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Silver Whisper June 7-14 Civitavecchia-Piraeus: A Very, Very Weird Cruise


BeeMinor
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My husband and I have recently returned from the June 7-14 Silver Whisper sailing. We are admittedly non-traditional Silversea cruisers--40ish creative professionals who lean toward shorter cruises and land trips--but after a few years of sailing in Celebrity's suite class we wanted to try out a smaller ship with more interesting ports, less of a crush of humanity, and what we thought would be an overall better experience. We are no teetotalers but we are not party animals either. We thought we'd do things like play trivia and relax on our balcony. We thought it might even be a little boring. Certainly when speculating about our trip we did not expect to hear someone sing karaoke to the tune of "Sweet Caroline" but with the chorus rewritten as something like "Income for Life," listen to some guy Facetime loudly and then play EDM for all to hear on his phone, or see someone peel off his shorts and hop into the hot tub in his boxers.

 

Unfortunately this experience was full of surprises, and most of them not good ones! I booked directly with Silversea (a mistake—I have always been our household travel agent and never needed anyone else, but if we consider sailing Silversea again, I will look into it)and our rep was not super competent. The rep, for example, volunteered to book and comp us a meal at La Dame for our wedding anniversary on embarkation day, along with sourcing some special wine to be placed in our stateroom. The wine didn't happen, she couldn't get us reservations at La Dame on the date, and I had to email her mid-voyage to remind her it was supposed to be her treat. No one on the ship even knew any of these conversations had ever happened. Silversea's air department booked our flights but didn’t tell us when our outbound domestic connecting flight was canceled and we were rebooked on a flight with less than an hour layover. I found out when I was checking flight times to set up our airport transfer. (RomeCabs, they were great.) Anyway it took days and multiple phone calls and emails to get a change through that I could normally make on my app in three minutes.

 

All that is water under the bridge. Mistakes happen. What still sticks in my craw is that our sailing included two partial charters totaling some 2/3 of the ship's capacity, including a group of 200 people on an employer-paid sales competition reward trip. None of the remaining 1/3 of the ship had any idea that this was going to happen. I mean, charters are obviously going to crop up, and I've shared ships with partial charters before, but not like this. I would never even have known about the smaller partial charter, for example, if not that I happened to chat in passing with a couple of people who were taking part in it. A couple of years ago we shared a bigger ship with a group of motorcycle enthusiasts and their motorcycles with no obvious impact on our day-to-day cruise! But a small ship and a large group is not a good combo.

 

The whole thing felt like being stuck at a wedding reception for some distant relative. The pool was frequently mayhem—the crew was doing their best but clearly stressed—and the groups on board did not mingle, creating an atmosphere that was very unlike the friendly camaraderie I associate with cruising. As what I assume was a result, I have never before heard "no" on a cruise so many times. No, you can't eat in La Terrazza tonight; no, we can't give you more sauce for your steak; no, we don't have any other beer choices; no, no, no. The whole situation reflected very poorly on Silversea and left pretty much everyone we spoke with on the ship unhappy. I have no idea why Silversea thought this would be a good idea, so much so that I have already emailed management to ask that very question.

 

By the way, future Whisper pax, the ship does not recognize formal-optional on one-week Med sailings. Again, they had no idea that this is what their own pre-cruise literature says. So come prepared for formal night—that is, gentlemen, bring a tie. Our formal night, somewhat weirdly, was on the second night of the cruise when we were in port from 1 p.m. to 10 p.m. We didn't get back in from sightseeing until after 6, sweaty and in hiking clothes from practically attempting to scale the island of Lipari. (I'd post a photo from as high as we got, but Cruise Critic does not seem to like Google Photos.) My husband didn't bring a tie—the lovely Vicki, who was a true highlight of the experience, did actually materialize one for him to borrow--but luckily we managed to get late dining seats at what proved to be an oddly deserted La Terrazza anyway.

 

I know this post seems unrelentingly negative, so I want to make it clear that it was not an unmitigated disaster. We did enjoy our vacation in spite of everything. The ports were lovely, the crew were largely very personable, our standard veranda room was comfortable, and the food was great. We actually liked the cruise a lot when we weren't on the ship or when we managed to figure out where to go that we didn't feel like interlopers.

 

But seriously—if you are considering Silversea for a trip, or even if you have one booked, BEWARE. We would never have gone on this cruise if we'd known that this was a possibility. If we ever seriously consider going on another Silversea cruise, I will seek assurance that we are sharing the ship with mostly other people who aren't going to show up on a caravan of buses wearing matching name tags!

 

I am happy to answer any questions about the cruise and/or the ports (Civitavecchia, Lipari, Trapani, Syracuse, Gythio, and Piraeus). We spent some time in Rome and Athens on either side of the cruise, and I have a stack of the Daily Chronicles. If I can figure out how to post photos, I'll take a crack at that, too!

