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SS Cruise Critic Member Review Data v. Other Ultra Premium Lines


Kilroyshere
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Maybe we can move on and enjoy some latest live reports from those currently on board SS ships.......[emoji4]

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Please - can we all just move on and agree that Kilroy had the last word. That seems to be what is required.

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TLCOhio;

 

Excellent post and beautiful pics.

 

What you show; fresh berries, garnishment, a beautiful spread and more, was not to be seen on our Spirit cruise. That's one fine example of luxury cruising that we missed on SS Spirit, but expected.

 

Others noted that for berries, only strawberries were offered with barely the odd blackberry used as garnish.

 

Our SS cruise served canned fruit every day on the breakfast buffet. This is just not 'Luxury' buffet fare, particularly from a ship provisioned out of Port Everglades.

 

Fresh flowers arrangements are not a complete deal killer. But they are but one luxury component of 'Luxury' cruise lines, I'd think cruisers would expect.

 

If one pays the same cruise rates on one luxury small ship line as is charged on most others, ought they not expect most or more luxury amenities and offerings of other competitive luxury cruise lines?

Edited by Kilroyshere
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TLCOhio; Excellent post and beautiful pics. What you show; fresh berries, garnishment, a beautiful spread and more, was not to be seen on our Spirit cruise. That's one fine example of luxury cruising that we missed on SS Spirit, but expected.

 

Appreciate your nice comments on my pictures, etc. As my live/blog below details, we had many wonderful meals and other "treats" from our 26-days on the Silver Cloud early last year. It was four and a half years between our July 2010 Norway cruise on the Silver Cloud and last winter's Amazon River-Caribbean cruise. I had read the various CC reviews that were somewhat negative on Silversea. BUT, I was very pleasantly pleased that our early 2015 Silversea experiences were very, very good. Yes, as I detailed, there a few little "slips" and times when a couple of better choices could have been made. BUT, overall the results were very positive and satisfying. That's why we booked this upcoming Silver Cloud South Africa ten-day cruise in early February.

 

In doing our total of 26 days on the Silver Cloud, it was actually two cruises. First, a 17-day Amazon River cruise sailing from and returning to Barbados. Then, a following, nine-day Caribbean cruise on the same ship. The Hotel Director said the second segment would be different and he was right. Different audiences, timing schedules and travel objectives between these two, back-to-back cruises. Both cruise segments worked for us, but they were "different" even with the same ship and crew involved for each sailing segment.

 

Looking forward to doing my upcoming "reporting" and sharing of the visuals to document our experiences with Silversea and in these interesting parts of the world.

 

THANKS! Enjoy! Terry in Ohio

 

From our Jan. 25-Feb. 20, 2015, Amazon River-Caribbean combo sailing over 26 days that started in Barbados, here is the link below to that live/blog. Lots of great visuals from this amazing Brazil river and these various Caribbean Islands (Dutch ABC's, St. Barts, Dominica, Grenada, etc.) that we experienced. Check it out at:

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

Now at 35,254 views for these postings.

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LOL, but since you asked. My wife uses a lot of tissues. Supply was sufficient as was the quality. :)

 

Keith

 

Keith, thanks for responding. This, plus a few other statements you have made on this thread indicates your tolerance level is much higher than mine. One of my 2,845 peeves include low quality facial tissue. I expect the same quality tissue as found on Crystal. I'm guessing your wife did not notice the difference. If you drink orange juice, did you notice the difference between what was served between the two lines?

 

This leads to another question. In what hotel class would you put Silversea?

 

PS....I'll always be grateful for you putting me on to Crystal. You are their number one ambassador.

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Our SS cruise served canned fruit every day on the breakfast buffet. This is just not 'Luxury' buffet fare, particularly from a ship provisioned out of Port Everglades. ?

 

Perhaps you missed the post that I wrote about the canned fruit or choose to ignore the answer I was given. I did not notice anyone being forced to eat canned fruit but I did notice lots of choices of fresh fruit.

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Adjusting the discrepancy of Cruise Critics total number of reviews reported not comporting with the total of "Excellent to Terrible" reviews reported, below are the percentages re-calculated within each group "Excellent to Terrible" (and one typo for posted Seabourn data corrected).

 

The data does not change the outcome in my OP that SS says the Lowest 'Loved It' percentage satisfaction, the Highest percentage of "Terrible" reviews and Lowest percentage of 'Excellent' reviews:

 

Silversea Cruise Reviews - 461 Total Reviews Below:

Excellent 230 = 50%

Very Good 79 = 17%

Average 77 = 17%

Poor 41 = 9%

Terrible 34 = 7%

 

Azamara Cruise Reviews – 851 Total Reviews Below:

Excellent 591 = 69%

Very Good 132 = 16%

Average 86 = 10%

Poor 30 = 4%

Terrible 12 = 1%

 

Crystal Cruise Reviews - 281 Total Reviews Below:

Excellent 178 = 63%

Very Good 57 = 20%

Average 20 = 7%

Poor 17 = 6%

Terrible 9 = 3%

 

Regent Cruise Reviews - 522 Total Reviews Below:

Excellent 289 = 55%

Very Good 83 = 16%

Average 72 = 14%

Poor 56 = 11%

Terrible 22 = 4%

 

Seabourn Cruise Reviews – 263 Total Reviews Below:

Excellent 189 = 72%%

Very Good 33 = 13%

Average 24 = 9%

Poor 14 = 5%

Terrible 3 = 1%

 

Thank you for compiling these statistics. I realize they do not tell the whole story about customer satissction, as others have noted, and may not mean much to many cruisers when it comes down to specific areas of interest and importance, but they are what they are -- one piece of useful information, amongst many others, people who are researching cruises can look at in helping them decide where to book. I am not sure why there is so much anger about your statistics postings. They are just ONE factor, amongst many, to consider.

