Silver Spectre

Not surprised that SS have pulled out of Sri Lanka. The situation there is dire economically and almost certainly not safe for any tourists.

They have on ours for at least a couple of weeks.

Normally 24 hours will suffice.

Not surprised, this is what happened on our segments of the WC in Feb/Mar.

Nope. It needs to be three days to qualify. 🤪🍷🤪

Sorry there is a lot of it @Lois R, the unvaccinated bit is in the middle.

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I’m pretty sure you will only be affected for the one day. IMHO it’s worth it to visit Jeddah.

I think you are missing the point @chrism23, the COVID boosters dont absolutely stop you getting it, your risk of getting it is however significantly reduced. Here in the U.K. people only started getting their second booster in September and it’s the bivalent Moderna one. Why are you worrying now when your cruise is still over 3 months away, we could have a new variant or bad flu to worry about before then. It doesn’t make any sense for SS to change their vaccination requirements at this time, but it would help enormously if they enforced their masking requirements.

I think your operative phrase was mass market. Not quite SS is it.

Candidates for keel hauling then.

What exactly do you mean by speciality coffee, Civet etc? And no the gym is not open 24 hours. That would need a staff member in attendance to cover H&S issues. It’s probably closed something like 10pm to 6am.

Are you joining in Barcelona or Lisbon?

Really sorry to hear that, and I agree with your comment about the SALT bar, we will avoid it. Hope you both feel better soon.

Hi Chris, I will be on the Moon in a couple of weeks and will be happy to try and answer any questions you have. Assuming the Wifi is ok I will do a live report.

Filleted and in the words of the immortal Jim Steinman, …………….

Thanks for your report @beaujolais

Thank you very much @machotspur, hope you had a great time. Gilbert is a star and Grant has a wicked sense of humour as well as being a really nice guy.

And I would like to know who the HD, CD and GRM are, please.

Agree with your comments on outrageous costs JP, Business Class airfare to New Zealand for early next year is now well over double what it was pre pandemic. Heading off to the Moon in a couple of weeks and provided we don’t get Covid quarantined we expect to have a great time.

Sorry that you came home with Covid @DiscerningD but glad you enjoyed your cruise. Interestingly other friends have just returned to the U.K. after a voyage on the Whisper and echoed the food, service and staffing issues.

A final update. Indochine was closed because of staffing issues and had been closed since mid July. Service was definitely an issue on this cruise with more than one occurrence of mains arriving at a table before starter plates had been removed. Apart from the lack of Tiki or any other NZ SB and running out of Rose, Karolina and the sommeliers did an excellent job. Putting those issues on one side it was still a good cruise and enjoyable holiday. Its obvious that SS is still having logistical problems with supplies in this (post) COVID world (and with no lobster on the Cloud). Unless your favourite tipple is missing most guests probably won’t notice. The staffing and possibly lower level of new staff training onboard are more of an issue, not unique to SS, with reports on Seabourn boards of similar problems on one ship in particular. Office staffing is also an issue and the SS Air department has been struggling for months. Maybe we will have to get used to SS being a 5* line for the time being. Thoughts?

The email was sent out a month before departure. The outbound date range has now been changed and the rides have been booked. Interestingly neither of the Blacklane support responses yesterday had actually read my email request, but just parroted back the instructions in the original link email.

I just received an email with a link to login to the Blacklane site, but then discovered that they have us being collected for the outbound trip on the date the ship sails, even though SS is aware that we are travelling out the day before. Contacted Blacklane to modify the date, with the SS Booking ref (which is also displayed on the Blacklane web page) and got absolutely nowhere, being told I must have a 9 digit Blacklane Booking ref!

Nothing wrong with the ship, it’s just the wine issues. The weather is fine. La Terrazza still coming up trumps.