ILL- Fated Silversea Antarctica cruise Feb 8, 2022

[FauxNom]

I appreciate the detailed information, as I, too, was skeptical at first. The initial poster started several threads that left one wondering if s/he was even on the cruise--just kind of poking and provoking. I get it now based on how you have explained things @Bigred84 and @StingrayX303

[Observer]

2 hours ago, cruiseej said:

@Observer It's fine to question details of posts, but your language comes off as very critical and doubting of all the people who were unfortunate enough to be on this cruise who are sharing about their experience. It's clear from reading the posts above that they were offered a 30% FCC, and then a 30% refund if they pressed for it, although SS hasn't yet done the computations to tell each passenger what this amounts to in dollars. You wrote "This is surprising and would be disturbing to me if such were the case." So you're clearly impugning the person who said this is the offer they got. There's no reason for that. 

 

 

 

I am sorry that my tone was off-putting.  What I said would be surprising/disturbing was the situation asserted by Bigred84 that "We been home for a month now and still do not know how much the refund will be or what they are basing it on."   

 

I have consulted again with my friend on a COVID-compromised Silver Spirit cruise in January, and s/he said that the letter with the offer gave no dollar value but was otherwise specific: "a future cruise credit equal to 50% of the cruise fare paid for this voyage [voyage number]."  To determine this figure one merely needed to consult the invoice or the TA.  It apparently does not include air upgrades, deviations, etc.  The amounts will of course vary from passenger to passenger, as different people book at different times with different cruise fares, enjoy different VS discounts (5% or 10%), may or may not have had the 10% early booking discount, etc.

 

It may be that the guests on this cruise received no such written notice of the compensation or that if they did the statement was not so specific.  If I had been a guest, I would have insisted on a written statement and would not have relied on an oral promise.

 

I appreciate that Bigred84 may not have known the precise amount of the compensation.  But if they had a written commitment as was provided on the earlier Spirit voyage they should have had a pretty solid idea and were not left with little/no idea of the amount of the compensation.

 

I will now swear off this topic and crawl back into my shell.

[Bigred84]

Observer, I am not sure who you are but I still do not know what the compensation will be. I emailed guest relations a week ago after not hearing from them and received an auto reply saying they would get back to me in the order in which it was received. After 3 days I called the number they gave me in the email and the person said that I had to contact my personal silverseas agent. I called her and she told me that she only knew of the future cruise credit and not a refund. I sent her the emails they sent saying they would now offer a refund. 2 days later I called her and she said she sorry but her supervisor did know anything about the refund either. She called guest relations and was told the guest relations manager was out for a few days and she would get back to me next week when she heard something. If you have some pull with silverseas please use that and get us our refunds. I am tired of dealing with incompetent people and just want to get the bad taste of silverseas out of my mouth. I appreciate that you and other posters here have had" zero,zilch,nada" problems and that your friend had a great experience getting there 50% refund or future cruise credit so quickly but that is not the situation here. I truly do not understand your negative responses other than you cannot except the fact that there may be a problem with your beloved silverseas.

[Bigred84]

I am going to have to apologize for let this get personal. I have heard about trolls trying to get people upset and I guess that happened to me. I am not use to someone questioning my integrity so I sorry for questioning theirs.

[RetiredandTravel]

We were close to booking a longer SS cruise, we particularly like the new Muse/Moon concept for restaurants and emersion.  After reading this and the South American Moon cruise experience earlier in the year SS won't be will be in our future plans.  IMO the performance of the senior management is in serious doubt.

 

 

 

[TLCOhio]

Appreciate all of the additional posts and background regarding this Antarctica Silver Cloud cruise.

 

From the Washington Post and MSN News yesterday, they had this headline: “Scorned cruise customers are invoking a ‘passenger bill of rights’ ” that ties in with this key thread about the challenges that happened on this Covid-impacted sailing.   

 

Here are some the reporting highlight after asking the question of "What is the cruise industry passenger bill of rights?".  Here is their follow-up: “The Cruise Lines International Association describes it as 'an explicitly stated, publicly available set of policies' that member lines have agreed to voluntarily adopt. The policies are a condition of membership in the trade group for oceangoing cruise lines and apply to all passengers who book an ocean cruise on a member line around the world.”

 

To the question of ""What rights are spelled out?", these are the first three key items outlined:

 

"The right to leave a docked ship if essential provisions can’t be provided).  When a sailing is called off or shortened because of mechanical problems, passengers have the right to a full or partial refund, depending on how much was canceled. They also have the right to lodging if they are forced to disembark and need to stay overnight in an unscheduled port.  The right to timely information and updates about changes to the itinerary if an emergency or mechanical failure happens, along with updates about the status of those issues."

