lisa6191

Thank you! I guess it matters who’s on the ship? There was nothing like that on our recent Med cruise, but we only had one sea day. Hopefully they bring artists, teachers, etc on the cruises with lots of sea days. In other news, I love your itinerary. Very jealous. Looking forward to your reports!

Looking forward to your updates. We are considering a transatlantic next year and I am particularly interested in the kinds of activities that may be offered with so many sea days. (Like lectures, classes, crafts, games etc.) Any info you can pass along will be welcome! Have a great time!

@Love dubai question about this - not sure if you saw on the other thread about issues with reimbursement for prepaid spa, but on our most recent cruise we had trouble getting our prepaid spa appointments reimbursed and converted to use our onboard credit. When you have done this in the past, have you prebooked your spa or waited to do it on the ship? If you did it before was it a problem to apply the spa credit to it once you boarded? Hope that makes sense! Thanks!

I agree that it sounds like it shouldn’t be allowed, all I can tell you is that the rep onboard told me I could do it. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Since I didn’t end up booking onboard I can’t confirm.

My TA says that FCD and Seabourn club can be combined. Maybe we will book the cruise we are looking at and find out!

That is not what I was told. I was told they were two separate discounts and could be combined. So if I had booked onboard and also bought a FCD, I could have applied the FCD to that cruise and ended up with a 10% combined discount. I did not book on board, so I have no way of knowing if what she was telling me would actually happen. At no point did she mention the Seabourn club discount so I don’t know how that plays into it.

It turns out that one of the sailings listed is one we are thinking about, so I just emailed my TA to see if the FCD and Seabourn club discounts can be combined (we didn’t book on board so that discount is out). I’ll let you know what she says.

I think there are 3 potential discounts: 1) 5% for booking onboard (or 20% if it’s an expedition) 2) 5% from a future cruise deposit 3) 5% “returning customer” discount, which I believe is actually referred to by Seabourn as a Seabourn club benefit (and you have to have sailed to be in the club, thus it becomes a benefit for returning customers). I actually just went on the website to check, and if you click on special offers it comes up there, and then if you click on “book now” it brings up a list of 31 sailings that it applies to. It is unclear whether this one is combinable, but I was told that 1 and 2 are combinable for the ocean voyages.

I was on Encore. As I understand it, the returning customer discount is completely separate from the FCD. You have to actively buy a FCD in order to get that discount. But the way it was explained to me, the FCD discount should definitely be combinable with the book on board discount. Did you book on board?

Can’t promise this is accurate, but I was told that: 1) the booking onboard discount (meaning actually booking the cruise) was 5% ocean, 20% expedition. The deposit required would be transferable to a different cruise but not refundable. 2) There is a separate 5% discount given if you buy a future cruise deposit, which is combinable with the ocean discount (for 10% total) but not combinable with the expedition discount. Future cruise deposits are good for 4 years and then can be refunded. So I think you should have gotten both discounts (the book onboard and FCD). I did not ask about the 5% for returning customers because I didn’t know about it. But she didn’t offer that info either and she was trying to get me to book, so I feel like she probably would have offered it? Not sure. Also, the itinerary we were looking at had no further perks like OBC or anything, but some of them did.

When we were on last week it was 5% off for ocean sailings and 20% off for expedition sailings.

As far as I know they are the same. We went three days on our recent cruise on Encore and loved it, which is why I am exploring the cost of booking it for the whole time next time. 😊

Great thank you! It’s a 19 day cruise so I am hoping it will work the same way.

For those of you who book for the whole cruise, is it generally at the price listed above, $100/day (with $50/day spa credit)? Or does it vary depending on the cruise? We are thinking about doing a transatlantic and would love to book the retreat for the whole thing, but with so many sea days I was worried it would be prohibitively expensive.

Totally agree. We did a private tour during the day and then went back for the night thing. Absolutely fascinating..

Thanks. Caviar in the surf does sound cool, but going to Ephesus at night after it’s closed and enjoying a chamber music concert on the spot where Cleopatra met Mark Antony was next level. I wonder if they do anything like that anywhere else.

I take it this means nobody knows the answer to this?

Just an update, we have returned home from the cruise and I did indeed get all of the money from my prebooked spa appointments refunded to me. Still, I’m not sure I would do it again based on how much time it took to sort out. Definitely a buyer beware situation.

We just got off the Encore where we enjoyed the complimentary shore excursion to Ephesus for the orchestra concert at night. Are there other ports with similar free excursions/events? I’m not really sure how to search for that info. Thanks!

We received two bottles as gifts and we are unable to take them with us because we only take carry on luggage. Can we give them to our room attendant?

