lelak

I've been a reviewer and creator of websites for both private industry and the gov't since

there were websites.  As stated above Seaware is the back end system the website talks

to.  I don't know enough about it to evaluate how bad it is.  However, all the user facing

errors (and there are well over a dozen) have little or nothing to do with Seaware.  Some

are actually laughable (hearing that my flight arrival time had to be before my flight

departure time for example).  This is a human problem much more than a computer one.

There is no excuse for releasing the website without proper beta testing.  In the corporate

world I would have fired the CIO for the embarrassment it caused the company.  In the gov't

world where I couldn't fire the person he/she would have been reassigned to Anchorage 🙂

 

In response to mnocket, we actually didn't notice many TA's or influencers onboard

our cruise, probably because of the length of it. 

 

There is a fundamental mismatch, imho, in their desire to have a "younger" affluent crowd than the competition and their blindness to the need for a functional website.  The shame is that (and I've told their US sales management this on an extensive zoom meeting) it wouldn't take more than a week of effort by a competent IT team to fix the vast majority of the problems.

 

 

We are a few weeks back from 19 days onboard--Vancouver roundtrip to Hawaii, so lot of sea days.

One major caveat--the ship was less that half full (about 350 passengers), so some of our very

positive experiences may not be duplicated when the crew to passenger ratio isn't almost 3 to 1!

Also, my comments come from over 40 cruises on mainly luxury lines (Crystal, Silversea, Regent,

Seabourn (and Oceania which in a "Upper Suite" is in most respects a luxury line)).

 

In many respects this was a tale of two cruise lines.  First the positive:

1.  The crew could not have been friendlier or more responsive (except the front office staff, see below)

They knew our names almost immediately and responded to almost any request.  For example, at one

dinner we were chatting with the "restaurant manager" (one step below the overall F&B manager)

and remarked that the gelato choices in the gelateria were rather limited.  He asked what we'd like

and we told him coffee gelato.  He told us it would be available the next day and sure enough when

we asked at the gelateria they had made a big tub just for us (which we enoyed off and on for the

next 14 days).  

2.  The Emporium Marketplace is a superb concept, clearly better than the best buffets on the above

mentioned lines.  The freshly cooked pasta, sushi, and salad stations (yes they now have thousand

island dressing!) were particular favorites and there was no need to wait around while they were

preparing dishes--crew were happy to bring to our table (would this be true if the ship were full?)  We

even did something we never do on the other ships--had dinner at the "buffet" with three or four

nicely grilled lobster tails brought to us as main courses.

3.  The ship itself was gorgeous--everything was immaculate.  Four pools, an amazing number of

huge spa pools, and despite what others have noted, we never experienced a problem in finding

a way to lounge in the shade.

4.  In general, the food was excellent (a few negatives noted below) at all the restaurants No problem

in eating wherever or whenever (again others have noted this isn't true when ship is closer to full).

They handled my wife's gluten free request extremely well.  She is the family oenophile and did find

some drinkable wines on the included list, but more importantly was impressed by the quality on

the discounted premium list and how close the discounted prices were to internet pricing on the

two or three she purchased.  I haven't seen much said about this option and wonder whether it

was new to our cruise.  I've seen some controversy about Anthology.  We used our OBC for it

and found the meal superb--extremely close to the meal at Claude Le Tohic's O' restaurant

in SF--actually a bit cheaper for the almost identical meal on land and no $100 upcharge for

the wagyu beef.  I don't know if we would have spent the money if we didn't have the OBC, but

it definitely a culinary highlight.

5.  Our Cove Residence was very well laid out and very comfortable.  The bathroom is small (although

shower is huge) compared to other luxury lines and it is weird they have a heated floor but not

a heated mirror--so wiping with a washcloth needed if you want to see yourself after showering!

6.  Cruise director Michael a hoot especially at trivia which he converted into a personal cabaret show.

(He is moving to Explora 2 soon).