 

Then there is aspect of this reporting for this question: "How are they enforced?" with these follow-up highlights: "This is where things can get murky. The cruise association says guests are entitled to full or partial refunds for canceled or shortened cruises due to mechanical problems. But while air travelers can easily file a consumer complaint with the Department of Transportation, there’s no similar form for issues related to a cruise.  Instead, the department says cruise consumers can report complaints by phone to the Federal Maritime Commission.  'The final resolution of such complaints or inquiries is a matter between the cruise line and the individual,' the Transportation Department website says, noting that consumers also have to initiate action on their own.  Jim Walker, an attorney who runs the Cruise Law News site, said he has never used the policy on behalf of a client and finds it useless for that purpose.  'There’s no mechanism to enforce these rights,' he said. 'And there are no remedies, there are no damages. So it’s rather meaningless quite frankly. … There’s no consequence if they violate these so-called rights.' "

 

Did not know there was such a "Passenger Bill of Rights", but it does not seem to offer much real "substance".  Is it only nice cruise line "PR" and feel-good window-dressing?  Am I being unfair, cynical and/or not trusting enough?

 

Full story at:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/news/scorned-cruise-customers-are-invoking-a-passenger-bill-of-rights/ar-AAVw7SO?ocid=BingNewsSearch

 

THANKS!  Enjoy!  Terry in Ohio   

 

Barcelona/Med: June 2011, with stops in Villefranche, ports near Pisa and Rome, Naples, Kotor, Venice and Dubrovnik. Great visuals with key highlights, tips, etc. Live/blog now at 254,628 views.

www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1426474

[MBP&O2/O]

19 hours ago, RetiredandTravel said:

After reading this and the South American Moon cruise experience earlier in the year SS won't be will be in our future plans.  IMO the performance of the senior management is in serious doubt.

Agree ... we had some issues with our last cruise in September.... a corporate mess! .. and like you I am going elsewhere .... just booked  Seabourne one for next year.

[TR1963]

Thank you to those who responded to my post and expressed their understanding and support for the passengers of that cruise. Imagine spending a great deal of money, preparing and shopping for this extraordinary expedition, renting special equipment, filling out tons of paperwork for the cruise line and the government of Chile, traveling for over 24 hours, getting 3 COVID tests in as many days, standing on countless lines in various airports, dreaming about this bucket list, once in a lifetime experience—- only to have it cut short and compromised by ‘corporate’ whose main concern was and still is their bottom line. At the end of the day, the cruise should either have been cancelled or the passengers should have been given a choice if they wished to sail under the existing circumstances. I for one, would have liked to be able to make an informed decision- before setting sail on a 12 day journey . 

 

[OlsSalt]

Biggest problem with "covid" is it ranges from merely a positive test result with no symptoms to a  link to those with already existing multiple co-morbidities who may manifest major health impacts.

 

There is no one thing as "covid". So for a "ship to experience a covid outbreak"   is really meaningless in terms of risk exposure to health impacts.  My condolences to this cruise who had to go through so much chaos, with so little real information. But that still is the nature of this beast labeled "covid". 

[Daveywavey70]

Bigred84, please don't take it personally and don't let it get to you. I Had a similar situation with a disastrous cruise on Silversea back in 2018 and the similarities to how your own case has been handled are striking. I Felt pretty much the same as you do now being questioned about everything by certain board members, being accused of lying, exaggerating etc etc and so on. It's not very nice having your integrity and motives called into question despite other passengers backing up what you are saying. The people that do this will not have a word said against the company and will twist everything you say and spend hours dreaming up excuses rather than just accept that SS might have actually got something wrong. They seem to not care that on the other end of that communication there is a real person, they also have either no idea or do not care what the consequences of their words are. 

 

It's also sad to see that SS doesn't learn from its mistakes. Reading the posts on here, things shoreside haven't improved one little bit.

[AtA]

On 3/28/2022 at 1:01 PM, MBP&O2/O said:

Agree ... we had some issues with our last cruise in September.... a corporate mess! .. and like you I am going elsewhere .... just booked  Seabourne one for next year.

Unfortunately I'd think twice about Seabourn too. We just got off of Ovation. We were told we'd be tested before boarding on March 13th. When we got there, there was no testing at all. According to a staff member, corporate decided they wanted to test whether they needed to test anymore and used us as guinea pigs.

 

Everything was fine until about day 8 or 9 when I read on the Seabourn FB Friends page about covid onboard. I enquired about it and was told that none of the staff had heard. I spoke to someone else, and they said the Doctor would get in touch with me, which he did the next morning.

