dinners were greatly enjoyed by all, and the choices for dining are incredible. As I indicated, some of the venues are truly unique for cruising as far as I know.  I regret that I didn’t have a chance to sample Seishin or Silver Note for dinner, but it was only a 7 day cruise, and some venues are just not suitable for even a very well behaved  2 year old.  Service in the restaurants was consistently good.

For breakfast, we prefer buffets, and for lunch, buffets and/or pool grill.  The buffets in La Veranda were very good. It is helpful to have long arms, however

 

 

I appreciate the "smixin" hand hygiene stations.

 

 

The pool grill was disappointing both in quality and in choices.  (I am not referring to the evening grill, just the lunch)

 

 

Service

We were truly blown away in how well our little Noah was accommodated.  The staff went out of their way to make sure that his needs were met.  A high chair was always either on hand, or a quickly made available.  Noah tends to do great in restaurants provided that he is not kept waiting too long to get something to nibble on.  The wait staff consistently took and brought an order of something that he likes very quickly, even if it was not something that was available in that particular venue.  They were always coming up to him to say hi, and to ask if there was anything that he needed.  So kudos for the Spirit staff for that.

As far as the rest of the service is concerned, other than in restaurants, I would say that it was good, but I was not blown away.  I just did not have the impression that they were there to go the extra mile to make passengers feel special.  A few cases in point:

·        On one occasion, I was pulling a lounge chair to a shady spot on the pool deck where there was plenty of room, but no loungers.  There was a pool attendant nearby, I would have expected him to say “let me do that for you sir”, he did not.  To be clear, I was perfectly capable of doing this on my own, and if I needed help, I would have asked for it.  I just found it surprising.

 

·        I ordered a drink at the pool bar.  The bartender put a lime on the edge of the glass, which fell on the counter.  I assumed he would throw it out and place a new one, but nope.  Back on the glass.

 

·        During our dinner at the Grill, there were no towels in the men’s room.  I have not encountered that on a luxury cruise before, but ok, anything can happen once.  On our last night in the men’s room outside of the restaurants on deck 4, no soap, no towels.  Jeannie told me that she encountered that in the lady’s room more than once.  Sorry, this does not scream "luxury".  There needs to be a schedule for servicing restrooms, apparently, there is not.

 

·        On 2 occasions, simple requests were not granted.  Nothing important, no biggies, I was just surprised. On a luxury cruise, I am used to hearing “of course, sir”.

 

Our butler was….ok.  We are pretty low maintenance, and rarely find need for butler services, but on other cruise lines when we had butlers, they were generally around frequently and offering to do stuff for us.  We met our butler on day 1, he was very nice, but rarely saw him afterward.  Again, if we needed him, we knew where to find him, just surprising.

In fairness, I must add that while I personally have not had these issues on other luxury lines, I read a lot of trip reports, and occasionally, members will post these issues on all cruise line forums, it could be the vagaries of any particular cruise, staff turnover, who knows?  I am not going to judge service on Silversea in general based on one cruise.

 

Entertainment

Oh dear, what can I say?  This is clearly not a priority for Silversea.  The production team consisted of 6 singers, and they had nice voices.  No dancers.  The singers danced as well, or tried to.  Choreography - not even a serious attempt.  To be fair, the stage is probably too small for anything elaborate, but still.  The shows were either the 6 of them singing, or 1 of them in a cabaret show.  No production shows, no costumes, no scenery.  No specialty acts, comedians, virtuoso performers, etc.  No  “signature orchestra”, as every other cruise I can remember being on has, they sang accompanied by recorded music. The good news is that you can walk in at the last minute and get primo seats, as the shows are very poorly attended.

But we loved Claudette!

For this particular cruise, this was not a problem for us.  We were more focused on family time, and we would not bring Noah to shows in any event.  And I totally get that some people could not care less about cruise ship entertainment.  But for those who consider this a big part of their cruise experience, this would be problematic.

 

 

Internet

I would rate the internet service on this cruise as “not horrible”.  For a cruise ship, this is actually a rave review.  There were rarely times of no service, and loading web pages was relatively fast.  However, I found that loading a full size image from my phone for posting was pretty much impossible, I had to use an image resizing app, and then it was not a problem.

I was very happy with the method of connecting, you just brought up the web page and click "start" and you are done.  No need for entering username and password each time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You are allowed one device at a time per guest, not per stateroom. Not at all a problem, if you try to log in with a second device, you get a message that clicking  " start"  switches you.

 

 

Easy Peasy.

 

 

Destination Services

We only took a few excursions, but were well pleased with the ones that we did.  The destination staff was very courteous, and helpful any time questions about ports were asked.  I love the fact that for ports in which we were docked, excursions met  on the pier, no need to wait in a theater for them to call your number.