7.  We enjoyed the two resident singers and went to all their shows.  Sight  lines in the show room

excellent--no pillars, etc.

8.  Best internet I've every seen (and I'm a computer scientist) at sea.  Download speed mostly 

100 mps and upload close to that.  Better than at our location at home.  Easy to stream anything

and no blockage of sites.  The fact that were technically in the US the entire trip at sea helped eliminate

the need for using any  VPN almost the entire trip.

 

Minor negatives:

1.  No production shows (this could be anything from irrelevant to a major negative depending on personal taste).

2.  All fixed menus (some minor variants day to day).  However, halfway through the cruise they added five

additional main courses to both Fil Rouge and Med Yacht Club, so perhaps they were listening to comments for

such a long cruise.

3.  We're from N. Cal. so Asian food snobs.  Sakura was a mixed bag.  Huge variety of sushi of all types and

excellent quality.  Lots of excellent appetizers (although I'd suggest asking for the lobster and soft shell

crab rolls without the very spicy mayo or other sauce as it drowns out the delicate shellfish flavor).  Main courses

were not so good--salmon very overcooked/dry, Pad Thai tasty but nothing close to actual Pad Thai--laughably

wrong noodles and missing the characterisic tamarind flavor entirely, curry almost devoid of spice.  At a second

visit they cooked the salmon properly, added a decent amount of spice to the curry, and gave me a separate

bowl of tamrind sauce to add to the still wrong noodles for the Pad Thai (but there was lots of lobster!)

Two big misses they really should fix:  1.  no tea menu or asian tea variety, 2.  only one sake' available.  Both

Oceania and Regent do this much better in their Pan Asian restaurants.

 

Major negatives:

1.  As noted by myself and others before on CC, by far the worst website not just of any cruise line,

but any customer facing company.  In all our previous cruises I never used our TA for simple tasks

like restaurant reservations.  I analyze websites as part of my work and in just a brief review of

Explora's I found over a dozen serious to fatal problems in any other case would cause the website

to be taken down for repair and another beta test (if they even did one in the first place).

2.  While the internet was superb, the onboard IT infrastructure was not.  The onscreen menu

had several significant flaws--for example the tab for showing  one's onboard account didn't work.

3.  While the majority of the crew was superb and in fact both friendly and responsive, that did not

carry over to the financial management staff.  As noted above, you couldn't see your onboard

account on your room TV and when we got a printed statement it was the most confusing

balance sheeet I've ever seen.  With three days to go we finally figured out we were missing half

of our onboard credit from Virtuoso and they refused to fix it without "documentation" which

because of the non-functional website we only had the email accounting from our TA.  This finally

got fixed post cruise by our hardworking TA, but you would think both the onboard staff and the

head office would know what their deal was with the huge Virtuoso consortium.  No big deal

except for the early morning calls from the front desk repeatedly asking for documentation,

although we did end up leaving about 40 Euros unused because of the foul-up.

 

A few tips:

1.  Believe it or not, unlike on all the other above-mentioned lines, you actually can

(in some cabins easy, in others requires some nimble fingers) attach an HDMI

table to the TV and display whats on your laptop (so we watched on a large screen

our streaming services included what we recorded on YouTube TV).  On the

onscreen menu go to "Your Home at Sea" and "Connections" then the far right

choice of "HDMI," the down to "Confirm" (or something like that).  Before you

do that, connect your HDMI cable to HDMI1 on the rightside back of the TV.

This is easy if you have a room where the living room TV is on a swing out

mount like ours was, trickier if it's on a fixed wall mount like our friend's cabin

was.  That required someone with smaller fingers than find getting the HDMI

cable into the socket--depending on the room lighting you might need another

person holding a cellphone flashlight so the nimble fingered person can see

the socket.  Since Explora does provide this menu option they really ought to

either have an HDMI port on the USB area next to the TV, or have an HDMI

cable already attached to the TV port for your use.

