An Essay On THE EXPERIENCE Of The Luxury Cruise

Wednesday, 13 July 2011 - Boulder, Colorado, USA

THE MEANING OF IT ALL: THE EXPERIENCE OF THE LUXURY CRUISE

INTRODUCTION

My original plan was to post some pictures and make some sarcastic (but good natured) observations about, 1) The Australian Group, and 2) The Peterson family and perhaps, just perhaps, make fun of some of the very, very rich folks who pepper the guest list on some of the luxury cruise itineraries. I remember that cartoon characters would be shown making a decision with a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, there both to whisper polar opposite moral advice in the character's ears. You might guess which might cause me to place a few pictures at the top of this essay including, say, one of a member of Captain's Choice group martialing for an excursion in the 3nd week of being together with THREE (3) marks of the group: the ever present label pin, a Group name tag, and to top it off a full picture ID card. Maybe I could be inclined by the dark spirit to also post a picture of the yellow shirted organizers with their group waiting for their private buses, or perhaps include a picture of a portion of the ship completely occupied by this close knit bunch of antipodal groupies. The contrary shoulder spirit might move me to include a picture or two of the ever jolly but oddly misplaced bunch of Ozzie and Harriet inspired Peterson's enjoying their own company as well. Of course, wouldn't it be devil inspired to present documentation of the early morning coffee/tea service soiled by a guest who had put their tea remnants and trash on the tray for clean cups and glasses tray and had also apparently carelessly bumped the sign to the wrong tray so that others might be moved do the same? That would be giving in to the dark side, indeed.

But maybe the angel might be encouraging me to use these snapshots to help illustrate what the Silversea experience is all about. That is, what is it that has attracted me and kept me doing this sort of thing for now 422 days on Silversea alone (but who's counting) and earlier some 200 days as guest and enrichment lecturer on Seven Seas Cruises long ago?


WHAT ARE THE "S" CRUISE LINES?

Silversea Cruises, Regent, Radisson, or just plain Seven Seas Cruise Line (the prefix on the name is still changing based on ownership), Seaborne, Sea Dream Yacht Club (really), Crys(sss)tal Cruises, and probably a few more with the "S" sound (kind of like mattress companies for reasons not clear) have a miniscule portion the so-called "cruise" market. These companies are small, although Seven Seas and Seaborne are subsidiaries, or more correctly, brands within larger mass-market cruise lines. All the "S" lines operate very small numbers of ships. Seven Seas has three ships, Crystal two, Sea Dream also two. Luxury line ships are very small by any measure. The largest Crystal ship—this line is really in the "medium luxury sized ship" category--has a maximum of about 1200 guests, but each of Sea Dream's two ships have capacities of 110 guests, as does Silversea's super luxurious "expedition" ship. All the "S" line ships sail with almost as many crew members as guests. There are no less than 3 crew members for every 4 guests when these ships are absolutely full. Often there are more crew members than guests when the ships sail at somewhat less than full capacity. The Silversea Explorer (formally named most unfortunately for those that know more than just the name of the Prince of Monaco, Prince Albert II) has a ratio when full of 1.1 crew to guests.