 

At that point the doctor confirmed there was covid onboard but refused to let us know how many cases. We asked if all the passengers would be informed so they could make a decision to mask up again if they wanted. We were told no they wouldn't. So we talked to a staff member who told us corporate didn't want us knowing because it would "panic" the guests.

 

Well it turns out after that someone I had sat next to at tea came down with covid along with their spouse and were sent to quarantine, That person mentioned how they could see there were 5 of them on the covid wing. This on a ship with only 450 pax at the time. The person I had sat next to at tea asked the doctor if he wanted the names of their close contacts. The doctor said it wasn't necessary!

 

On the Friday before getting off, they tested those pax who were staying on to go to Europe. Apparently 3 other pax tested positive, yet once again, nothing was said. I spoke to at least a dozen pax who had no clue there was covid onboard and they were not happy since if they had known, they would have at least put back their masks.

 

We can't eliminate covid and if we cruise we all take somewhat of a chance even if vaccinated and boosted. However, if there is an outbreak onboard, I expected to be informed so I could make an informed decision as to how I wanted to then conduct myself. 

 

Additionally, the Ovation was given a status of Orange by the CDC and were required to follow certain protocols which can be read about on the CDC website. They were NOT following the protocols!

 

 

[scottjeanne]

We were on the cruise that followed this disastrous one.  I can confirm that at least half the crew, 16 our of 24 expedition members, the future cruise director  and the entertainment director all had covid.  Those left standing struggled to provide services for the passengers.  

 

Though it does not help those on the previous cruise, we did not have any covid outbreaks and the crew could not do enough for us.  We saw more this cruise than  they had seen all season.  So I am hesitant to slam Silverseas.  I am fully aware their corporate offices are poor at communication.  But I have to say the onboard staff was superb.

[TLCOhio]

6 minutes ago, scottjeanne said:

We were on the cruise that followed this disastrous one.  I can confirm that at least half the crew, 16 our of 24 expedition members, the future cruise director  and the entertainment director all had covid.  Those left standing struggled to provide services for the passengers.  Though it does not help those on the previous cruise, we did not have any covid outbreaks and the crew could not do enough for us.  We saw more this cruise than  they had seen all season.  So I am hesitant to slam Silverseas.  I am fully aware their corporate offices are poor at communication.  But I have to say the onboard staff was superb.

 

Appreciate this additional background, these comments and follow-up.  Very interesting and helpful.  Given our interest in doing Antarctica, we are following these challenges for the cruise lines in being able to offer a first-class experience in this unique area of the world.  For what Silversea and the other charge in price, we would want to have a full range of sights, services, etc.  Keep up the great sharing.  Still looking forward to some detailed response from Silversea as to how they have and will respond under these challenging Covid conditions.  

 

 

THANKS!  Enjoy!  Terry in Ohio

 

Norway Coast/Fjords/Arctic Circle cruise from Copenhagen, July 2010, to the top of Europe. Scenic visuals with key tips. Live/blog at 243,843 views.

www.boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1227923

[cruiseej]

2 hours ago, scottjeanne said:

16 our of 24 expedition members… had covid. 

 

@scottjeanne I'm curious how having 2/3 of the expedition staff out of circulation affected things. Were you limited to mostly sightseeing from the ship? It seems there can't have been many zodiac trips and landings with only 8 of the 24 staff members able to participate. Or were some of them release from quarantine in time to conduct somewhat normal operations by the time you were in Antarctica? (We're booked on a Cloud trip to Antarctica in December, so the more we know about what can go wrong and how the crew adapts to it, the more prepared we'll be for whatever might come our way.) I'm glad to hear you had a great cruise in spite of the Covid issues.

 

2 hours ago, TLCOhio said:

Still looking forward to some detailed response from Silversea as to how they have and will respond

 

Terry, based on what I've seen (or not) from Silversea management about any number of issues (from Covid incidents to the hacking shutdown last summer), all I can say about expecting detailed responses and transparency from Silversea is 🤣😂🤣😂

[Bigred84]

I do not know if silverseas being bought by Royal Caribbean has made a difference in how they handle things but we still have heard anything from them or our personal representative. She told me not to call her that she would let me know when she heard something from guest relations.

[brittany12]

SS management should do a complete transparency letter to all SS future customers explaining the Antarctica outbreak and what they did to counteract it as well as deal with passenger issues. Take the  temporary heat but level with us. It could happen too any of us booked on future SS cruises. Their future and ours depends on total candor and no corporate bs. Fess up and tell us how they are going to do better.

