cruiseej

@bubbulz SS Air booked us AA through Miami to and from Santiago. Unless you're locked in on only flying United, AA via Miami isn't a bad option. If you're upgrading to business class air, then you get the use of American's Flagship lounge in Miami. One other thing to note: if you use SS Air but fly a day early, you normally pay a deviation fee for this, but if you book the extra night in Santiago through SS, the deviation fee is waived; the extra night through SS was more expensive than booking it on our own, but when you add in the waived deviation fee, the transfers, and the hotel day room at the end, booking through SS Air was cheaper and worked out quite well for us. But as @alithecat details, eahc circumstance is different. It pay to check the pricing via SS and on your own to see which option is best for your trip.

@chrism23 So what's the verdict? Are you headed to Lima to join the Moon?

SS already provides the upgrade to Premium Internet to people in the top suites (Silver Suite and above).

Terry, the same argument has been made for years about included alcoholic drinks for those who don't drink or drink minimally. People have to decide if there's enough about the experience on a cruise line which they value that the included features they don't utilize aren't important — or choose another cruise line which better aligns with the things you want. Many people would prefer a la carte pricing for certain amenities/expenses, but their management has decided it's better to sell an all-inclusive experience. Regent has been doing this for years, and SS management obviously decided they needed to step up to compete. The SS Blacklane addition is the latest element in this we're-more-all-inclusive-than-you arms war of inclusions.

@ak1004 For La Dame, I don't think the issue is generating a lot of extra revenue; it's that there isn't enough capacity for every passenger to dine in La Dame on every cruise. So they use the extra cost as a means of reducing demand somewhat; some passengers decide they don't want to spend more, or are just as happy in one of the other restaurants. If La Dame was free, but a fair number of people were not able to eat their on their cruise, there would be many more complaints. Regarding premium internet, I think this is now pretty standard across much of the hospitality industry. It's certainly not unique to Silversea among cruise lines. Seabourn and Regent, to name two competitors in the luxury cruise market, offer free unlimited Internet, but also offer upgraded Internet for a fee, giving you access with more than one device at a time and/or faster service. and it's similar at many hotel chains, which offer free basic internet and faster premium internet for a fee.

@les37b Anecdotally, I don't believe there have been reports (here or on that other social media website) from passengers on any SS ships that Starlink is up and running yet. That doesn't help with when it's coming, but I think we'd have reports here if it got flipped on on any of the ships.

@chrism23 One thing I didn't see you mention is a letter from a doctor stating you have recently recovered from Covid. I think that's an important document to obtain before you leave. your home tests are good for your peace of mind, but they aren't sufficient to convince an authority figures, should any questions arrive. You will undoubtedly be asked somewhere along the way if you have had, or been exposed to, Covid within the past 14 days; when you answer yes, you really want to have a printed letter from a doctor who has tested you stating you are recovered. With that in hand, I think you should be good to go. If the tests say you no longer have Covid, you should be no threat to your fellow passengers at all. Let us know what happens, but I hope you're cleared and able to proceed with your ship. Best of luck!

I think one can generalize to say that if Luggage Forward didn't deliver luggage to most customers, most of the time, on time, no one would use them and they wouldn't remain in business! But… as with any service, something can (and sometimes does) go wrong. Flights are cancelled, something is mis-sorted, and then the adventure is on to see if the luggage will get delivered on time. As counterpoint to the several positive experiences posted above, we could point to other threads which report on luggage delivery woes with Luggage Forward — some minor, some major. I don't think anyone here has enough data to say whether your odds of a mishap are greater checking luggage on an airline or sending in advance with a luggage service; both get the vast majority bags to the right place, but both have failures. If you have one or more connecting flights, and if those connections are in airports with a reputation for baggage woes (such as Amsterdam), your odds become worse, and using Luggage Forward can look better!

There are no formal nights on expedition cruises. We just got off three weeks on the Cloud in Antarctica, and there were a few informal nights, no formal nights. And for the informal nights, I wore a sport jacket, but I'd say 50% or fewer men were wearing jackets. I don't know if the feel on the Endeavour in Iceland in the spring is any dressier, but I think a sport jacket is the dressiest you'd need to be.

