Running out of chocolate?

[lincslady]

Apropos restrictions on Showergel. Is this a subtle move by Seabourn to extend it's customer base to encompass the great unwashed?

 

Does running out of French Fries suggest these are not prepared fresh from potatos on board but are bought in pre conditioned. If the latter, it would be good to know the source, as I for one would like to buy some.:)

 

I am sure they are brought on frozen - sometimes they have the ones with extra crispy coating, sometimes not. Sorry I don't know where they come from; I have always assumed the USA. Worth asking next time!:)

[electra2008]

Cruise Critic is well named, Most seem to think Critic being the operative word How much shower gel can 2 or even 3 people use! I use Molton Brown at home, bought at JL, and it lasts for ever, a drop, tsp full, is all that is needed. As for towels I don't have a clean towel at home every day and it annoys me that so many people waste so much energy, expecting clean towels evey day when they are away. No towel rails sling it over the shower rail, 1st checking that SR is clean. or be like the Janpanese use a facecloth to wipe all the excess water off you and the towel is only needed forbuffing you dry. As for no chocky if what I know about cheaper cruise is anything to go by, who has room for it!

I am booked for next year on Sojourn and if my previous cruises are anything to go by it will be good fun. A life experience that many people are not so lucky to enjoy.

So maybe it's not what it used to be, what is.

[NEOPHYTUS]

 

Does running out of French Fries suggest these are not prepared fresh from potatos on board but are bought in pre conditioned. If the latter, it would be good to know the source, as I for one would like to buy some.:)

 

Sysco Imperial French Fries, according to one source.

Sysco is one of the USAs biggest and quality suppliers of food items to institutions. Many top of the line restaurants it was revealed even use their desserts. Wholesale only.

[hoosier74]

Margaret' date=' I so agree and wish we were eating those wonderful french fries right now with you and enjoying each others company and laughter.

Shirley[/quote']

 

Me too, Shirley. And maybe a glass of wine?

Which brings me to the thing I fell in love with about Seabourn; the people. Staff, fellow passengers.

It's a rare privilege.

[CraftyEC]

Just off our first Seabourn cruise on the Quest and happy to report:

• Two chocolates, in rotating flavours, each night
  
• Small flower vase in our suite, with single rose on formal night
  
• Plenty of fruit, changed or topped up every day
  
• Toiletries: always a full bottle of each of the four in the glass cupboard, in addition to whatever was in use
  
• Each of us offered our choice of soap by our stewardess
  
• Specialist bath product provided promptly on request (the Gingerlily one was lovely, I brought the rest home!)
  
• Towels, even when folded and put back on the rails were obviously not done so to our stewardess's high standards, all used towels were replaced twice a day - so much for the green-policy! I found the towels big enough (and we are both far from small) and when feeling lazy padded around the suite in the robe if I wasn't quite dry!
  
• Ice bucket replenished twice a day, stayed frozen but useable in the 'fridge
  
• Fabulous crunchy fries available daily at the Patio Grill, not every day in the Colonnade
  

All in all, great service, a delightful and friendly stewardess, good food, drinkable wine, plenty of champagne, great company - we didn't want to disembark!

[lincslady]

Really pleased to hear you enjoyed it so much (especially as we are on Quest fairly soon). It does seem to prove that any blips are not Seabourn-wide, but just occasional occurrences for various reasons - running out of things can obviously happen easily, especially I would guess if the ship comes into Athens and has difficulty in getting supplies in the current situation there.

[johnnycruise]

Just off our first Seabourn cruise on the Quest and happy to report:

• Two chocolates, in rotating flavours, each night
  
• Small flower vase in our suite, with single rose on formal night
  
• Plenty of fruit, changed or topped up every day
  
• Toiletries: always a full bottle of each of the four in the glass cupboard, in addition to whatever was in use
  
• Each of us offered our choice of soap by our stewardess
  
• Specialist bath product provided promptly on request (the Gingerlily one was lovely, I brought the rest home!)
  
• Towels, even when folded and put back on the rails were obviously not done so to our stewardess's high standards, all used towels were replaced twice a day - so much for the green-policy! I found the towels big enough (and we are both far from small) and when feeling lazy padded around the suite in the robe if I wasn't quite dry!
  
• Ice bucket replenished twice a day, stayed frozen but useable in the 'fridge
  
• Fabulous crunchy fries available daily at the Patio Grill, not every day in the Colonnade
  

All in all, great service, a delightful and friendly stewardess, good food, drinkable wine, plenty of champagne, great company - we didn't want to disembark!