All the "S" ships, however, are very big for their capacity. The Silversea twins, Silver Shadow and Silver Whisper, are each 610 feet long and hold at full capacity only 382 guests. By comparison, a newer "smaller sized" mass market ship, Holland-America's Nieuw Amsterdam, is 936 feet long but sails with 2106 guests when full. Princess Cruises' Emerald Princess is 951 feet long and sails full with 3100 guests and 1200 crew. That, by the way, reflects a typical mass market guest to crew ratio of 2 to 2.5 to 1. And the two Royal Caribbean International super ships, Oasis and Allure of the Seas, are both 1187 feet long and each holds 6359 of one's closest friends if you are on board. These two monsters are almost 20% too big to transit the Panama Canal and can only dock at a handful of purpose built "cruise ports". You might recall a moderate sized mass market ship that had to be towed from Mexico to the USA because no small port could handle evacuating the couple of thousand passengers who thus had subsequently to endure US Navy Spam and no toilets for a couple of days until reaching a port big enough to tie down and that could amass the dozens of buses necessary to take these refugees to a nearby airport with sufficient capacity to take all of them home. The small "S" ships, of course, have small numbers of total guests and crew and are small enough to be able to visit out of the way locations (or empty the ship of guests, if necessary) in a handful of trips on their usually two tenders which are actually the larger of the two sets of lifeboats. Silverseas' ships usually have two tenders plus two smaller lifeboats tucked away from any passengers'cabins. In constrast, even the mid-sized mass market cruise ships might have twelve or more boats on EACH SIDE of the vessel, many cabins with limited views out the windows, and of course the dreaded "inside cabins". The certainly less than huge Emerald Princess has 16 lifeboats running along the entire length of each side of the ship. A recent docking of Silver Cloud alongside Emerald Princess made the Silversea ship look like one of Emerald's lifeboat. The small ships, of course, don't require tender reservations or serpentine queues for entering and exiting the ship at each port.


NO CLIMBING WALLS HERE UNLESS YOU WANT TO CLIMB THE WALLS

There are obvious but more important, subtle consequences of the size and crew ratio differences between the luxury line experience versus the mass market cruise "product". Yes, there are no queues for anything on the small luxury ships.You usually enter and exit the ship at each port "at will" as would be for any hotel. Embarking (check-in) is similar. You walk up, get your security picture taken (not like an hotel but necessary since your key card links to the security system of the ship). This is usually a no wait, brief experience as you sip a champagne handed to you by a butler. A butler! The dinning rooms resemble gourmet restaurants on land in every respect, well except for the different views out the window each meal. Unlike the big ship's traditional experience, the small ships provide open and unassigned seating always, and only the very intimate specialized small restaurants on-board might require an advance booking. The little Silver Wind, with a maximum of 296 guests, has four dining venues for dinner plus 24 hour full service room service.

Oh, I almost forgot, these products usually include a real no tipping policy. Drinks (water, wine, liquor, and every thing else potable in the bars, restaurants, at the pool, and in your mini-bar and fridge), mostly all specialty restaurants, and even some or all excursions are included in the one cruise price. Expect innovative cooked to order food (Silversea now features "slow cooking" sous vide methods when appropriate), no questioning of special orders for almost anything. There's no need to reserve deck chairs. The pool attendants will set up an infinite number of additional lounge chairs at the pool upon request (although some nationalities like to place random library books on their chairs as a cat marks its territory and deplete the library of all the books by authors whose name starts with "A" or whatever section is nearest the door. Oh well.) The usual catch phrase is that the crew "can't say 'no', although unfortunately there can be some confusion when the answer to some guests' requests can not be 'yes' (as when one guest insisted on Pringles during a Pacific Ocean crossing.) You get the point.

OK, so you say, it's like a Ritz Carlton that moves you to cool places every day? Well, yes. Is that the big difference with this "S" ships? Well, yes that's true, but that's not the point. That's not why I do it. Let me work a bit harder so that you don't really miss what I'm trying to say. Consider that the crew has memorized your name (from that security photo) the first night, not to impress you but because they have been briefed on your preferences for EVERYTHING before hand. My lactose free pastries are available where I have my morning coffee THE FIRST MORNING, and the butler already is afraid of what I might publish when we first come on-board. (But that's my profile.) Think of it, you can say, "Oh, can I have rack of lamb tomorrow? I see it's not on the menu", and it's there the next evening. The waiter wherever you sit just knows and tells you that the lamb is there if you still want it. One of the dozen or so chefs ran out of full galley at the buffet each lunch I chose to eat there (rather than the Dining Room, Pool Grill, or room service where other chefs might do the same) and pointed out the items with dairy in them and offered to make me a lactose free version of each right then and there. The Talmud says that you can't prove anything by giving examples, but perhaps now you are getting at least a glimpse of what the on-board experience is on the super luxury class small ships.

