Any changes to Seabourn post COVID?

[Ijballo]

We completed two trips during 2023 ( total eight weeks aboard) on the two larger ships Encore and Ovation. Both excellent…some new crew but to complain would be absolute knitpicking. We will be interested to see how Quest is by comparison later in 2024.

[avalon1025]

• Our June/July 23 sailing on the Sojourn felt like a Seabourn Cruise, good service, happy crew, we were made to feel special.   Our November 23 cruise on the Ovation felt crowded, staff were stretched and overall felt like a downgrade from the Sojourn.  I feel Seabourn was more consistent pre covid.

Edited January 4 by avalon1025

[Covepointcruiser]

Sailed Ovation on the November transatlantic.    Everything was excellent, never felt crowded.    Service was great just like our April cruise.

[Utopia1]

6 minutes ago, Covepointcruiser said:

Sailed Ovation on the November transatlantic.    Everything was excellent, never felt crowded.    Service was great just like our April cruise.

I was on the Ovation transatlantic November 19-- the cruise was great- not crowded-  service was great.  We were surprised because even Thomas Keller wasn't busy and we were able to dine there almost any night without an advance reservation.

[jonsrq25]

Heard that one ship was being sold in 2024 to perhaps the Saudi’s and that may extend to the entire fleet. Planning a trip in January 2025 to New Zealand and Australia and I’m reading some of the reviews of that cruise some thought the service levels had dropped due to the uncertainty surrounding the sale. Meaning many of the crew were being moved to other ships in Carnival’s fleet and replaced with less experienced crew. Can anyone comment on either the service levels or our particular cruise?

[alexandria]

4 hours ago, jonsrq25 said:

Heard that one ship was being sold in 2024 to perhaps the Saudi’s and that may extend to the entire fleet. Planning a trip in January 2025 to New Zealand and Australia and I’m reading some of the reviews of that cruise some thought the service levels had dropped due to the uncertainty surrounding the sale. Meaning many of the crew were being moved to other ships in Carnival’s fleet and replaced with less experienced crew. Can anyone comment on either the service levels or our particular cruise?

I commented on this in the related thread you recently started.  🙂

[auldlassie]

 

Just back from 3 weeks on Ovation over the Xmas and New Year holidays. Our first Seabourn cruise since the Xmas/new year of 2019-2020, just before covid. Auldladdie and I are quite a picky couple of travellers who like our luxuries, good service and creature comforts. We have now enjoyed quite a number of cruises on several different lines and recognise comparative differences between the different operators. We honestly thought this cruise was fabulous.  Most of the crew, with hardly any exceptions were helpful, chatty and lovely, doing their utmost, as before. Food in all venues varied a bit from good (at worst) to excellent, mainly toward the latter, although we got a bit jaded with the main dining room dinners by the end of 3 weeks. Simple enough to change it up with sushi or another restaurant though, as we frequently did, so we always felt we had options.

 

Plenty to do on board, with a lively, holiday-mood, crowd of amiable, interesting, well-travelled people who enjoy chat and laughter, which was exactly how we found our previous Seabourn cruises. This was a Caribbean cruise, with several less well visited stops and one or two were not ones we found held much interest, but that is a very personal thing and it didn't happen often enough to matter much overall to us. 

 

I have heard the naysayers on this board for a while now, so we were a little concerned as to what to expect this time around, but we were delighted to find Seabourn seemed just as much fun as we remembered our from previous cruises. Tiny hiccups on rare occasions, but overall the staff did an excellent job of sorting those quickly. Keen to cruise with Seabourn soon again. Just my honest tuppenceworth! 🙂 

 

 

[caviargal]

On 1/5/2024 at 7:03 PM, Utopia1 said:

I was on the Ovation transatlantic November 19-- the cruise was great- not crowded-  service was great.  We were surprised because even Thomas Keller wasn't busy and we were able to dine there almost any night without an advance reservation.

Nice!   Not the case in April on Ovation.

[CLOU]

We are just off the Ovation but were only on for one week.  Our reaction was a little different, although I am not sure it has much to do with Covid.  I do think there may still be supply issues.

 

Food is very subjective and we found it a bit lacking, especially at lunch.  The cold foods and salads were virtually the same every day and the chafing dishes for the most part were not particularly appealing.  Getting a wine other than the featured wine of the day was treated like a big ask, and some of the wait staff only knew one or two of the wines available.  I don't know about wine at dinner because we had a large shipboard credit and bought reserve wine each night.  More on that below.  At breakfast there was hardly any fresh fruit, other than bananas.  Lots of canned fruit.  When there was fresh fruit, some of it was tasteless. 