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Hi BM,

 

You have our sympathies because we were also on the same cruise as was another poster. We hang out in another thread where I had intended to stop posting once on the cruise, but the daily events as they unfolded became so bizarre it turned out to be a sort of daily surreal blogg. I’m told by readers of my unintended blog that I was stoic, balanced and of good humour considering what we went through.

 

If you are sufficiently interested in reading about our experiences on the same cruise then it sort of starts at post 3593 and continues - or should I say waffles on from then onwards.

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.co.uk/showthread.php?t=2559429&page=90

 

 

We were promised on board that we would be pro-actively contacted as soon as we got home to offer us compensation, but neither us or the other party have heard from Silversea in spite of the promises and reminders directly and via the TA. It seems that they do not intend to honour their promise.

 

It would be helpful to all of us if we kept each other abreast of any developments. Please feel free to post here and/or over on The Cooler thread where we hang out.

 

All the best.

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Thanks for posting.

 

BTW I used to post on CC using Google Photos, for years. They have made it nearly impossible so I jumped ship to SmugMug, which is far easier to use. The explanation is complicated and beyond the scope of this thread, but AFAIK all of the free hosting sites have made it difficult if not impossible to post a direct link to the picture (which is what you need to do in order to embed the pic on CC).

 

You could try the Forums/Tapatalk app which sometimes allows you to upload the picture directly to your post. It seems like it worked better for me last year, and not so good lately. YMMV as others say that it still works well.

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BeeMinor, thanks for sharing your Whisper experience with us on the principal Silversea thread. We can relate having found yourselves on a group cruise which changes the dynamics of a normal (non group) cruise.

 

Appreciate your candid thoughts.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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So sorry you had this experience. But it is good that you found redeeming qualities in an otherwise disappointing cruise. I had a similar experience on another luxury line -- finding that I was cruising with a large group who were being rewarded for sales achievements and who in no way fit the demographics (or expected behavior) of that cruise line. I understand that cruise lines have to fill berths to stay financially afloat, but at what cost? In any case, I didn't let that experience prejudice me against that line, and I have since spent many happy days on their ships. I have never bothered to ask the cruise lines I frequent whether there will be a large group on my sailings. I doubt I would get an authoritative answer. In any case, in lots of cruising on luxury lines, this was fortunately a one-off experience for me. I hope it will be for you as well.

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Welcome to the Silversea forum BeeMinor and thanks for taking time to post your thoughts in an official thread on this cruise.

 

I’m sure the thread will be interesting as it’s certainly controversial and guessing anyone else on this cruise will have lots to say, so it’s pleasing you’ve said you are open to discuss the good and bad in the thread you’ve created for this purpose.

 

I did see a link posted elsewhere to a carnival cruise in Australia where a party of 23 caused havoc, causing conflicts on the ship, fighting other guests and crew members and were eventually evicted from the ship. Comparisons were made to this and called “the cruise from hell”, which that one certainly was.

 

I can see from what you’ve said, you’d rather not have had this large party on with you (and don’t blame you), but was it really anything remotely like that?

 

I do think you’ve a good case to complain about regardless, so hopefully you can convince them to give you a decent goodwill gesture of a discounted future cruise. It sounds like you deserve it.

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It is really interesting to read another report on this cruise, from the different perspective of a first time Silversea cruiser - and I think first time 'luxury'line cruiser, with that of someone who has previous Silversea cruises under their belt. Although the perspective is therefore slightly different, both to me ring very true, and if I were a Silversea aficionado I would find it hard to condone the company's attitude to their customers.

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Thanks for the post...…...I am sailing on Whisper on July 10th...…….after reading Jeff's and Davey's report and now yours I have to wonder if my cruise will have a large group on it too:eek:……...this will be my 2nd cruise on SS.

Last summer I had a marvelous time:)……...I have to hope this one will be just as good but I am starting to wonder now.

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Hi everyone! Thanks for your kind words, and Jeff, I read your in-the-moment reports with great interest. For us the cruise was part of a larger trip and as Silversea first-timers we looked on the whole thing as something of an experiment . . . though not perhaps a very successful one. (At some point in the trip I thought to myself, wow, this is a great advertisement for Celebrity's suite class.) I, too, hate to complain about other people having a good time, but when someone else's good time consistently impinges on mine, that is not okay.

 

Frustratingly at times we could tell we would probably have really enjoyed a "normal" Silversea cruise, but for the price it's quite a risk to experiment too often. At any rate I have received an apology from U.S. senior management and been promised a timely follow-up, and am looking forward to seeing how they handle the situation. My husband, on the other hand, is maybe ready to never go on another cruise ever again.