 

My first SS cruise was on the Shadow in 2011 and though I did not write a review, it was 5/5. Late 2012 on the Cloud in South America it was 4/5, but I did not write a review, so again, missing data. On the Monaco Grand Prix Spirit trip in spring 2014 where I wrote a review it was 4/5, same as New Zealand Feburary 2015 where I reported food and service issues in my review on the Spirit but we still overall had a good time, ergo the 4.

 

Food, wine and calming "can-do" service remain very important to me, so I kept looking. I was delighted with SB, 5/5 September 2015, Greece, Turkey and Black Sea, and with Hapag-Lloyd's luxury small ship Europa 2 , 5/5 I just finished out of Cape Town ( lots of flowers, lots of fresh fruit including fresh-squeezed OJ, one-seating specialty restaurants, professional musicians and dancers, etc.)

I will not likely return to SS, absent a spectacular itinerary and price, because of some moderate food and service concerns for us, as ideally, we would like that extra star to be there as much as possible and overall it seems the trend on SS is wrong. My health will not likely allow too many more years of cruising and traveling, so I want to keep failed experiments to the minimum. Your review, and others on the other side, help me make intelligent decisions, based on what I value.

 

I find MORE information for me to process, rather than less, to be valuable. I wish more people would post reviews and comments, even at risk of being flamed, so we can all learn, and take the information with a grain or two of Malassol.

Edited by Catlover54
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The one single orchid in your room...I acknowledged there were single orchids in a few venues including suites. I acknowledged some dining tables had an unattractive single sprig of asparagus like green (or was it a sage sprig), in a small vase.

 

As compared to lavish floral arrangements on other Luxury small ship cruise line suites, that lonely orchid and asparagus sprig does not speak well of SS detail to luxury.

 

But the fact is; aside from the odd single orchid or asparagus, there were no flowers or floral arrangements on this 'Luxury' cruise.

 

You were taking snaps of each plate of food served, the buffets and other venues and yet, you have no pictures of flowers or floral arrangements in public ares but for a lonely orchid or asparagus sprig. There may have been floral arrangements on other SS cruises, but not this one.

 

In your other threads when I first mentioned this floral feature missing, you acknowledged that fact. Now, you're saying something different.

 

Please, prove me wrong; go through your pics and post shots of public areas from THIS cruise and show the flowers you claim were there.

 

Others aboard ship discussed the missing floral arrangements on this cruise with us (aside from the single orchids here and there). Perhaps they'll post to confirm this or perhaps not.

 

You were caught posting false assertions that SB Pride had no in-house entertainment. You were adamant about that claim. When others refuted that with knowledge of SB's crew and named them, you meekly walked back your false SB claims.

 

I've tried to stay on thread regarding measurable features of SS and how they comport to the low CC member reviews...and SS no doubt has the lowest CC review scores among SB, Regent, Azamara and Crystal.

 

Trying to discuss simple, measurable, objective truths, there can be no balance or credibility when one posts about things that are not true, that they have to walk back later.

 

I have been blogging for 9 years now including from eight World Cruises averaging 100 or more days.

 

I have never taken photos of flowers to post other than flowers that were presented to us for milestones on one cruise line and photos sent to us from family or friends. People care about photos of food. Not the flowers.

 

I find it hard to believe we are now discussing flowers.

 

While flowers are pretty I just don't pick my cruise line based on who has more flowers. I don't think there are many who do that.

 

My experience if someone didn't like something as you clearly have not then they will essentially nit about things like flowers looking for all sorts of things that they didn't care for.

 

All I simply was pointing out to you is that twice you have said there were no flowers and twice I have said there were flowers in some (note the key word is some) of the specialty restaurants which represented two of the three that we ate at and that our room had a beautiful orchid. By the way my wife is allergic to most flowers which can make her feel ill so the orchid was perfect. It was attractive and did not bother her and did not take up a lot of space. Sometimes in a room the flowers can get in the way.

 

There is no question that there are some things that you find on other luxury lines that you don't find on Silversea. On the other hand there are things you find on Silversea that one or more of the other luxury lines don't provide. Or all of them provide something but do it differently.

 

In the end, my advice is to figure out what is important to you and what things you are happy with an pursue them. But at the same time realize that what you consider important (flowers) many others don't.

 

Keith

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Keith,

 

I don't think Kilroy ever stated or implied that the flowers were one of his decision criteria when choosing a cruise line, he simply gave it as one example amongst many he noticed that he felt placed SS in a poorer light compared to other lines. The topic then seemed to me for several reasons to take on a life of it's own.

 

:)

 

Jeff

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Jeff, obviously the flowers are important to him because he has mentioned them over and over and made incorrect statements about them. Maybe it was because he didn't notice them until I mentioned them. Happy Sunday. I think it's still Sunday in the UK.

 

Keith

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