 

Embarkation/Disembarkation

Could not have been easier.

 

So, will we cruise on Silversea again?  Yes, I think, more than likely we will, if we come across a great itinerary where the timing is just right.  But I would be less than honest if I did not say that we would first check out a line that is a better fit for us.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record….. At the risk of sounding like a broken record….At the risk….  We had a wonderful time on this cruise, nothing that I have mentioned here should be construed otherwise, none of the issues that I point out here had any major impact on anyone's enjoyment. I only report on them for the sake of candor.

Thanks to all that have been following, and for all that have posted their well wishes, they are greatly appreciated!

Bob

 

 

 

 

[Lois R]

Hi Bob, thanks for taking us  along with you.  I appreciate the summery and I agree with  many of your points......no towels or soap in the bathroom? That would get a BIG thumbs down from me.  I am the type of person who would find someone (either Guest Relations or someone who was at the pool) and let them know that someone needs to be checking the bathrooms....towels, soap, etc must be checked!...…..I would say it respectfully but someone needs to do their job. Someone dropped the ball for sure.

 

But I am glad you and the family had a good time

 

[Stumblefoot]

Bob,

 

Appreciate your balanced review.  Thanks for sharing.

 

It is amazing how “different” service can be from ship-to-ship, which falls under the purview of the Hotel Director.  Many of the minor irritants you experienced just didn’t occur on our Shadow voyage taken at the same time as your Spirit voyage.

 

Glad you enjoyed your voyage!  It sure looked like A LOT of fun for you and your family.

[annmarz]

I enjoyed your postings tremendously especially  since I will be sailing on my first Silversea cruise on Spirit next week.   I am one of those people who enjoy the shows and I have adjusted my expectations accordingly.  Do they have any enrichment lectures or educational type activities onboard?

[boblerm]

14 hours ago, Lois R said:

Hi Bob, thanks for taking us  along with you.  I appreciate the summery and I agree with  many of your points......no towels or soap in the bathroom? That would get a BIG thumbs down from me.  I am the type of person who would find someone (either Guest Relations or someone who was at the pool) and let them know that someone needs to be checking the bathrooms....towels, soap, etc must be checked!...…..I would say it respectfully but someone needs to do their job. Someone dropped the ball for sure.

 

But I am glad you and the family had a good time

 

Lois R, I did just that, and also mentioned it in my survey.  Hopefully, this will be addressed.

Thank you for all of your nice comments!

[boblerm]

11 hours ago, Stumblefoot said:

Bob,

 

Appreciate your balanced review.  Thanks for sharing.

 

It is amazing how “different” service can be from ship-to-ship, which falls under the purview of the Hotel Director.  Many of the minor irritants you experienced just didn’t occur on our Shadow voyage taken at the same time as your Spirit voyage.

 

Glad you enjoyed your voyage!  It sure looked like A LOT of fun for you and your family.

Thank you Stumblefoot, glad to know that it is not a systemic problem, no doubt that the issues I experienced was just a quirk of this particular cruise.  We did have lots of fun!

[boblerm]

10 hours ago, annmarz said:

I enjoyed your postings tremendously especially  since I will be sailing on my first Silversea cruise on Spirit next week.   I am one of those people who enjoy the shows and I have adjusted my expectations accordingly.  Do they have any enrichment lectures or educational type activities onboard?

Thank you annmarz.  I think that you will enjoy the entertainment provided that you are not expecting big productions, as the singers do have very nice voices.  One other thing is that cruise director Nico starts the show off with some jokes, and he does have a wry sense of humor.

There are enrichment lectures, but we did not attend any, as the topics were on more recent Caribbean history and Noah's interests are mainly in pre- Columbian.

Sorry, I just can't help myself.😜

[jpalbny]

3 hours ago, boblerm said:

Noah's interests are mainly in pre- Columbian.

 

I would have pegged him as more of the Antediluvian type...

[Lois R]

oops....I posted on here in error! Should be on the Cooler's thread! Sorry

[TLCOhio]

On 2/23/2019 at 2:30 PM, boblerm said:

Terry, I appreciate your remarks, I always love following your reports and great photos.

 

Excellent summary as to the specific details connected with Silversea, your ship and this wonderful family adventure.  Nicely outlined and expressed.   Agree that when uploading pictures, keeping the file size smaller can be very important and helpful for gaining success. 

 

Regarding your kind shout-out as to my live/blogs and visuals, I am glad to know you are a person of such high class, great taste and wonderful judgment to make these generous comments.

 

THANKS!  Enjoy!  Terry in Ohio

 

Norway Coast/Fjords/Arctic Circle cruise on the Silver Cloud from Copenhagen, July 2010, to the top of Europe. Wonderful scenic visuals with key tips. Live/blog at 233,909 views.

www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1227923