 

Crafty,

 

Your experience nearly mirrors mine on the Legend in early August. Agree that any toiletries moved from the mirrored cabinet to the tub/vanity/desk were replaced during the next cleaning service. Specialty bubble bath available upon request - and they always brought two bottles.

 

I received several notes during the course of the cruise and all were signed by an individual (stewardess, hotel manager, bar manager, etc.) - never by "The Management." That seems most impersonal. Fridge always stocked completely full, even with diet tonic water and an endless supply of Perrier water - one bottle in the fridge and two on the counter above it. A full bouquet of flowers (different colored roses, oriental lilies, etc. - not the cheap filler) delivered as a birthday gift, along with a bottle of wine.

 

The Sky Grill became my favorite casual lunch venue. French fries and fresh guacamole with tortilla chips always available.

 

johnny

[Flamin_June]

1964: Cunard Queen Elizabeth to NYC, back on Queen Mary - does that count?!?

 

Wow! I'll say it counts. When cruising was really cruisng. I am assuming that you were very young then (though that could well be an erronous assumption). How does today's experience compare to the days of the Great Queens??

[Chairsin]

Seabourngirl,

Did you try using bread flour? If that does not work guess you will just have to book another cruise!

[CraftyEC]

Well, unfortunately I don't remember too much about the TA trip in 1964, I was only just 6 years old! When we went on the QM2 there was a meeting for folks who had travelled on the 'old' Queen Mary, and I seemed to be one of the youngest attendees, by some margin.

 

Interestingly the things I remember about the trip are largely food-related - I wonder why? I remember the bouillon being brought out on deck, in cups, when we were wrapped up in blankets on steamer chairs. Also the main dining room, where I was so fascinated by the word 'vanilla' which I thought to be the height of sophistication, that I ordered this for desert each day, even though I preferred chocolate icecream!

 

It was my sister's 16th birthday while we were crossing on the Queen Elizabeth and they made a big fuss, on one the the gala dinner evenings. They made some flambeed dessert at the table (Cherries Jubilee, my sisters report, but I can't remember the details) and there was champagne all round - including a very little glass for me - which apparently I loved! The funniest story from that meal is that some 35 or more years later we were talking about it over Christmas, and we sisters (aged 6,12 and 16 at the time of the trip, by now MUCH older) all had the same recollection of the starter which was odd 'round things' in different colours, with some flaky bits on top. In retrospect it was obviously melon balls soaked in various liqueurs, with flaked almonds (very 1960s!). This thing is that ALL three of us had done the same thing, which was, being polite young girls and not wanting to refuse something, to swallow them whole so that we didn't have to chew them!

 

Back to the original topic, we did run out of Sauternes one night but more had been taken on board by the next time we 'needed' it two nights later.

[turtlemichael]

Thanks CraftyEC, great recollection and great reading!

[Flamin_June]

I'll second that, Tutlemike -

Thanks, CraftyEC !

[CraftyEC]

I just really wish I'd been older and could remember more! I was recently contacted on a social networking site by a younger boy of a family we knew who were coincidentally on the same sailing, and he couldn't remember it at all :(

 

It took me another 44 years to get around to cruising again, but now I'm hooked! This last cruise, our first on Seabourn, was absolute bliss, now I'm just worried that if we cruise with anyone else I will be disappointed!

[Flamin_June]

This last cruise, our first on Seabourn, was absolute bliss, now I'm just worried that if we cruise with anyone else I will be disappointed!

 

That's exactly how my wife and I feel - which is probably why I get so hot under the collar about falling standards. We feel we are both ruined by our Seabourn experience and that nothing else could compare. A sentiment shared by many passengers we met on our first cruise, including a young (late 20s) couple where the girl's father had worked for Cunard for many years and she had been on dozens of cruises on the Queens and P & O etc etc. since a small child. We asked which she thought was the best and she said, without hesitation, Seabourn, by a country mile.

 

Talking of cruising in the grand tradition, and great reading, there is a marvelous short story by W Somerset Maugham, called P & O, set in the early 1920s, on a liner sailing from Singapore back to Britain. It has a very amusing section about plans for a Christmas party. Perhaps I will post a few paragraphs from it if I can get round to transcribing them.

[wripro]

Flamin_June,

 

Thank you for the recommendation of the Maugham story. I will seek it out as soon as possible.

[kiskadee]

It's not pressure to keep prices down but an effort to drive profits up.

Despite the talk of keeping costs down, corporations are doing very well in this low interest rate, high unemployment rate, low inflation (some say deflationary) environment.