Of course, the mass market small to huge ships are convenient "no packing and unpacking" transportation in some sort of basic to very extensive resort hotel. Although I've been to maybe 3/4th of my 133 countries visited (but who's counting) via luxury cruise, the ship rather than a collection of ports is the destination. It also takes you to various places to spend the day. As they say on the one PA announcement each day on Silversea over and over, "Once Again", the ship is really the experience. Of course, the ports are an important component of the experience and often provide a great diversion each day, and being on a ship and watching arrivals and departures or sitting on the deck in the evening or after dinner and having a drink while watching the land recede is way cool. Again, the ship is the destination, and it moves you from one place to another you might be interested in seeing, OR NOT. As you've read from my very low key and hidden messages in my blogs, sometimes there is some frustration with crew members who can't say "no" when the answer really can not be "yes", and some of the guests who are not used to being in the presence of others who may be equally used to being top dog are sometimes not at their best, but in general the "S" line luxury cruise experience is what I have become addicted to: the Shipboard Experience first, the Port Stops or more accurately the Itinerary (more about how this factors in below) second, and then being on an Actual Sea Vessel (that is, watching the arrivals and departures, the sea itself, even the weather). It all adds up, and there are no climbing walls.

But what is it that so great in this product, if there aren't the advertised big ship "amenities" (It's not more than a cruise ship. It's a cruise ship!) and it's not an alternative to other means of transportation?


UNLIKE DURING PASSOVER, THERE ARE ONLY THREE QUESTIONS

If you haven't ever taken this kind of cruise, now you are dying to ask me The Three Questions: 1) Aren't you bored when you're not in port?, 2) Do you get seasick?, and 3) Do you have to dress up?

Note: question 2) above is can be accompanied by a penguin like movement if not by an admission that the questioner "always" gets motion sick and will not be able to take a cruise. Never. Don't even ask, you say. Read on.

ANSWERING THE THREE QUESTIONS, BUT FIRST SOMETHING ELSE

To answer the THREE QUESTIONS, I have to start first talking a bit about the itinerary.

The cruise itineraries are just about how everyone picks any cruise. I like small and exotic places that can't be gotten to conveniently independently and also places I really want to spend a little time in. I know this sounds contradictory. All cruises can only give you a glimpse or at best an orientation to places that you might want to spend a few days at another time by flying in (or taking a train, as we do in Europe) and to enjoy the evenings and early mornings. Sailing out of Bombay just as the fireworks on the night of Diwali were just beginning to go off was most frustrating if otherwise enchanting. Having to make the multi-hour bus ride back to Casablanca from Marrakech just as the Jamaa el Fnaa Square was coming to life was dreadful. But in the first case I was about to sail to Gibraltar and in the second to cross the Arabian Sea to Oman. This is the perfect travel means for those of us with short attention spans coupled with a high sense of wonder.

Get it? IT'S DIFFERENT. Thinking of the luxury cruise as transport is like thinking of a hot air balloon ride as…. Whoops. I'll work on that one. Maybe comparing visiting Yosemite and staying at the Ahwahnee Lodge compared to trekking the Appalachian Trail, or visiting the fantastic gourmet food market at the Ferry Building in San Francisco versus a quick stop at a 7/11. OK, already. I'm done with the analogies, I think. Thank you, I needed that.

OK, IT'S NOT A MEANS OF TRANSPORT BUT TRAVELING THOUSANDS OF MILES TO VERY NIFTY PLACES. SO HOW DO I CHOOSE AN ITINERARY THAT WILL MAXIMIZE THE VALUE OF THE CRUISE?

