I agree with almost all of Col. Wes' review of the 4/13 cruise. There were some differences in our experience which I thought interesting.

We booked air and a pre-cruise day at the Intercontinental through Silversea. Loved the IC, and all of our rooms were reserved correctly. (Advantage SS over RSSC here) However, the transfers were horrible and disorganized. Never on RSSC have I had to schlep my baggage myself - heave it on to a bus, and get it from the street to the hotel because the bus provided couldn't get up the hotel drive. It was a very bad start to the cruise. The transfer from the hotel to the ship was almost as bad - with a 20 minute line to board. The line was probably due to the fact that it was 3PM when the bus got us to the ship and they were not letting people on until three. (Huge advantage to RSSC here!)

Other than that embarkation was smooth - still prefer RSSC who takes your passport, does the security pic, and gets your credit card info all at once rather than having multiple stations for these functions. SS doesn't get your credit card info at boarding - you have to go to Reception to get that done. This is not a complaint - just advantage to RSSC in this area.

Suites were lovely - so much like Navigator! Couch is more comfortable and a bit bigger than on RSSC. Dad's bar set-up was in his room when he arrived - no one else's was. They were quickly provided on request. Thanks to the Amex perk we got a bottle of the house bubby PLUS a bottle of Dom (which came home with us!) Dad also had a nice birthday cake and note from the Captain in his suite. Unfortunately his toilet didn't work - and had to be worked on every day during the cruise. Annoying.

Food was outstanding. Service was also wonderful. We loved La Terraza and ate there twice. We also enjoyed the Restaurant. Pool grill had more choices and significantly better service than we have experienced on RSSC. Room service was prompt and hot. Service at all of the bars was wonderful - different bars stock different beers which we found interesting. For example, the pool bar had Becks, but could not get Bud Light or Heinekin. We asked about it and were told that's just the way it worked.

Oddly enough, Dad could not get his desk phone to work. When we called him he had to answer by the bed or in the bathroom. He called several times and they looked into it - on the next to last day of the cruise someone finally explained that his desk phone had a different number than his room number. If they could have explained that in the beginning it would have eliminated a lot of frustration on his part. We never did find out why some suites had two phone numbers, but assume it has something to do with Internet access.

We loved Cynthia our stewardess - the only problem we encountered is that she would not (or could not) put more than one beer (sometimes not even one) in our fridge each day. We mentioned it to her and thought perhaps it just got overlooked so we even left her a note one day - no beer. We were close enough to the pool bar that it was no big deal, but still we found that odd.

The number of children has been mentioned several times - and I agree too many were left out of control.

We thought disembarkation was smoother than RSSC - for some reason it seemed more relaxed. We never felt we were being rushed out of our suites.

All in all it was a wonderful cruise. The family consensus is that we prefer RSSC still - especially now that it will be all inclusive. We enjoyed the public areas on the Whisper in part because there were more people there. Given the right itinerary and price we would certainly sail on Silversea again. It was a wonderful cruise and one of the most relaxing we have ever taken.

In re-reading this it appears overly negative, so I want to be clear that we really enjoyed ourselves. I just feel it wouldn’t be fair to only state the positives when there were some negatives – oddly enough all in the service/maintenance area which I always thought would be Silversea’s strong suit.