[Sailernot]

My husband and I were also on the Covid Antartica 12 day cruise, and I can tell you that the previous summeries were 100%  accurate.                    1) Five, one hour expeditions off the ship in 12 days  ( only 8 expedition leaders were healthy)

                  2) No entertainment except for lame trivia once/day , since the entertainment director had COVID, as did the piano player

                  3) No videographer - COVID

                   4) Buffets for 75% of the cruise served by crew who later were quarentined for COVID. 

                   5) Exercise director also had COVID

                    6) French restaurant never opened

                    7)No polar plunge

                    😎Although passengers were tested three times prior to embarkation, the Captain stated that staff was only randomly tested every 10 days.

                     9) Very expensive cruise that should never have sailed

                    10) After antigen testing passengers  day seven or eight, and getting positives, the captain high-tailed it back to Chile, essentially ending our Antartica trip.

                    11) Since returning, no emails have been returned; no response concerning any refund; calls to the salesperson are met with  "there's nothing I can do", and " I don't have any numbers to give you to take care of the problem".

                    12) Many passengers ended up testing positive for COVID and some were quarentined in Punta Arenas for 10 days prior to leaving the country.

                     

I hope this helps answer any questions Observer may still have concerning the Feb 8 Antartica Silversea cruise. 

BTW, we haven't heard anything from their parent company, Royal Caribbean, either!

 

[purpleally]

On 3/29/2022 at 3:06 PM, AtA said:

Unfortunately I'd think twice about Seabourn too. We just got off of Ovation. We were told we'd be tested before boarding on March 13th. When we got there, there was no testing at all. According to a staff member, corporate decided they wanted to test whether they needed to test anymore and used us as guinea pigs.

 

Everything was fine until about day 8 or 9 when I read on the Seabourn FB Friends page about covid onboard. I enquired about it and was told that none of the staff had heard. I spoke to someone else, and they said the Doctor would get in touch with me, which he did the next morning.

 

At that point the doctor confirmed there was covid onboard but refused to let us know how many cases. We asked if all the passengers would be informed so they could make a decision to mask up again if they wanted. We were told no they wouldn't. So we talked to a staff member who told us corporate didn't want us knowing because it would "panic" the guests.

 

Well it turns out after that someone I had sat next to at tea came down with covid along with their spouse and were sent to quarantine, That person mentioned how they could see there were 5 of them on the covid wing. This on a ship with only 450 pax at the time. The person I had sat next to at tea asked the doctor if he wanted the names of their close contacts. The doctor said it wasn't necessary!

 

On the Friday before getting off, they tested those pax who were staying on to go to Europe. Apparently 3 other pax tested positive, yet once again, nothing was said. I spoke to at least a dozen pax who had no clue there was covid onboard and they were not happy since if they had known, they would have at least put back their masks.

 

We can't eliminate covid and if we cruise we all take somewhat of a chance even if vaccinated and boosted. However, if there is an outbreak onboard, I expected to be informed so I could make an informed decision as to how I wanted to then conduct myself. 

 

Additionally, the Ovation was given a status of Orange by the CDC and were required to follow certain protocols which can be read about on the CDC website. They were NOT following the protocols!

 

 

I hope you all don’t run to Seabourn. But, I was on this Seabourn cruise and it was NOT a problem.  Yes, people were isolated but pretty sure we can count on our fingers how many, and have fingers left.

[cotto22]

These posts are just horrifying. I cannot imagine how awful it must have been to be on this cruise and its aftermath, and for Silversea to be so unresponsive to the needs of their passengers. Clearly SS did not fulfill its contract with the passengers and rather than being apologetic and offering adequate compensation, they are burying their heads and dollars in the sand. 

  This is really making me second guess my reservations for 2023 and 2024 on SS. We have not sailed with them in a decade, and perhaps we should stay with Regent and Oceania.

[brimary]

Sailornot,.......Thanks for your detailed summary of your recent Silversea Antarctica cruise experience.Disgusting cruise and more importantly the appalling way SS have dealt with the situation is not the level of service expected from a luxury cruise line.After 20+ years of annual cruising of top quality with SS you helped considerably in making the decision to retire at the top with happy memories rather than risk the future experiences you experienced

[Bigred84]

Just received a call from my silverseas personal agent who told me she still has not heard from guest relations on how much our refund will be. The one person who she said could answer that question has been out of the office. She told me the same thing over a week ago. This is really getting frustrating and just one more reason I will never sail on silverseas again. The cruise was bad but I think what has happened after the cruise is worse. There should be no reason for taking over a month to tell us how much we are getting back as a refund.

[RetiredandTravel]

This is looking from the outside in but there doesn't appear to be much planning for some fairly predictable contingencies.   They are cruising in a pandemic, I would think they would have procedures in place to deal with certain events.  I'm not left with the impression that they do.