Well, it certainly will be easier! But I highly doubt you will find $2000 worth of gifts in the shop, unless you buy jewelry. The safest thing to do is probably to plan to use at least some of the OBC for the spa but just wait to book till you’re onboard. You’ll pay higher prices but you’ll be assured that it will come out of OBC. We have also used some OBC this trip on laundry and the Retreat, but there is no retreat on Venture, right?

Ok, I have extensive personal experience with this, for better or worse. You are about to get more info about this than you ever wanted lol. We are currently on Encore and had $1600 OBC to use. We had the same idea as you and prebooked excursions and some spa treatments, with the understanding that Seabourn Square would have everything switched to apply the OBC and refund our credit card when we got onboard. For the excursions, no problem whatsoever, it was adjusted immediately. The prepaid spa was another story. The first rep we spoke with said that prepaid spa cannot be refunded and then applied to OBC, so we would have to go to the spa, cancel and rebook our appointments, and then it would go against the OBC. Ok, no problem. Except the spa manager said that if we cancelled and rebooked, we would be charged the higher onboard prices for the treatments and would lose the benefit of having pre booked at a lower price (and some of the differences were significant). So, back to guest services we went. The next rep we spoke with, the lovely Anine, said that of course it was possible to convert prepaid spa to OBC and she would take care of it and let us know. Next morning, no change in our account. Anine was not working but another rep again told us that he didn’t think it was possible to do, but he would talk to the night auditor who was responsible for making those adjustments, and the night auditor did not come on duty till 11 pm. Next day, still no change. Anine was back and we found out that she had been working on this for us for the past couple days, sending long emails and talking to various people to try to sort it out. Apparently the issue is that the spa is an independent entity from Seabourn, so it can’t just be done automatically the way the excursions are. We decided to let it go and see what happened. Two days later, still no change. Now we were getting a bit concerned, and although we try to stay very positive, honestly a bit annoyed also. So we asked for the guest services supervisor who turned out to be the lovely Nicola. She spent a great deal of time with us trying to sort out what was going on. It seems that the real problem is the accounting system that Seabourn uses, which is incomprehensible to passengers (and also crew apparently). Rather than just start with an OBC amount and then just charge against it, there is an inexplicable mish mash of credits and debits that truly cannot be deciphered by anyone. We all knew what we wanted to do, but nobody could figure out how to do it! Fortunately, Nicola seemed to have the greatest understanding of anyone that we had talked to, and she assured us it would be handled. Later that day, we received a message from Nicola that it had been sorted and we would get an updated statement the next morning. Next morning, you guessed it, no change. Our account still showed the same amount of nonrefundable credit, meaning that the spa treatments had not been applied to it. We tracked down Nicola later in the day and she was mystified, because as far as she could tell it had been fixed. She promised to get back to us, and later that day we finally had a printout of our account that showed the correct amounts. Phew! Oh, but we aren’t done yet. 😊 The next day, we got an another printout of a preliminary statement in our room (it was getting near the end of the cruise so I think it was just routine). Back to the same incorrect numbers. 😳 No change in charges or anything else, just wrong again. Back to Seabourn Square, where Anine was ready to tear every hair out of her head lol. I joked with her that we had broken her system. Turns out that for some reason the account was correct in the computer, but when they tried to print it out it kept showing the wrong numbers. But she showed me the right numbers in the computer, so I decided to trust her. And lo and behold, the account is finally showing the correct numbers today, on day 9 of our 10 day cruise. All of this is to say, proceed with caution lol. And if you have a problem the first day, ask immediately for the guest services supervisor, because it is unlikely anyone else will be able to fix it for you. But the answer to your question is yes, it can be done. The thing that really confused me was that it seemed like we were the first people to ever try to do this, which can’t be possible. But there was clearly no standard procedure for handling it. I will say that everyone we dealt with was incredibly pleasant and professional (and we were also very pleasant the whole time, which I’m sure helped). This was our first Seabourn cruise and we have loved it, and we are already planning our next one. I know it sounds like we spent hours dealing with this, but it did not interfere with our cruise enjoyment in any way. Sorry for the long book but I figured it would be useful info for future guests trying to do this.

We spent yesterday at the Retreat and loved it. I had already booked it for another port day during our cruise but I called this morning to see if we could get it for our one sea day also, but it is fully booked. So if you think you might like it, book it ahead and you can always cancel.

Although thinking about it we might need more than one device per passenger anyway, we each have a phone and an iPad.

Did you use the basic Wi-Fi or did you upgrade? Was the basic ok for like checking email, Facebook, things like that? I won’t need to stream shows or anything like that.