Let me start answering question number one (that boredom question) by addressing choosing luxury cruise itineraries. That is, you start the process of going on one of these cruises usually by picking the cruise segment or segments based on itinerary—but it's not properly done quite the way you think. I really enjoy, for example, the Sydney to Singapore cruises. I really enjoy seeing Sydney and Singapore again, cities I'm pretty familiar with by this time, I like to snorkel the Barrier Reef, and this itinerary meets my preferred default scheme of, 1) warm weather, 2) westward travel to avoid 23 hour days and have some 25 hour days (that time zone thing—it's not jet lag but rather a way of having a late evening lemoncello and watching the next morning's early docking), and 3) has a few strings of sea days thrown in. (More on that in a minute.) That isn't to say, that the London to Montreal cruise I did about 7 years ago that included Iceland and Greenland wasn't one of my favorites, ever, or that this last Western European port intensive cruise was anything but way up there in my experience. What I am saying is that the itinerary that works best is the mix of exotic or alternatively familiar ports, days at sea to enjoy the ship experience, and other factors that make the entire experience as comfortable or as adventurous as I want. These are the criteria for choosing each cruise on the luxury small ship product.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but the "ideal" itinerary for enjoying and getting the most out of the experience on the "S" ships is one that is based on mood and maybe what the last trip was (or wasn't). A newcomer might want to select a string of brief introductory stops in places you either will want to visit for a week at a later time or alternatively to places that ½ day is enough but you're glad to have seen. Just three brief examples: Egypt by Silver Wind earlier this month was super, the pyramids were not crowed for reasons you know. Wanna go there on your own now? And what about sailing around Dinko Bay and watching the glacier that is the source of the Atlantic icebergs calving in NW Greenland in the midnight sun? Want to arrange that on your own. And of course, the "mindless Caribbean cruise" of last Winter was right for then. ("Maybe we'll get off again in St. Kitts. Maybe not.") See what I mean?

NOW THE THREE ANSWERS

Of course, the three questions are really the three worries. Who wants to pay big bucks and feel that reading a book is all you want or can do during a string of sea days. (You should be aware that the breathtaking brochure price is discounted to a fraction for everyone, and the total cost is really not that much per day than a nice cabin on a mass market line if you consider that the luxury lines provide all inclusive, gourmet food and wine, no tipping, usually free alternative dining, and essentially no extras. Even the few "S" lines that charge for excursions, say, now include an on-board spend how you please credit and most now include "free airfare")  Actually, sometimes reading a book by the pool is all you want to do—between meals and with some uniformed crew member bringing you a gin and tonic from time to time—but I know what you mean. These ships don't have surfing beaches, climbing walls, or many other mechanical diversions. But even the sea days can be quite busy, if that's your thing. The 296 guest smaller Silversea ships schedule cooking lessons and demonstrations by their culinary institute trained chefs. There's destination and enrichment lecturers on art, history, geo-politics, opera even, (oh yes, some enrichment lecturers are still very good—but not like the old days when the lecturers were fantastic and particularly handsome), martini or wine tasting, galley and navigation bridge tours, plus the usual and age old daily shipboard events of pool volley ball and table tennis "with the cruise staff", an ice cream social (whatever that is) on deck, yoga instruction, team trivia, etc., etc. Silversea  has a resident "International Hostess" who even schedules daily language lessons with a rotating scheme of four or five of the most popular. Even the little ships have a health club (with personal trainer available), a spa and beauty salon, a casino, card room (often with a resident bridge instructor couple), and of course there is entertainment most every night from visiting signers, violinists, or pianists, a cocktail pianist for tea time and in one of the pre-dinner lounges, a resident quartet or more musicians on the larger, but still small ships, and full shows every few days by the usual six member on board "troupe" of talented young and oh, so enthusiastic performers. After a while, you skip the shows and watch the stars. Sometimes there's even an astronomer enrichment lecturer. There's even something called, "disco" or "discus", late at night, I'm told. I skip that, as I also avoid the early morning escorted "power" walk on the jogging track, presumably for folks who might get lost on the circuit. There's also a more or less extensive library of mostly best sellers and non-fiction, full copies of a couple of dozen international newspapers, and a bunch of video on demand or physical DVDs. No, you don't get bored. The danger is overdoing, even on the small ships.