2.  This has already been noted, but it did work for us.  If you have a Residence,

the champagne in the room is the cheap complimentary stuff served throughout the ship.

However, if you ask your butler nicely for the promised 2013 Dom Perignon it

did magically appear in our refrigerator a couple days later.

3.  If you want something, ask for it.  This seemed to work almost as well as on

Crystal (at least the Old Crystal, we haven't tried new Crystal yet).

 

Bottom line:  we would definitely book Explora again, even given the additional

strain on our TA, most likely on a 14+ day voyage where occupancy was likely

nowhere near capacity if they have any of those again.  I think we've learned how

to "navigate" the line appropriately!

 

I can perfectly believe that SeaWare is both buggy and hard to program from

the point of view of its GUI.  However, even with all that true, releasing a user-

facing website without what seems like even a modicum of proper beta-testing

leaves a terrible impression upon that user base and makes for needless work

by both the poor human service agents and travel agents who have to make up

for it.  CIOs have been fired for lesser offenses.

 

The part of the website that lets one find cruises has some bugs and some

less than ideal search and presentation pathways, but at least its useable.

The much more critical part for getting information about booked cruises, entering

personal information (passports, flights, etc.), and choosing retaurant reservations

and shore excursions (excuse me, destination experiences), is, imho (and actually

expert opinion) just hopeless.  In only a cursory look I counted at least a dozen 

significant problems of which at least half I'd consider fatal in the sense that a

poor user would likely just give up on using the website and call Explora and/or

their TA, probably being seriously annoyed from having wasted a serious amount of time..

 

I would respectfully implore Explora to take that functionality (or non-functionality)

offline and rapidly convene a panel of current customers to properly test the 

website before re-releasing.

Mine was SPS on an IBM 1620 (dates both of us).

 

I can see our booking (which is only true recently), however it claims I owe

money which I don't.  And while the "check-in" button is greyed out in the

booking information, there is fine print for check-in when you go to the three

horizontal lines button that is active.  

 

I agree there are problems with Seaware, but no excuse for not doing even

elementary beta-testing before exposing this to customers.

 

Crystal, Oceania, Viking, and Silversea websites work quite well (although

some minior quirks on all of them).  Regent had some serious response issues

(I think their back end was probably one of the 70's computers 🙂 ), but they

have improved a lot (their IT VP is very responsive to problems).

As a computer scientist, I am somewhere between amused and offended by the number of

outright bugs and terrible design issues one observes when examining and trying to check

in for a booked cruise.  It is impossible to believe that someone actually beta-tested

the site.  I won't go into the details of the over a dozen such errors I found when my TA

and I tried to check in, but perhaps the most "interesting" occurred when trying to provide

pre and post-cruise flights.  I got the error message that my arrival date had to be prior

to my departure date for my flight!  While I have occasionally had that happen when flying

from Japan or Australia to the US, it rarely occurs otherwise 🙂

can anyone tell me what brand TVs they have (Samsung or LG, I bet)?

 

Thanks!

i suggested this in one of the other threads.  Randomly I clicked on the "filters" button at the top of the webpage (after I had logged into my account and like any it wouldn't find my booking).  I entered all the requested info (booking #, name, birthdate, etc.) and now the booking appeared.

 

 

try clicking on the "filters" button at the top of the webpage.  I found that was the only way to find my booking.

We too did the Falls a few years ago when it was the Sheraton on the Argentina side.  Iguazu puts

every other waterfalls to shame because of the sheer variety and number.  The advantage of the

Argentine side is that you have immediate access from the hotel to walking trails both upper and lower as well as a train-like shuttle to the one single huge fall.  But the Brazil side has a lot more hotels and dining spots so I'm sure you'd enjoy either.

 

As others have stated, doing it yourself is easy--lots of flights from in-city airports in Buenos Aires

and Rio.

 

Don't miss Iguazu, it really is one of the modern wonders of the world.

