SilverSea Trip Report Venice to Rome 7/1

This is the cruise line trip report. I’ll post a separate one for the ports and for Rome.

We did the 7 day Venice to Rome trip including Dubrovnik Croatia, Corfu Greece, Taormina and Sorrento (Pompeii) on the Silver Shadow on 7/1. We’ve done the Radisson Mariner and Voyager, Crystal Symphony and the Seaborne Spirit.

Overall we loved SilverSeas. We loved the size of the ship, large enough to have lots of public space but never a line for anything. I liked the size of the ship better than Seaborne, which seemed a little small to me. I think the lines are very similar from a service quality perspective. We also love the “all-inclusive” style. I hate signing for drinks all the time. The ship was in great shape. The service was top notch. I noticed they had a number of older service staff, it was a career to them rather than something they’ll do for a few years while they are young. We were pleasantly surprised by how good the shows were. Especially one night when they did a cirque style show with ropes from the ceiling and dancers spinning around, suspended in the air. Did not do any gambling since I only play craps. Blackjack requires math, and I don’t like to do math on my vacations ;-) The average age was lower than I expected, perhaps due to the itinerary and the fact there were a few large family groups on board with their 20 somethings. There were a lot of 40s and 50s on the ship. Getting off the ship was the easiest on any of the ships I’ve been on.

There were two black marks on our cruise. The first was checking in. The taxi took us to the Venice port where you drop off your luggage. No taxis were allowed near the ships. At the luggage drop off building there were only signs for the Grand Princess luggage. We felt very uncomfortable leaving our luggage there even though they said it was the right place. A SilverSea sign would have made us feel good. Then we had to walk 100 yards to the check-in building. It was 6:10p and the building closed at 6:00p. Fortunately someone was standing at the door to direct us another 100 yards back around the building to a waiting bus. It would have been nice if the person had moved to the luggage drop off space to save us carrying our hand luggage an extra 200 yards. After about 15 minutes waiting alone on the bus we were off to the ship. Check-in on the ship was fine, and our luggage appeared within the hour.

The other black mark was the tendering limitations of the ship. Every ship I have been on puts out a wood platform to tender from. SilverSea tenders directly from a door in the ship. At first I thought this was so convenient until we were stranded on the dock for 25 minutes in the sun with no water, waiting for a tender. The waves were just a little too big to tie up directly against the ship. They should have had water since we were in the sun, and they should have told us what was going on. The Wind Surf ship sent two tenders during that time and as a group we were really losing patience. Turns out we were lucky, one of the tenders was full and was bobbing around near the ship waiting to tie up for almost 45 minutes. I would have been leaning over the rail feeding the fish had I been on that tender. They were moving the ship around trying to protect the side of the ship from the waves until it was smooth enough to tie up. The door in the hull is only 6 ½ feet tall so if there are waves when you step from the tender to the ship you could hit your head against the steel hull. This is a bad design and could be fixed with a deployable wood platform like everyone else uses. I will be careful to avoid this cruise line if they have a tendering port. There is too much risk of not being able to tender. Also in Taormina they ran a shuttle up to the town. When we got off the tender it was already full. We stood in the aisle until they decided no seat no trip. So we started sitting in people’s laps to get more people on. Not exactly 6 star service. A few people had to get off and I don’t know what happened to them since the shuttles were only running every 30 minutes. I’m sure they were not happy.

We will do this cruise line again but I will try hard to avoid itineraries that have a tender port.

Thank you so much for your informative report. It should not be that difficult to install the "wood platform" (with railings of course) for getting from the ship to the tender (and vice versa). So if that is important, why won't Silversea do it? May be someone with more experience will kindly explain this!

Wineasmusic: I've read you comparisons and this review of Silverseas and I have one little "gripe": Seabourn is spelled Seabourn.

Wineasmusic: I've read you comparisons and this review of Silverseas and I have one little "gripe": Seabourn is spelled Seabourn.

:)

Host Dan