The 2^nd worry, uh question, is about mal de mer. Yes, we've all seen those pictures of pianos crashing around a ballroom on some ship (go to "Cruise from Hell" on YouTube), and many of us—me especially—turn green if I attempt to read The Onion on the bus. Seasickness is not anyone's fun. But, in my almost two years of being on these smaller ships, I've resorted to taking the non-lactose Walamine four times total. I found that typing a blog when the ship is noticeably moving is a bad idea. That's it. Four times of feeling less than perfect in 650 or so days on the sea. And then, the pill worked. I slept until the seas calmed down. Some people wear those continuous dose ear patch thingies, but fortunately fewer and fewer believe that a magnet or a piece of towel wrapped around ones wrist does anything useful.

Most of the time there is no noticeable sensation of movement, much less of pitching. Remember, even the small ships are in the double digit tens of thousands of tons (or tonnes, which are bigger and very European and stylish I believe). By the way, there usually is no large side to side rolling on these ships even in quite trouble seas due to the nifty stabilizer wings that emerge as soon as the ship is underway, and even full ocean crossings often seem like small ponds. Yes, occasionally you KNOW you are floating on perhaps a troubled sea, but that doesn't mean you get sick. (Looking out the window and getting air on deck does help under these circumstances, by the way.) Just don't pick a North Atlantic crossing in March or some other more motion prone itineraries. Perhaps avoid the Tasman Sea during your first cruise. Cruise travel agents--that is, those agents who specialize in cruises or better still luxury cruises--know what to avoid, or ask me (include money with your request).

Sure, everyone can get motion sickness—in a car, train, airplane (they don't put those bags there just for all the stuff they say they will but don't pick up before landing), or even in a boat—but there is less exposure to problems in a cruise ship than any of the above. Some people take a day or so to stop telling each other that "the ship is moving" sometimes, but they get over saying that. OK, do you feel any better?

Before I proceed to the dress up question, let me address a potential fourth question. What about overeating? Come on now. Do you overeat at home? Enjoy the cruise. Actually, the "S" cruise line guests are pretty used to getting what they want, when they want it, at home—or at least having it available. The food onboard the ships is truly gourmet, but fortunately even lately with some upsizing, the portions are appropriate even when the courses are many. For all it's worth, I LOST ½ pound during the recent 22 day cruise. I attribute this to thinking about the one hour, 10 minute connection time in Frankfurt for the flight home from Nice, but it was probably due to not snacking and walking extensively in ports and on the jogging track. (You can even get some running in by pointing out to sea and saying, "Whale",  when there isn't one and then trying to keep ahead of the crowd.)

Lastly, what about that tuxedo thing?

Every time I wear the (now hand tied) bowtie and dinner jacket I look in the mirror and say that that's the best I'll ever look again. Silversea has a couple or three formal nights per cruise ("business suits are acceptable"), but some of the others stay with Resort Casual ("shirt with collar and long pants") or are mostly Informal ("jacket, tie optional"). It's no big deal, really, and it is very nice to dress up. Tuxedos can be rented by the week at home, and you'll look better than you ever will again.

Hope this helps. As a former US president said, "I did it because I could." That's why I do the cruise—the "can" part, not the cigar part that is, but mostly because it is a fantastic existential experience. Even with the occasional bozo who could buy and sell me in a second, the busboy who asks me for the (literally) 66^th time if I wanted still or bubbly water, and the strange habits of groups or families traveling together. Luxury cruises have changed my life, more than once, and I would find myself planning the next one after (or almost after) getting over the jet lag from the previous one.

MB

Boulder, CO