We just stayed in a Penthouse Spa Suite on Quest and in almost all respects it was great.  The curtains separating the bedroom from the living room are completely opaque--no issues with

light from the living room bothering the bedroom.  Don't take the "extra healthy juices" thing

too seriously, but your room attendants will get you anything you want.  The four spa suites are

isolated which is mostly a good thing and they are extremely convenient to all the dining

and public areas expect for the observation lounge--elevators are just down the spiral staircase, so you are both isolated and near even though that sounds a bit contradictory.  It might take you a day or two to train the cabin attendants when they should clean your room.  It might take you most of the cruise to figure out how to work the somewhat non-deterministic lighting controls!  The room has both an espresso machine and a tea kettle.

 

The only  major negative is that while in theory there is a stair lift for the spiral staircase it didn't work

at all during our 14-day cruise and I got the feeling that it hasn't been operational for a long time.  I have some mobility issues so had to be very slow and careful navigating the 15 steps.  If you or yours have serious mobility issues you need to make sure they have actually fixed the stair lift or the Quest PS won't work for you.

 

 

Yes, although from what I have read the view isn't nearly as nice from those terraces.

We just got back from our first Seabourn cruise--we've been many times on Old Crystal, Silversea, Regent, and Oceania (the larger ships).  We were on Quest and found almost all aspects to be excellent.  We did stay in a Spa Suite and really enjoyed it.  It took a few days to get synced with the two lovely cabin attendants, but after that we had no complaints.  Overall food quality and variety exceeded our expectations having read some negative reviews in this venue.  Service in all locations was excellent with staff going out of their way to greet us by name and spend time to make sure we were happy.  The F&B manager Giocomo and Head Chef Christophe almost adopted us given the amount of time they spent chatting with us.  Entertainment better than I expected given the size of the ship.  The 6 person production cast was incredibly good--singers almost good enough for Broadway or West End, the two dancers amazing, particulary Oksana.  The internet service was the best I've ever seen on over 40 cruises.  Easy to stream from all the normal sites.  I did speed tests several times and averaged 10 mbps download and 1.5 upload--that's at least land-based DSL quality.  I asked whether that was because they had Starlink installed and was told,  no they

hadn't.  If that was the case, they don't  need help from Elon!

 

We were very lucky that one of the ports was Bar Harbor and the ship brought on board a huge amount of fresh shellfish including lobster, clams, mussels, and oysters which were served that evening at a special buffet in the Collonade.  The next night we achieved something I've been trying to have happen for the last 30+ years of cruising--get lobsters properly prepared.  By that I mean simply boiled and delivered intact--no cracking or "cleaning" where the best parts, the green tomalley and red roe are removed.  Christophe and Giocomo made sure we got three lobsters in the Restaurant and we ate them properly as my grandfather taught me many years ago.  We put on a good show for nearby tables!  

 

There were a few negatives.  I am somewhat mobility limited and navigating the spiral staircase was a slow and careful process.  The stair lift was not working, which I think was inexcusable.  I did survive without falling.  Our suite was not properly cleaned when we first got in and the berries in a jar were moldly.  Those issues got fixed quickly.  It was never really clear what actual spa privileges we were owed.  In addition, the Source app needs a lot of work and some further beta testing.  For example, unintuitive way to check your onboard account.  I wish Seabourn (and the other luxury lines) would pony up to have a least ESPN on the TVs.

 

So bottom line is that we've added Seabourn to our short list of luxury lines for future cruises.  Even given the spiral stair case issue, we would book a spa suite again for its size and location (as others have mentioned, very convenient access to all restaurants, Seabourn Square, and the Club--only remote venue is the Observation Lounge).

 

 

We did the Sydney to Auckland two week trip many years ago on Crystal (usually Melbourne, Hobart in NZ, then a bunch of ports plus Milford Sound (incredible place) in NZ).  Doing it again to introduce some friends who have never been to Oz or NZ on Silversea over Christmas and New Years 24/25.