Carnival can borrow funds at low single digit rates for infrastructure, wages have been flat for years, while fuel is purchased via hedge and futures contracts years in advance. The so called luxury market has done very well in this economic slowdown as the customer base is generally immune from its effects. Guests who pay nearly 1K per day, (cruise,airfare,hotels,etc.), to embark on Seabourn should not be subjected to policies designed to save a few of dollars a day per passenger. Cheap house wines, rationing of cabin amenities, occasional closing of the MDR, double-dipping on visa issuance, restricting combination of onboard credits and running out of fresh fruits,vegetables,etc. are petty practices solely designed to fatten the bottom line at the expense of the so called and shrinking luxury cruise.

If this trend accelerates, savvy cruisers will seek other alternatives which may offer a comparable experience for substantially less.

 

I have been on two world cruises and recently have noticed all the cut backs you have mentioned here. We were left one bar of soap so had to transfer the soap from the shower to the wash hand basin each time and we were only ever left one body wash. We may not consider Seabourn in the future as these petty little cut backs are not what we consider luxury cruising and we have been on Seabourn a couple of times a year for 14 years.

[MarciAnn]

I don't think the problem is with Seabourn making cutbacks. I think the problem lies with those Seabourn cruisers who believe they are entitled to bring home a suitcase laden with Hermes soap and ask for 4 bars a day(and believe me there are such people). I, like others on this board, never experienced a shortage of toiletries on our recent Quest cruise nor a shortage of clean towels or anythng else for that matter. Rather I will tell you that SB went out of their way to fill our requests. The couple we were travelling with like Hendricks gin and voila, it appeared the next day in his suite. They actually went out and got it for him. Ditto with my huisband's request for mouthwash when he realized there was none in the shop. I say stop sweating the small things!

[stamfordian]

This last cruise, our first on Seabourn, was absolute bliss, now I'm just worried that if we cruise with anyone else I will be disappointed!

 

You will be!

[MARIANH]

Flamin_June,

 

Thank you for the recommendation of the Maugham story. I will seek it out as soon as possible.

 

This is one of SM's short stories. Some consider them to be his metiere. Beware the Malaysian curse. Happy reading.

[Flamin_June]

This is one of SM's short stories. Some consider them to be his metiere. Beware the Malaysian curse. Happy reading.

 

If anyone is interested, it can be found in the volume called Far Eastern Tales.

I, in fact, read this story while on our first SB cruise last year.

[wripro]

I will order it on Amazon. I have an 18 hour flight to Africa next month and that will be my entertainment. Thanks again.

[digtexas]

Marianh,

After your references to Maughm, I downloaded Of Human Bondage and another of his books onto my Kindle from Amazon for free. I am not sure that the short stories were available on Kindle, but I will be happy to finally get around to reading this author, who, for some reason, I have missed.

 

Thank you for the idea.

[Flamin_June]

Perhaps the time is right for a WSM revival. I have to say I found Far Eastern Tales an easy and enjoyable read. Maugham has a much lighter touch than I had imagined and a dry sense of humor. I tried reading some years ago, in my very late teens, and couldn't get on with him. But that, I now know was mostly a matter of my lack of relative maturity and sophistication.

 

Raymond Chandler was a fan of Maugham - Chandler is one of my absolute all-time favorite writers - and I can see why. Not that the two are remotely similar, superficially at any rate.

 

P & O is set, as I said, on a Liner in the late 1910s or early 1920s. It is not specifically about the cruising life, but is packed with period detail and incident, and really does convey what day to day life on those long voyages to and from the colonies must have been like.

 

Wripro - I hope you enjoy it and the other stories in Far Eastern Tales.

 

 

I am planning on taking Mugham's collected Ashenden stories on our next cruise in December (Ashenden is often described as the first modern spy in fiction) along with some Le Carre ( another writer who I first 'discovered' last year - 30 years after everybody else!).

[turtlemichael]

The thread has moved a long way from chocolate which is probably a good thing. ;) P&O is also in a Kindle available book of Maugham short stories.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-ebook/dp/B0031XYI9C/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1317674277&sr=1-4

[digtexas]

The thread has moved a long way from chocolate which is probably a good thing. ;) P&O is also in a Kindle available book of Maugham short stories.

 

http://www.amazon.com/Short-Stories-ebook/dp/B0031XYI9C/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1317674277&sr=1-4

 

Perhaps we Yanks still live in the "colonies". The link stated that the book of short stories is not available in the U.S.