Don't worry; it won't be long until you get puzzled, and then annoyed, at the string of emails announcing and then changing your scheduled boarding time! 🤣

@labrasett The issue is that @ak1004 received the $600 not as a cruise credit, which is what's expected, but as an onboard credit. @labrasett I think the question is whether you anticipate using the $600, in addition to any other OBC you may have received, on your cruise for paid excursions, laundry, premium wines, etc. If not, then I would indeed go back to SS and seek to have the admin fee credit applied as a discount on your cruise price rather than an OBC. If you think you'll use it up as OBC, then save yourself the trouble of pursuing it and ,eave it be. 🙂

@florisdekortThanks for the input on the Northwest Passage. I know the people who did the trip this year were unhappy with their many days at sea. I just spotted a cruise on Lindblad/Nat Geo which does western Greenland and Eastern Canada and looks interesting; I wish Seabourn would offer something like this (ideally a little shorter). We've done an Iceland to Greenland cruise covering the southern tip of Greenland; we'd love to go back to see more. (It's a Mercator projection map, so Greenland and northeastern Canada is distorted to looks larger than the rest of Canada.)

Unless they've cleaned up their process recently, you'll get an email about 3 weeks before your embarkation. And then another two weeks before, another a week before, and another a few days before -- each one moving your time a bit earlier or later. I have no idea what new information they ingest to require the multiple changes of boarding time; it makes no sense to me! As noted above, you can bend your assigned time a bit and not be questioned or asked to wait. The main reason they do this is to spread out people arriving so there aren't a lot of people congregating and waiting; if everyone disregarded their assigned time and rushed to get to the port at noon, everyone would be waiting in a long queue.

We were on two cruises which ended in Barbados in the past 18 months. For those with late afternoon flights, both concluded with a bus tour, including a light lunch, and ending at the airport. If there was a hotel day room option, it was only for people with late-night flights. If your flight is at, say 5 pm, they will want to have you at the airport at least 3 hours early, which means leaving a hotel probably about 1 pm. I think it's unlikely they'll take you to a hotel for just a few hours, but these things change, so you'll just need to find out onboard. Or you might be able to tell by checking your My Account for the cruise to see what you can reserve for that last day. P.S. If they offer the excursion to visit Harrison's Cave and then go to the airport, that's worthwhile if you've already done the drive-around-the-island tour.

If you book your own hotel, you will not get a transfer to the hotel and from the hotel to the port. The included transfers are only to/from the hotel(s) they are using.

Thoroughly enjoyed both Fede and Damon on our recent Cloud cruise. Even if you don't get everything Fede is saying, his enthusiasm is so contagious you can't help being excited. 🙂And as long as you can stomach some of his dad jokes, Damon is incredibly entertaining as well as informative. But we also got a lot of information from others on the team, including Neil, Nil, Nakita, Jenny, Alejandro and Mild. (On our 18 day cruise to South Georgia Island, we had a lot of sea days and a lot of lectures from the team.) @WesW, I think about a third of the expedition staff is rotating off next week, so you will probably have a number of different folks aboard. The bigger issue is that the washers are surprisingly slow; one of them takes a couple hours to finish (unless you figure out how to do an express wash cycle). I ended up sending some clothes to the ship's laundry a couple time rather than being involved with doing our own over several hours. It sounds like you're doing the Falklands and South Georgia cruise? That's what we did from mid-December to early January. We were pleasantly surprised by how wam it was in the Falklands and South Georgia - in the mid and upper 40s, even low 50s for awhile. Obviously the weather varies from week to week, but being able to pull off layers while hiking ashore is as important as having warm enough clothes for hiking in the snow in Antarctica. You have to complete a medical questionnaire and be approved by the ship's doctor. Since I didn't do the plunge, I didn't see what's on it, but it might ask if you can swim. You don't really need to be able to swim, but you need to be able to doggy paddle for a few seconds and get your head above water. As others have said, the crew is right there ready to help you up the ladder, but you want to be able to reach out to grab the ladder. If you don't jump too far out, you won't be far away from it; you can just slip in from the bottom step, turn around, and get right out. I suggest you check YouTube for "Silversea polar plunge" so you can see it and decide if you'd be comfortable with it. Once you commit, you've got to be committed! Our expedition leader said anyone she found on Deck 3 was going in the water, even if she had to throw them in. (She was joking... mostly!.... to keep anyone who wanted to watch on upper decks and out of the way.)