[Venturing out]

I’m not quite sure how to work cruisecritic so am posting the review I wrote earlier.  I was on the Feb 8 Antarctica cruise and can confirm it would have been considered a disaster by the standards for any cruise line, much less one who advertises and charges for luxury.

 

I’ve been reviewing the Silver Cloud and Silver Explorer reviews.  The overall startling thing I’ve noticed is that people reviewing cruises before Royal Caribbean bought Silversea pretty uniformly had wonderful experiences whereas those who traveled after Royal Caribbean took over had generally dismal experiences.

 

My once in a lifetime Antarctica cruise was one of the latter.  There were so many problems it’s hard to include all of them.  Perhaps the biggest disappointment were the poor decisions and handling of the cruise, the COVID outbreak on the cruise, and even the after cruise experience.  Apparently the leadership on the ship was in constant contact with “the main office” as one spokesperson said and I bElieve it was with RC headquarters. The first terrible decision was to even set sail.  The passengers didn’t know and weren’t told that there were active COVID cases quarantining in board when we embarked.  Many cruise lines, whose ships had similar circumstances, have been cancelling cruises or at least debarking their patients.  It wasn’t until the second day that they announced that 1/3 of the crew had tested positive for COVID.  The whole situation was made worse by the secretive way they handled problems, including hiding bad news.  Often we had to get information from the internet(!) and some staff to know what was going on.  I believe the the final count of quarantined staff was about 100 ( out if I believe 220).  And after a couple of days we noticed passengers disappearing into what turned out to be quarantine.  Obviously, many of us had been exposed.  For example we spent some time with our butler in our cabin on the first day while he explained things.  He disappeared the next day because he tested positive.  Note that these were rapid antigen tests which have a higher rate of false negatives than the PCR tests, which mean we all were likely exposed more than we realized.  Although we would have qualified as a “close contact” of our butler we were never called in for testing or checking on symptoms.   And it turned out the quarantine area was right next to the self serve laundry.  Moreover after seeing styrofoam boxes stacked in the hallway for our next door cabin, we had to guess that that was because there were COVID patients quarantining there.  This was never told to us until I read that the quarantined folks were mixed in with the passengers on the internet.

 

The staff shortages greatly affected the experience of the cruise to the point that it would have been substandard for any cruise ship, much less a ship that advertised and charged for luxury.  The chefs were on quarantine ( we only surmised this because the food was the worst I’ve ever had in a cruise ship and miraculously got better once the initial staff were let out of quarantine on about the 11th day.  Not only the chefs but the recreation director, the musicians, the videographer and photographer were all on quarantine so there was virtually no entertainment.  The worst part though was the Expedition staff, which are the main part of a cruise to Antarctica, were depleted by about 2/3rds.  At the final goodbye assembly I counted about 26 total expedition staff.  For the majority of the cruise we saw about 7-8 of them.  They didn’t have enough staff to actually guide us on outings.  They seemed to have only enough to operate a few Zodiacs to ferry us to and from the beach where we were left to wander around by ourselves until we got tired and went back to the ship. As in all areas, the staff that were there were excellent but there was no way they could adequately cover what the full complement could do.  Other advertised COVID protocols like daily temperature checks, cleaning of common areas and hand sanitizer stations were sporadic at best.

 

And we were only in Antarctica for 2-3 days before the leadership claimed we had to go back to Chile because there was possibly a storm coming that might have 15 foot waves and that the ship would start breaking apart with waves that size.  This was hard to believe for a ship that crossed the Drake Passage often and, if true, would probably be another reason to avoid a Silversea cruise to Antarctica.

 

Upon getting back to Chile the Chilean government refused to let us dock or even go out on Zodiacs so we just sailed up and down for several days.  There were only 2-3 days when there were ANY excursions, however limited, out of a 12 day cruise.

 

There were many other mismanaged events like the post cruise COVID tests that made us question the judgement of whoever was making decisions.  What made it worse was the hiding of information and I think actual lying, so that we had to guess and were never sure what was going on.  And it was a rolling disaster because we had to surmise another problem every day. It actually went to the extent of being traumatic, bring stuck on a boat with active COVID, knowing that it was being handled poorly and not having much information much less ability to affect what was going on.

 

[RetiredandTravel]

I haven't read this entire thread but they did offer everyone a FCC equivalent to the cost correct?

 

 

 

 

[Bigred84]

No the future cruise credit was 30 % of the basic cruise cost, not airfare or hotel. This is what I think they are offering since no one will tell me what monetary amount they will give us.