 

And thanks for the tip on SmugMug, JP, which conveniently solves the problem of my phone yelling at me about low storage space and allows me to post a few photos to show off the good parts!

 

Roma!

We've been to Rome before, but it's been a while, so we spent five full days there before boarding the ship. Most days we spent some time admiring this view from our AirBnb's roof terrace:

 

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And stuffing ourselves with pasta:

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Of course we also saw some sights. (My pedometer app suggests we saw 100,000 steps' worth.) And I took hundreds of pictures. Here are a few highlights.

 

Finally, I remembered to make reservations for the Borghese Museum. Tickets at the desk were for entrances a week out, so I'm glad we planned ahead. We also pre-booked the small group Vatican Gardens and Via Triumphalis Necropolis tour through the Vatican Museums. I highly recommend it. Much of the tour is spent strolling through the extensive grounds behind the museums and the basilica rather than just seeing the formal gardens, and the whole thing feels very behind-the-scenes and special. (For starters, you get to walk past the 1,000+ people lined up to enter the museum and go right through security.)

 

Some of the gardens:

 

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We tromped up the 551 steps to the top of the dome, because walking up tall things is what we do on vacation. You have to make room for all the pasta-stuffing somehow.

 

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I was delighted to discover we were in town for the annual rose show and garden opening:

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And what's a trip to Rome without swinging by this thing on the side of the road:

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Back to work for me, but I'll post some photos from the ports later on! There will be more views from high places and food. I took almost no pictures on the ship, which is probably for the best, really.

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Thanks BM,

 

Rome is a very visual city and there is a lot to see, particularly in the areas surrounding Rome.

 

I’m glad you read my account - and I just revisited it for the first time since our return, and I believe that any fair minded person reading it would recognise I was really genuinely determined at all times to try and enjoy the cruise and make the most of it, and approached the situation as it unfolded with balance and humour. In the end however, we hadn’t paid to be confined largely to our suite or expected not to be able to enjoy the restaurants, bars, shows, or outside spaces. After a few days of 24 hours drinking and boisterous behaviour it was miserable.

 

It is great that you have received at least an apology and holding communication, for my part there is simply tumbleweed.

 

Please keep in touch.

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Frustratingly at times we could tell we would probably have really enjoyed a "normal" Silversea cruise, but for the price it's quite a risk to experiment too often. At any rate I have received an apology from U.S. senior management and been promised a timely follow-up, and am looking forward to seeing how they handle the situation. My husband, on the other hand, is maybe ready to never go on another cruise ever again.

 

I really think the risk is very small -- and probably smaller after this fiasco. I have hundreds of nights on Silversea and have never encountered such a situation. I am certain that Silversea is greatly chagrined by this episode and will take even greater care in the future in screening such groups as want to purchase a large number of suites on its ships. I hope you can persuade your husband to give cruising/Silversea another chance.

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BeeMinor - I am so sorry you had such a poor introduction to Silversea. I can well imaging that having a group of people on board who are having a "free" cruise will very much change the demographics and probably not for the better.

 

We had an experience a while back on the Cloud cruise to Norway where there were two groups sponsored by some travel agency in Australia. The result was that half of the passengers were Australian which made it tons of fun for everyone! We had the opportunity to be in two countries on the same trip: Australia on board and Norway on shore. We loved it! I do know, however, that if it had been a bunch of sales reps on a free cruise, I would not have been so thrilled.

 

Good luck with Silversea. I hope they do the right thing.

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I’m glad you read my account - and I just revisited it for the first time since our return, and I believe that any fair minded person reading it would recognise I was really genuinely determined at all times to try and enjoy the cruise and make the most of it, and approached the situation as it unfolded with balance and humour. In the end however, we hadn’t paid to be confined largely to our suite or expected not to be able to enjoy the restaurants, bars, shows, or outside spaces. After a few days of 24 hours drinking and boisterous behaviour it was miserable.

 

I absolutely agree you did the best you could. We were out and about on the ship pretty often, and disembarking I saw I remarkable number of unfamiliar faces; there was a couple discussing the cruise a few people ahead of us in the boarding line at JFK on our way back, and I swear I had never seen them before. I'd hazard you weren't the only ones holed in your suite! And based on my text message history, I guarantee you my live presentation of the situation would have been much more livid at points than yours was. We had spent so long looking forward to this trip which was both a milestone celebration and a much-needed break after an extremely stressful first half of the year that I decided on about Day 3 to look on the situation as an opportunity to observe human nature--and to write a strongly worded letter after I got home.

 

Meanwhile I'm going to take advantage of this quiet day at work to bring you--Lipari!

 

Lipari was a port we knew nothing about and had no real plan for beyond "maybe we'll see if we can hike somewhere." It was quite pretty from our balcony, and after having a poor first night on the cruise and overhearing people talking about their suite mates still being passed out at nearly 11 a.m., I was looking forward to getting off the ship for a while.