 

Dinners in the main dining room were for the most part acceptable, with one notable exception, but nothing special.  We did enjoy sushi and TK was the same as always, although there was a problem with our reservation, which they claimed we canceled, which we had not.  Looking forward to Solis.

 

One plus is a new program if you like to buy reserve wine.  Rather than the old silver or gold package, if you sign up for the package now, which is free, after you spend a certain amount of money you qualify for a free bottle up to a certain amount.  If you don't claim it and spend more on wine, you get a larger credit.  Since we bought wine every night with our ship board credit, we ended up with a $200 credit on our last night.

 

We found staff to be pleasant, but a little less attentive than normal with a couple of exceptions.  One of the being our stewardess who was wonderful.

 

Another subjective issue was the cruise director.  we did not care for Loula.  Of course, the only real interaction with here was at trivia.  Trivia was a lot of fun with various teams winning and all seeming to enjoy it, but it went on for well over an hour, once close to an hour and a half.   That's too long and I think part of it was due to Loula's personality.  Still, as I said, a matter of personal taste.

 

We thought the ship was in good shape, and it wasn't a bad cruise, we just in general things had gone downhill.  This was our 13th Seabourn cruise, so we have some experiences to compare to.   We have three more booked. I was not so disappointed as to consider cancelling, just a little let down.  We will see what June brings.

 

There was

[skybluewaters]

@CLOU  Thank you for your thoughts.  Please bring us up to date after your next SB cruise.  Hopefully it will be longer than one week this time.

[2SailingNomads]

Agree with most of what CLOU said except that we did find Loula to be one of the better CD's now that most of the good ones have departed.  We find the food, unfortunately, to be not what it used to be.

[CLOU]

I am hopeful for our June cruise. That cruise is on the Quest, so the smaller ship. Plus, it is more our style of cruise, to Europe, which will have more interesting ports. We do our own exploration and we are looking forward to the ports of call, most of which we have been to before either off a cruise or on a land based vacation. I will report back.

[jonsrq25]

Thanks i appreciate any feedback.

[auldlassie]

I had no difficulties whatsoever in getting alternative complimentary wines, right from day

1's lunch when I boarded. All I needed to do was to say, politely " No I do not want that wine, I would prefer...." and either ask for a particular wine I knew was available or to ask for a particular style, grape variety, or whatever. Never any issue, refusal, or problem, although at times a few minutes wait if the waiter or sommelier had to go find the wine I wanted from elsewhere.   You can ask a sommelier for a copy of the current comped wines, although it might take them a day to give it to you, so best to ask in the interim for an alternative style or type you like until you have it. I would think you could also get the list from Seabourn square, as it clearly does exist.  

 

[Vineyard View]

We had the same experience auldlassie. We are a bit picky with wines. We found a couple complimentary we liked okay (not special for certain), we brought some on board as well as buying some from the list.  One additional comment is that we found that once servers found what we liked in a particular venue, they tended to remember and they had it available, along with offering anything new we might like to try that had been brought on board. Example the MDR after the first night knew I liked to have a taste of cognac after dinner. After that first night, which did take some time, they apparently had a bottle available. That was impressive. 

[BasandSyb]

Sometimes finding one you like is very difficult as we like full bodied reds. They will go the extra mile and find loose bottles from an old list and have them ready at your dining venue. The problem is making sure it doesn’t run out as once it’s unearthed others find it. 😩

[Vineyard View]

7 hours ago, BasandSyb said:

Sometimes finding one you like is very difficult as we like full bodied reds. They will go the extra mile and find loose bottles from an old list and have them ready at your dining venue. The problem is making sure it doesn’t run out as once it’s unearthed others find it. 😩

Exactly our problem as that is our go-to as well with many, not all  meals.  They tried their best for sure. But A++ for effort on SB staff!  

[avalon1025]

On 1/5/2024 at 3:52 PM, Covepointcruiser said:

Sailed Ovation on the November transatlantic.    Everything was excellent, never felt crowded.    Service was great just like our April cruise.

We had friends on your sailing.  Our sailing was full,  the TA wasn’t.  Perhaps these ships can’t handle over 600 passengers?  We found many untrained staff and when discussed with the leaders of these areas,  they were dismissive. Seabourn seems to be in transition.

Edited February 3 by avalon1025