We really like Seabourn. The Sojourn and her sisters are the perfect size. They are well laid out, the standard suites are very comfortable and, even before the refit, the Sojourn is in good repair. The passenger mix is very friendly so making friends for cocktails or dining is easy! The ships are small but you never feel you are in a crowd or are being herded.
The service both in the public areas and the suite is almost perfect! Only the last night’s dinner service was bad, as the timing of the courses was really off.
The food is very good, the steaks and lamb perfectly cooked and very tender each time we order. Dick says the fish is nicely done also. We eat breakfast every morning in the main dining room. One whole window side is used. Service is from 8 to 9:30AM. We go at various times from opening to closing. They use all the places in the first two sections every day and either reset those tables or use the third section also. No fewer than 40 to 50 people and as many as 75 to 100 come every day. There were many people on this cruise using the main dining room for breakfast. Though that has not been the case on some of our other cruises, we always eat breakfast in the main dining room. The only days it has ever been closed for us have been disembarkation days. Then we do room service.
Room service for afternoon tea, late night dessert, one light supper and the last day breakfast is always on time with hot foods hot and cold foods cold. Plus the order is always complete.
Eating a big breakfast tends to make lunch hit or miss for us. The dining room is open for lunch everyday except long port days and the day they have a special deck lunch. We do not like the Colonnade for breakfast or lunch...always too noisy and crowded so we tend to avoid that venue except for embarkation day. We were among the first to board and got an outside table that day. Plus, we were just excited to be aboard!!
Most days we eat lunch at the Pool Grill...love the pizza or go to the Square and grab some tea sandwiches, the egg salad and the salmon were our favorites, and a hot chocolate or a coke float. The cookies and pecan squares are also good! The serving times there seem to fit better with our time ashore.
The main dining room's dinner time food is great. We like that they now seem to have more of the simpler main meals we like on the always available side of the menu. Though we did eat off both sides. Usually the food comes in an orderly fashion, all the extra things for the dish arriving with the dish and hot. Wine and water service is timely also. We have one or two wines we like and ask for them if the offered wine is not to our liking...no problem, the request is honored promptly. The Keller menu did nothing for us.
We do eat in the Colonnade for the Thai dinner (very good...they cook Carolyn’s meal special due to food allergies). We also eat at the Pool Grill three or four nights...we really like the dinner time grill choices, especially the relaxed atmosphere and very attentive service.
We have three tables for two, three hosted tables and one large table in the main dining room, so we have a number of different servers and again, except for the last night at a table for two, we have excellent wait staff.
Restaurant 2 used to have some very good meals when they had only the little girls and we ate there many evenings. Now we never eat there. That is just not our style of food anymore. I know it is going away with the refit, but I don’t like what is replacing it if what we saw of the Keller offerings on this cruise is any sample.
We did four Seabourn tours, two catamaran rides, an ATV trip and a jet boat trip. They were well done and we enjoyed them all. Weather in Alaska is very iffy most of the time especially in Juneau, Sitka and Ketchikan with flight and boat tours being canceled often in those ports.
We also like the more casual dress code. Dick liked not having to deal with a jacket every night. The” formal” night produced a very mixed bag from jacket only to Tux, including at the two Officer's tables we were invited to join.
There is a “but” in this review..... just not sure how to explain it. It may have been just the type of cruise with all the special venture team activities. The problem for us was the daytime lectures were at odd times, like 6PM, when we wanted to be getting ready for dinner. I know we could watch them on TV, BUT the ship had the programs labeled wrong...Sika was Sitka but Juneau was also the Sitka talk etc. So we were not able to enjoy all the lectures. We really enjoy going to the live daytime lectures and visiting with the speaker afterwards.
Also wish they would have broadcast to the outside decks or on the TV, when members of the venture team were outside talking, especially at Alert Bay when we had the whales around us for so long. The weather was awful several days so there was no sharing of information then.
The daytime program was just off, hit or miss somehow. There were many passengers who could not do the Zodiac or the Kayak (there were not enough spots if most had been able) and on some days that was the only activity. Since three of the stops were not usual port stops, it left a boring hole for many in the daytime activities with the ship anchored in the same spot for hours.
Bad weather changed one of the port times so they scrambled to do an afternoon movie with popcorn. It was fun and would have been great to repeat a time or two. Much more fun than sitting in the suite watching the movie on the small TVs.
Guess the biggest complaint was over the crab claws. Did write about this on the mid-cruise card. They were served once for lunch in the Colonnade on a day that we had a tour conflict. We were in Alaska on a “luxury cruise,” at least price wise, for 12 days! They should have had them as a choice in the main dining room a couple of nights!
Will we do Seabourn again...yes, just probably not on the new larger ships...there are too many people which gives the ship more of a mass market feel. For us luxury is a small full service ship with single seating dinners and a good itinerary. So far Seabourn fills this bill with their three 450 passenger Odyssey class ships.
No comments:
Post a Comment