Swan Hellenic Minerva II up the Amazon 4 November 2006

[Bollinge]

We just booked.

 

Is anyone else going?

[roger b]

Hi,

I have already booked and I am doing a B to B,27 days finishing in Bridgetown.Have you cruised with Swan Hellenic ???? as I have not.Regards Roger

[philipb]

We shall be on board. We are devotees of this ship and are devastated that Carnival are taking her away from Swan Hellenic and posting her to Princess. It's such a shame.

For us it's a partial repeat of the trip we did on Minerva last November. Then we did a back-to-back: Las Palmas to Manaus and then right round the coast of Brazil and on to Buenos Aires. A total of 5 weeks. It was wonderful.

We wouldn't ordinarily have gone back and repeated the 4 November itinerary quite so soon, but with the loss of Minerva next April we now feel we are in the 'last chance' saloon.

We are back home from the Amazon trip for a month before doing a 3 week cruise over Christmas and New Year (New Orleans to Barbados via Central America)! This final cruise will be our Swansong.:(

[Bollinge]

Hi B's.

 

Are you by any chance related?

 

No, we have never been on Swan Hellenic before, but we were alongside Minerva II in Copenhagen last year and she looked very tidy.

 

We had never visited Brazil before when we booked QM2, Rio-NY in April, calling at Salvador de Bahia and the Caribbean. Unfortunately, there was the infamous "pod incident" which meant our call at Salvador was cancelled.

 

We still wanted to see more of Brazil rather than just Rio, which has a very European flavour, so we booked M623. Looking forward to going up the jungle. Not looking forward to anti-malaria prophylaxis!

 

Can anyone work out how to post a hyperlink to this page from: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=72

 

Also how to post a dedicated Roll Call thread using the "Roll Call Tool" at the top of that page.

 

I have posted starter threads on Roll Calls before, but I can't remember how I did it! And now I've tried once it won't let me try again for our voyage.

[Bollinge]

I think I've worked it out and a way to get our own proper thread page running..

 

I have set up a thread on the Roll Calls page: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=6734320#post6734320

 

If one of you could please go to this page: http://www.cruisecritic.com/rollcall/index.cfm?Ship=201

 

and then click "your cruising info"

 

log in and enter: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=6734320#post6734320

where it says "link", that's it.

 

You could re-enter your threads on that page and then we can use that page for future correspondence and it's easy then for anyone else to find it using the drop down ship list at the top of this page:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=72.

 

Cheers!

John & Liz

[hatshepsut]

Hi,

I have already booked and I am doing a B to B,27 days finishing in Bridgetown.Have you cruised with Swan Hellenic ???? as I have not.Regards Roger

 

I am booked for the whole month too, and just getting excited now that the tickets and final information have arrived. I went on a Med cruise with Minerva last year, and it was fantastic. The whole set up is efficient and professional, whilst being very relaxed and friendly- if that makes sense.

The ship is very roomy and well equipped and I can see why Carnival decided to pinch it _expletives deleted_ but I am very sad about it as I had anticipated cruising on her every year for as long as I can still stand up. I tried Spirit of Adventure this Summer, looking for a substitute, given the boasts made in their marketing - but Minerva or Swan she is NOT, an elderly ship with temperamental air conditioning/heating, an alarmingly creaking bow and very inferior excursions. I gave up on their organised trips and went my own way. I certainly wouldn't go on her again.

However, the Amazon with Swan should be fantastic.

 

See you

[mancunian]

Oh dear, oh dear. We are booked on Spirit of Adventure in November and were looking forward to it very much. This is the first bad report I have heard. A report on here and a report from friends had been very good. We shall see.

 

The funny thing is we were going on Spirit of Adventure to find an alternative to Swan Hellenic too though for different reasons. We have done 7 cruises with Swan and have been so disappointed with the changing efficiency and attitude on our last two cruises that before the closure was announced had decided not to go again hence looking for an alternative. To be fair on both occasions we drew the short straw with cruise directors, and also are comparing Minerva 2 with Minerva I and Orpheus (another very old ship but a super atmosphere). Minerva 2 is certainly a nice ship but seemed much too big to run as they did before. Anyway I hope we all have great cruises on both ships. It's horses for courses really.

 

One thing that I wonder though is this assumption that Carnival stole Minerva. For a smallish ship with only about 600 passengers and different itineraries each week I have wondered why their cruises have to be advertised quite as much at reduced prices. Until recently (and we are now down to last few cruises) there were two or three big adverts in the Telegraph and Times at weekends. With excursions included there is not much income actually on the cruise except for drinks. The trouble with the included excursions of course is that if you are having to reduce your prices all the time the passengers are getting reduced excursion costs too. This has always struck me as unfair in any case to the passengers who have booked earlier but even more importantly I guess it may be that SH with Minerva as its ship is not as profitable as it should be or used to be. I have heard they are considering a getting a replacement ship in about 2008 if they can find one. This I guess would be an older ship than Minerva, but I think the important thing is that it should be smaller for all the above reasons.

 

Have a great trip.

.

[cosimdm]

We are veterans of 9 Minerva I cruises and 1 Minerva II cruise. We thought the II had too many passengers to be effective in the excursions. We are desperate to find a substitute. We very much enjoyed traveling with the Brits and the intellectual aspects of Swan Hellenic. Anyone who has any ideas should post them here. I am sorry to hear that the Spirit of Adventure isn't the one. Sad in California

[mancunian]

Watch this space. We are going on Spirit of Adventure on 22nd November and I will certainly report back. I have seen/heard three reports of the ship, two excellent, one poor. It may have just been that particular cruise. Certainly our cruise booklet of excursions received about three weeks' ago looks every bit as good as SH all of which were certainly not brilliant in the Far East. As well as lecturers - who seem mostly to be from SH anyway we have a team of 4 antiques people on ours including Hilary Kay and David Batty, and also (very important to my friend and myself) an artist for painting classes. We will see. Being a small ship we are all four hoping for the ambience of the old SH Orpheus.

[cosimdm]

I'll be looking forward to your review. We had so many good times on Minerva I. We will always remember the wonderful Brits we met through the years.