 

Since no one so far mentioned Silversea, just a few words.  Their standard cabin is equivalent in size

and amenities to PH on Oceania.  Weather-wise, the right time to visit Down Under is November through January, although most times of the year are pretty mild except for mid-to-late their summer when it can get quite hot (like 40C).

 

Hard to directly compare Silversea to Oceania--it competes more with Regent and Seabourn.  Food can be pretty good, sometimes as good as Oceania at its best, although variety on O better, and strangely they charge extra for two of their specialty restaurants.  Two of their larger ships (but large

here is like half the size of Marina in terms of number of passengers, although actual physical ship size almost the same) Silver Muse and Silver Nova are doing the Aus-NZ routes.

 

Their pricing can be confusing and their are lots of "specials" these days.  A wide variety of excursions are included in the pricing as are all beverages. etc.  If you care about butlers, all cabins have butler service.  Entertainment weaker in recent years than Oceania--although had recovered a bit on the last Silversea cruise we took last year.

 

Anyway, I would consider Silversea over Azamara or Viking.  If you use their "Port-to-Port" fare--only available on the standard suites (all cabins are suites), then considerably cheaper than Regent.

 

We've done close to 10 on Oceania, Regent, and Silversea and we did choose Silversea for this itinerary.  If one of the larger Oceania ships were on the same itinerary we'd probably choose Oceania for the hugely better pricing on Owners or Vista suites compared to the highest end cabins on the other lines.  But for a PH equivalent size suite (and the standard veranda cabin on SS is actually closer to a true suite than a PH on Oceania), is your choice I would choose SS right now.

 

Anyway that's my humble opinion right now.

A proof that decent cookies can be provided:  we are one of many frequent Oceania cruisers who find the cookies terrible.  We are on our first Scenic river cruise and as an experiment I described to our butler how to make real chocolate chip cookies.  The next day he came back with half a dozen ones I'd rate 9 out of 10 (only minor flaw was that they were really chocolate chocolate chip with cocoa in the cookie base--some actually prefer it that way).   

 

So I'll try the same thing on our next O cruise and I suggest others do the same--don't give up hope!  It's not rocket science.

My wife has the same issue.  She even brings her own tea from her supply

of about 30 or 40 types.  The only line we were able to get a kettle in room

in recent times was the old Crystal.  However, after impressing upon our butler

and/or room service that she needs boiling, not just hot water for proper tea,

after a few days the delivery seems to be adequate.  She keeps a teapot and

just gets the carafe they deliver.

 

At afternoon tea she goes directly to the station where they boil the water and

waits for them to get it properly hot.

Oceania and Regent seem to share recipes for some items like cookies and soups.  Many are very good, but a few, like the chocolate chip cookies are strange.  They seem

very much more cake like than a good cc (say Tollhouse or Doubletree or even Costco) cookie.  That gooey chocolate inside is just missing.  We enjoy almost all the soups, but again, their recipe for New England clam chowder doesn't come close to authentic, although the lobster bisque is excellent.

 

As many have said, a lot is subjective, but I'd put the batch of chocolate chip cookies I just baked in a blind taste test against Oceania or Regent any day.

Yes.  It worked fine on Marina in March.

Forgot one other Silversea plus--unlimited caviar, you merely have to ask for it.

 

The official rule is that Italian restaurant is "informal" on formal nights.  You can find

in the rules that means a jacket (no tie required). but in our recent experience

that wasn't enforced at all, except once in S.A.L.T. where the head waiter brought

one over to hang over a chair for another couple 🙂

 

After dinner at the show a complete mix of dress.

 

As was said in multiple posts, you may find near perfection on either line, or you may

run into less than adequate service, food, shows, etc. depending on individuals.

 

One thing I believe most here will agree with, everything better onboard than dealing with HQ of either line!

From recent experiences on both.