We ran out last week on the Cloud, a few days before the end of our cruise. Not many places to pick up a fresh supply in Antarctica, though. 🤣

For any who have cruised on the Silver Origin in the Galapagos, I have a question about a possible suite. On the cruise we're considering, there are only a few suites available: tow connecting suites near the front and a two midship near the elevator/stairway. We generally try to avoid the front due to added motion and the noise of the anchor, and to avoid connecting suites because of more noise from the neighboring cabin. The midship suites available are 517 and 516. The location seems great: the last two suites before the mid-ship elevator and stairway. But we're wondering if there is noise such that we should avoid these suites. (Clearly others who have booked ahead of us have left these two vacant so far.) Has anyone been in 517 (or 617, a deck higher), adjoining the elevator? Or in 516 (or 614 a deck higher) adjoining the stairwell? Was there noise from the elevator/stairs, or did you find your suite fine? Thanks!

We're planning a Galapagos cruise for 2024, and I'd appreciate the name of your guide if you had a good experience with him. (I forget if you can mention guides here on the forum, but if not, you can email me at jacobsedj at gmail.) What did you do in your two days with the guide? Thanks!

I agree. I can't believe how warm the boots are! You step off the zodiac into six inches of freezing water and you don't feel it at all. I'm not saying that you don't get cold; I'm saying you're not even aware you've stepped off dry land into freezing water! We had to hike up some areas with snow, often sinking into the snow halfway to my knee... and I never felt anything cold, even after an hour. They are amazing. And there's no need for more than one pair of wool hiking socks.

I didn't want to jinx things by saying anything earlier, but I'll now say that our Silversea Air arrangements worked perfectly for our Antarctica cruise which concluded last week. With all the disasters that get reported here, I figured it was worth a positive report when everything works correctly. 😉 Last spring, the initial booking SS created had crazy bad connections, but as soon as our travel agent reached out, they corrected it to the flights we had originally requested, which included flying one day early and adding a night at Silversea's pre-cruise hotel. We had business class bookings on American, from PHL to MIA to SCL and back. The flights SS booked stayed locked in leading up to the cruise, American made only minor schedule adjustments when they finalized their December schedule, and all our flights were on time and fine (not that the latter has anything to do with SS). That was our first time booking air with SS, and our experience was a good one. Going forward, we'll evaluate booking on our own versus through SS once we see the costs, flights available, and potential complexity of the location.

Thanks, @sfvoyage. I knew someone here would be able to fill in the blanks! 🙂

On the mid-cruise comment card, I tried to note a few things which were actionable by the staff (as opposed to complaining about slow Internet or lack of an Arts Cafe). One of the things I noted was that the Observation Lounge has a tea and coffee machine, but there were no other beverages. It seemed easy for them too put out a tray with carafes of water, cans of soda, and a bucket of ice. I was very impressed that these things appeared the very next day! Kudos to the hotel director or F&B manager. It's not a real bar, but it was a nice step forward. On a larger scale, I think they could pull out the racks for books in the Observation Lounge, moving those books to the existing Library, and then use that space to put out some self-service snacks in addition to water and soft drinks, or even a limited bar during select hours.

That's this week; try again next week and the reverse may be true! 🤣

We just sailed from and to Puerto Williams in Chile, just a few miles down the channel from Ushuaia. It's really a very small town. There's only space for a dock, built for the Chilean navy, but they are building a new cruise ship pier. The airport is also small; strike that -- there is no airport, just a landing strip with no terminal at all. (We walked from a shuttle van onto the plane and visa versa.) The airstrip is so short that the planes need to fly from Puerto Williams to Punta Areanas to be refueled before flying on to Santiago; the planes would be too heavy to take off from the short runway if fully fueled. That all said, it seems to week beautifully for the two Silversea ships using Puerto Williams this year. I'm just not sure there's enough infrastructure to handle many more ships.