 

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Up we went through Lipari town, which seemed very quaint.

 

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We found a turn-off marked a little ways out of town, and followed a foot/scooter path for a while. It climbed the side of the island facing the town.

 

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The trail went along pretty far from where we started. There's the Whisper in the distance.

 

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I'm not quite sure whether this villa is actually called "Minestrone Recipe" or whether the owner just really likes minestrone, but perhaps I'll try it out sometime.

 

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See the small grotto below? There's a treacherous-looking footpath marked "BEACH" heading down from the end of the trail toward that. We considered giving it a shot but had seen and almost stepped on a snake on the way up, and decided not to chance it.

 

i-n4GXN5p-M.jpg

 

Remember when I mentioned we liked the cruise better when we weren't on the ship? This was definitely one of those moments.

 

I see I have hit my per-post image limit, so let me continue in another post.

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I’m so sorry to hear about your experience Beeminor. I really hope Mr Beeminor gives it another go. We certainly wouldn’t be put off cruising despite our recent experience but we would be more careful about what we booked.

 

Thanks for the pics, I Love seeing where people have travelled to.

 

I Hope you get a reasonable response from Silversea, it’s a good sign that you’ve had an acknowledgement already. Not many of us seem to even get that.

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Lois,

 

The chances of this happening to you is not high I would have thought. It had our group and that was followed by some sort of 100% charter as I understand for a few days. If it really is worrying you why not ask your TA to check.

 

Hi Jeff,:) I am not really "worried"...….and not sure I want to know:eek:…...cruising in 3 weeks so nothing I can do about it anyway.

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More Lipari and Because I am Verbose A Rundown of Formal Night

 

By the time we made it back to town I'd estimate that we had walked about 4.5 miles round-trip, so we were ready for a break.

 

i-dmR9RKH-M.jpg

 

Afterward we walked back up to the church and the archeological museum. By then it was well after 4 p.m. and the museum wasn't open much longer, so we only had time to walk through one of the buildings. As might be expected they had a rather large pottery collection and also an interesting collection of Greek theatrical masks. I was an undeclared classics minor in undergrad (didn't do the classes in ancient Greek but took all the others), but I could never see another decorated pot and probably be good.

 

The church was small but quite pretty. There's a small Norman-era cloister off to one side.

 

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And, because this is Italy after all, of course there's a very well-fed stray cat to greet you.

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If you ever visit Lipari and don't feel like a possibly snake-ridden 4.5 mile hike, you can enjoy perfectly good views from the overlooks near the church.

 

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We got back to the ship around 7 or so and formal night had already kicked in--like I said, a weird night to choose for a non-optional formal night. The following day we had an all-aboard of 5:30 so why it wasn't then I really don't understand, but it is what it is.

 

In a rookie mistake, we only had the pre-booked reservations at La Dame and ones I'd made at the Grill for the sea day; from past experience with Celebrity and figuring folks would be pretty spread out across the ship, I didn't anticipate it would be a big deal to get into La Terrazza any evening by asking our butler to arrange it in the morning. In fact every time we asked for a non-MDR seating it was fraught with suspense, and we couldn't always dine where we would have liked. The standard balcony room is a little cramped for room service dinner, IMHO, so if you are sailing for the first time, I'd suggest making back-up reservations somewhere every night just in case the MDR menu doesn't appeal.

 

Anyway. Although it had been a big question mark, when we showed up at La Terrazza for our 9 p.m. reservation, there were about maybe 15 people there and most of them were almost done eating. We had a very pleasant dinner on the terrace with a perfect view for sailaway. Our waiter, Christian, was a gem, and it was the only time a chef came out to see how we liked the food. "You must have a frowny face emoji next to your picture on those little tablets," my husband said, "for us to get that kind of attention."

 

We left La Terrazza full and contented, and then made the absolutely wrong decision to go see what the Chronicle promised would be a Roaring 20s dance party was all about. What is was about was five minutes long and then an onslaught of ABBA in a crush of people. (Looking back at the Chronicle, I see it is double-billed with "Disco night" so I guess we should have known.) We stuck around for about 20 minutes and after seeing a particularly florid-faced man my husband referred to as "Chuck from Accounting" all week skitter across the dance floor holding three glasses of Champagne we decided to hide out in our room for a nightcap. This is the night I texted a friend, "I cry inside to think about how much money we spent to go to someone else's party."

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Beeminor, I am loving your photography, as well as your indefatigable attitude for making the best of an awful situation. Thank you for sharing both the gorgeous and the ugly with us.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

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Thanks for posting your photographs, they are wonderful.

 

Not so wonderful = the sordidness of the pax aboard and the blight their behavior caused on what would have otherwise been a fabulous cruise.

 

 

 

 

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