When was your a-ha or wow moment

[Mauzac]

I posted a while back about this but it sums up my Wow moment on our first cruise (which was only ever going to be a 'one off'.  Hasn't worked.  6th SB cruise booked for next Spring!)

 

Embarkation day.  Lunch in the Colonnade, chilled Rosé, delicious food.  Decided to go and look at the desserts (which I don't normally have).  I muttered to myself 'Panacotta!  My favourite, have to have this!'

 

2 days later in the MDR one of the lovely staff brought me over a delicious lemon panacotta and said 'We've made this for you Mrs.M, we know it's your favourite!'

 

I had no idea anyone had heard me say anything, and for them to track me down to do this just sold me on SB!  

Edited July 6, 2019 by Mauzac
spelling

[snuggarelli]

On 7/4/2019 at 2:07 PM, Cru Doll said:

On the second day of our first cruise on one of the Little Sisters, my DH was  personally presented (by his name) with a glass of champagne in the hot tub.  When  he looked surprised he was  told  “I remembered that you like champagne”.   

 

Another occurred on our second Little Sister Cruise.  We were welcomed aboard in Lisbon with a number of the crew lined up at the gangway to greet us as we walked aboard. Nice touch.  

 

Also on both of our Little Sister cruises, every evening I was escorted to our table by one of the dinning staff or Maitre D’ .  On the Encore in August, 2018, this occurred on formal nights in the MDR.  I attributed the difference to the larger ship. All of the other personal attention touches were still evident.  We’re looking forward to sailing on the Ovation in September/October this year.  

 

Thank you for sharing.  What are sisters and little sisters?

[rols]

16 minutes ago, snuggarelli said:

Thank you for sharing.  What are sisters and little sisters?

The 'Little Sisters' were the original three Seabourn ships, Seabourn Pride, Legend and Spirit. They sold them to Windstar a few years ago after they had taken delivery of the Odyssey class ships (Seabourn Odyssey, Sojourn and Quest). I didn't see any reference to 'sisters' in the previous mail, I suppose you might call the Odyssey class ships the 'sisters' but most people just call them O-class. Since then Seabourn have taken delivery of two more ships, basically O-class with tweaks to the interior and another deck of suites on top and those are the Encore class. 

 

There's still quite a lot of fondness for the 'Little Sisters' from people who cruised Seabourn back in the days they were the ships for the line. We did one cruise on them where we fell in love with Seabourn service, the ships not so much, but they remain the 'little sisters' in the hearts of many. 

[snuggarelli]

1 hour ago, rols said:

The 'Little Sisters' were the original three Seabourn ships, Seabourn Pride, Legend and Spirit. They sold them to Windstar a few years ago after they had taken delivery of the Odyssey class ships (Seabourn Odyssey, Sojourn and Quest). I didn't see any reference to 'sisters' in the previous mail, I suppose you might call the Odyssey class ships the 'sisters' but most people just call them O-class. Since then Seabourn have taken delivery of two more ships, basically O-class with tweaks to the interior and another deck of suites on top and those are the Encore class. 

 

There's still quite a lot of fondness for the 'Little Sisters' from people who cruised Seabourn back in the days they were the ships for the line. We did one cruise on them where we fell in love with Seabourn service, the ships not so much, but they remain lkithe 'little sisters' in the hearts of many. 

Thank you so much for the explanation!

[Cru Doll]

We have many fond memories of our first sailings on the Pride and the Spirit.  Since there were only 208 passengers on those ships, it was quite a pleasant change from the larger cruise ships.   Fortunately, Seabourn has managed to deliver the same personalized service on their newer ships.  

[Kwaj girl]

On 7/3/2019 at 5:11 AM, snuggarelli said:

Just got off of Regent, and we never got our “a-ha” moment where we said- yes this is why this cruise is a luxury cruise, nor a moment where we felt “wow’ed.”

 

On your first Seaborne Cruise, what prompted your “a-ha” moment and when were you “wow’ed”?

 

I’m trying to figure out what cruise line to do next.

 

Well, my "a-ha" moment WAS on Regent!  We had a great butler last year with our Penthouse and this year coincidentally we had him once again.  On this year's cruise he came to our suite shortly after embarkation and said, "Welcome back Mr & Mrs Kwaj.  Shall I bring your usual martinis at 5pm today?"  Now THAT was a 'wow' moment.

[snuggarelli]

1 minute ago, Kwaj girl said:

 

Well, my "a-ha" moment WAS on Regent!  We had a great butler last year with our Penthouse and this year coincidentally we had him once again.  On this year's cruise he came to our suite shortly after embarkation and said, "Welcome back Mr & Mrs Kwaj.  Shall I bring your usual martinis at 5pm today?"  Now THAT was a 'wow' moment.

Well, I couldn’t afford a Penthouse (or at least wanted to use that money for other things), so we had no butler.  We still should’ve had a “wow” experience without a butler if it is indeed a luxury cruise, don’t you think?