 

1.  Regent completely "elegant casual" as in no need for even jackets for men if you don't feel like it.  Silversea still has one or two "formal" nights, which means jackets for men in Atlantide and La Dame, but can eat in La Terazza (very good Italian) and other places without.  No real enforcement after dinner.

 

2.  In general better entertainment on Regent--Silversea went through a really bad drought, but getting better.

 

3.  Service recently very good on both.  Both happy to cater to special requests for food, etc.  For example, made a great lobster rissotto and Opera cake for us one night on Silversea.

 

4.  Subjectively food choice somewhat better on Regent.  A bit annoying that you have to pay for La Dame and Kaiseki (on larger SS ships).  However, Italian restaurant considerably better on Silversea.  Asian restaurant on larger Regent very good--subjectively much better than Indochine on larger SS ships.   Subjectively Chartreuse and La Dame very good French restaurants, but no upcharge for Chartreuse on Regent.

 

5.  Recent experience is that Regent still quite a bit more expensive on comparable itineraries than SS, but there is so much "special sale" promotions going on that it is hard to judge.

 

6.  Availability of true two-room Silver Suites on larger SS ships a significant plus compared to Regent.

 

We have stayed in that suite.  Like any other front balcony it does get very windy when the ship is moving at cruising speeds.  There is a side piece to the balcony that is more useable, but don't expect to spend much time on the front part while the ship is actually moving.  Having said that, it is a wonderful suite, and the Silver Dawn feels like a brand-new ship.  The front balcony is a great place

to enjoy reading, eating, and napping while in port and while slowly cruising into and away from ports.

We stayed in the deck 8 master suite shortly after Explorer rolled out.  Most things very nice; a few serious glitches that may or may not have been fixed.  Most serious is the living room layout.  The couch is incredibly uncomfortable and far too close to the TV.  The back of the couch is too low and very hard.  Their solution was to give us some extra cushions for the back of the couch, but then you tended to slip off the couch.  This was definitely a "did anyone actually ever try sitting in the couch" thing.  There are many sets of switches for the living room, but they all do one of two things and you can't control individual ceiling lights.  At the time we sailed, the suspended ceilings in the bedrooms looked great, but tended to rattle in even moderate seas.

 

On the plus side, the aft facing balcony is huge and works well even on sea days.  The pop up TV in the master bedroom is a nice touch.  If you can play the piano (or like using the autoplay features, that's a plus; if you don't that takes up a lot of space.  Having a second bedroom great if spouses/partners have different sleeping hours occasionally.  

 

If you don't need the second bedroom, I'd consider the aft grand suite on deck 7.  More room and better layout in the living room and equivalent huge deck.  And it's a few thousand cheaper per person.

 

 You can find a detailed review I wrote on the suite by searching ship reviews.

We had no problem going ashore both days. I highly recommend Green Island Tours. Extremely responsive. Far better and cheaper than tours offered by Oceania. Our guide was friend of the owner who happened to be the technical director of the Rapa Nui movie. He married a native and stayed on the island after the movie was completed. So we got an engineering perspective of the Moai which was great.

Having just returned from a cruise on Marina, I can tell you that there has been a lot of misinformation about the discount on excursions, much of it coming from Oceania HQ. The actual discount, whether onboard or beforehand is 25%--at least everyone on Marina was just given that. However, when you sign up for YWC all excursions become non-refundable, although you can switch excursions before the normal 24 hour deadline.

 

The onboard excursion staff just laughed at me when I told them about all the stories about discount percentage in relation to the "free" Olife excursions. The Olife ones do count toward the 6 you need for the YWC discount.

Two ways to easily use the HDMI ports:

 

1. Use the DVD player remote--there is a small set of button in the upper right for the Samsung TV. The "input" button there is enabled.

 

2. A bit trickier. All the Samsung TVs have a little button on the bottom right of the back of the TV. It pushes in and also moved in all four direction. Push it in, then after the menu comes on the TV, push it to the left (your left) and you'll be able to access all TV functions including input.