[Kwaj girl]

21 minutes ago, snuggarelli said:

Well, I couldn’t afford a Penthouse (or at least wanted to use that money for other things), so we had no butler.  We still should’ve had a “wow” experience without a butler if it is indeed a luxury cruise, don’t you think?

 

Okay, how about this - we were on the Regent Explorer another time in a 'regular' room/suite.  There was a room steward serving the other end of our deck but I would pass him each morning in the passageway on my way to the gym.  We were on the Regent Navigator earlier this year - same room steward happened to be working there, stopped me in the passageway and said, "Mrs Kwaj, I remember you from the Explorer 2 years ago!  How nice to see you again."  He was not my room steward on either voyage but he did remember my name.  My downfall is that I am terrible at remembering names as well as they do. But I remember his name now!

Edited July 8, 2019 by Kwaj girl

[toseaornottosea]

On 7/4/2019 at 10:17 AM, raphael360 said:

This is a fun one to answer:  We did a14  St. Martin - St. Martin cruise last year and our non-stop flight out of Miami was 5 hours late taking off.  The ship was scheduled to leave at 11PM but all guests were requested to board by 9PM.  We finally landed at 10PM, went through immigration, picked up our bags, went through customs and found the private airport to ship driver (that we scheduled through Seabourn).  It was 10:45PM when we reached the ship fully expecting to be denied boarding.  But no, SB had kept all of the local security staff, baggage handlers and port staff waiting for us.  The hotel manager met us personally at the gangway and 2 SB staff escorted us to Seabourn Square where we were handed glasses of Champlain while we checked in and our luggage was x-rayed and loaded. A-ha, I love this cruise line.

 

We had a not too dissimilar experience.  My wife and I had been on many Seabourn cruises and were booked on the Sojourn on a 10 day Alaska cruise Vancouver to Seward in August of last year.  For reasons I need not go into here we were unable to make embarkation in Vancouver so I contacted my TA to ask if he could contact Seaboaaurn and arrange for us to meet the ship in Ketchikan, the first port stop after a day at sea from Vancouver.  I soon learned a great deal about the Jones Act/Passenger Services Act.  Our TA had to jump through hoops to get Seabourn to agree to allow us to board in Ketchikan, however we had to agree to pay a $750 per passenger fine for violating the Jones Act/PSA if Seabourn was fined for allowing us to board in Ketchikan in violation of that act, to which we agreed.  We were told we had to get to the ship by 6:00pm even though departure was not until 11:00pm.  Due to flight schedules we were unable to get to Ketchikan until 4:30pm.  From the Ketchikan airport to get to the port one must take a ferry across a river and then a taxi to the ship.  We arrived at the ship about 5:45pm where Seabourn had help waiting to take our luggage as well as someone from Seabourn Square to escort up to Seabourn Square to check us in.   When all was said and done Seabourn could not have been more accommodating and by the way,  I don't know if Seabourn was fined but we were never billed the fine of $750 per passenger for violating the Jones Act/PSA.  We love this cruise line too!

Edited July 8, 2019 by toseaornottosea

[kkmiausa]

We were in Valencia Spain for the first time and had wandered around a while and but took a different path back to where the tour bus had left us off.  I was just starting to panic a bit when William from Guest Services saw us and came over to ask if we were okay.  He then showed us where we should have turned, but instead of just doing that he decided he would accompany us back to the ship instead of taking his break in town.  This is the kind of service and extra mile that you can expect from Seabourn and it's excellent crew. Also I  don't eat meat or fowl, only seafood and they always know that I would like a standing order of seafood for dinner. Since I am not a big fan of Salmon, they always have a lobster tail or some other fish they know I like available.  They really are special.

[raphael360]

11 hours ago, Kwaj girl said:

 

Well, my "a-ha" moment WAS on Regent!  We had a great butler last year with our Penthouse and this year coincidentally we had him once again.  On this year's cruise he came to our suite shortly after embarkation and said, "Welcome back Mr & Mrs Kwaj.  Shall I bring your usual martinis at 5pm today?"  Now THAT was a 'wow' moment.

Glad you had a good experience Regent!

 

We weren't impressed with our one and only Regent experience.  Seabourn is a better fit for our personalities/lifestyles. Probably is why I never post on (or even read) the "Regent" forums.

 

We did have a butler on 2 other (non-Seabourn) cruises but we didn't like the experience either time.  We didn't have a bloody thing for them to do. They were trying so hard to please and bring value but so we started asking for ice 4 times a day because we felt bad ignoring them.  Not big fans of butlers or Regent. But that's us.

[raphael360]

11 hours ago, toseaornottosea said:

 

We had a not too dissimilar experience.  My wife and I had been on many Seabourn cruises and were booked on the Sojourn on a 10 day Alaska cruise Vancouver to Seward in August of last year. 

That's a great a-ha story toseaonottosea.  I can't imaging any other cruise lines going what SB did for you and I.   All of these a-ha shares are exactly why we take our 2 to 3 Seabourn cruises a year.