This was our 4th cruise with Seabourn and we had no regrets! Our cabin was wonderful, the service, the food - exceptional as always . We enjoy having lots of restaurants options, with open seating. Some nights we had the pleasure of joining other folks and other nights having the luxury to eat by ourselves, sometimes even on our lovely balcony. We usually ended the hard day of sightseeing, sitting in the hot tub comparing notes with fellow travelers. Having the waiters hand out wonderful frozen drinks and/ or champagne made it perfect. And I confess that I did order a plate of caviar almost every day, while my husband treated himself to some ice cream. We enjoyed all the ports, although we had arranged for private tour guides, we do not enjoy group bus excursions. We were a little disappointed with the new TK Grill, after all the hype, we really preferred Restaurant 2, with its tasting menu. We had the pleasure of meeting and dining with many fascinating and charming fellow travelers, which for us is a highlight of the cruise. We even ran into one couple that we had met on our previous cruise ,18th months earlier! Not uncommon as Seabourn cruisers tend to be very loyal. Read Less

I picked Seabourn because I was told the service was outstanding. If anything, that understates the service. I never had anything less that a totally perfect service from any employee. If I was picky, I would note that caviar took 25 minutes to show up one night, and that I had already finished my first martini before it arrived. That is hardly anything to complain about. I was disappointed in the quality of the food in the colonade one night, and in the quality of the service in the Restaurant one morning at breakfast. Overall, however, food was outstanding. About the embarkation. We were on the 10th floor. We entered the boat, as did everyone else, on the aft side. The greeter told us to take the elevator to the 10th floor. The problem is that the aft elevator doesn't go there. Right when we were entering and did not know our way around the ship, we got bad instructions. If they won't let 10th floor guests enter in the front, they should let us know how to get there. Read Less

I'm on board Odyssey right now in week 4 of a 5 week cruise. We've sailed on most of the major cruise lines and there are so many ways Seabourn excels its hard to describe. Just try them, you simply can't lose. The service is great and the staff excellent. Being all inclusive means no chits, no "may I have your keycard" constantly. Other lines may offer drink packages, but you and the bar staff are still passing back and forth cards, receipts etc. The ambience is totally different when all that nickel and diming stuff goes away. Throw in more like hosted dinner tables, staff who actually know your name, remember your favorite drinks, previews of the next day's dinner menus delivered to your room etc. And stuff like no ship's photographer in your face all the time, almost no announcements all day long for Bingo, art auctions, pool games, and (usually) no, or almost no kids Read Less

We flew into Athens the day before departure, and boarded the ship around 4 pm on departure day. Embarkation process was smooth, except that when we got on the ship, the elevator we were sent to only went to the 9th floor and our suite was on the 10th floor. As relatively "newbie" cruisers, some explanation of where to go to access the correct elevator would have been helpful, but we did figure it out. The Odyssey is a lovely ship, well maintained and comfortable common areas through out. Our Penthouse Suite was surprisingly spacious. Plenty of closet and drawer space, double sinks in the bathroom. Shower stall is a bit cramped but adequate. The bed was incredibly comfortable. Room temperature was always just right. Seabourn is particularly known for its dedication to top-notch service, and that is certainly what we experienced. Every member of the staff seemed to go out of their way to provide whatever we wanted. The only service "complaints" I have are so petty I feel stupid to mention them. We particularly loved going to the Observation Bar for pre-dinner cocktails, and enjoyed the piano entertainment by Katy, plus nightly servings of caviar! We also loved the patio bar around the pool. Plenty of chairs around the pool, but sunny and shady for at-sea days or after returning to the ship from a port. Meals were excellent. Not to say that there wasn't the occasional "dud" course, but overall we loved the food. The Thomas Keller Grill is very special (I loved the veal chop!), and the Thomas Keller "theme" nights (one night ribs, one night fried chicken) were a lot of fun. On those nights, sharing tables was encouraged and meals were served family style. The nightly entertainment was a mixed bag. Some shows were really good. Some just "meh", but we didn't really care that much about seeing shows. We did enjoy the team trivia days, as well as the casino (which is small, but adequate). The only real negative about the cruise was the pathetic internet access. My husband and I each opted to buy 2 hours worth of access, figuring we could sign on, download email, and sign off. Sounded like a great idea, but often trying to download emails would take as long as 10 minutes. Most of the time, we just had to wait til we got to a port where we could access free WiFi or our cellular network. Plenty of people were frustrated with the slow internet speed. While we all like to "disconnect" to some degree, it is still necessary to be able to check in once a day. Read Less

After suffering two disastrous cruises with P&O over twenty years ago we vowed never to cruise again. However, having reached our fifties, we researched it again in a lot of detail, and we decided to give Seabourn a shot with a seven day Venice-Athens run on the Odyssey in early September. In short, though expensive, it was the best holiday we have ever had...and we have already booked up again for next year. All the worries we had about cruises from previous trips - i.e. lack of space, poor food, bad maintenance, downmarket entertainment, compulsory black tie, enforced shared tables and chain smoking everywhere - dissolved within a day on the Odyssey. It's in sparkling condition. Nothing feels dated and even though the cruise was fully booked it felt very roomy. We'd booked an Owner's Suite up front as we wanted space to retreat to (we're quite private) and it had just been completely refurnished to a very high standard. It's now decorated in muted greys, beiges with champagne-coloured chair backs and a much better sofa than that shown on the current website. I wonder if it's the same furniture as used on the Encore? It was certainly very well appointed. It was all the private space we needed with an enormous verandah, so we had breakfast there most mornings. The new beds are INCREDIBLY comfy too and Kudzie, our Suite Stewardess, was an angel. More premium liquor provided than even I knew what to do with. On embarkation day we felt all our worries were coming true again. As it was Venice Film Festival, most private launches were reserved for celebs so there was difficulty in the agents finding boats and the Seabourn Transfer could only pick us up from our hotel at 3.15pm (ship sailed at 5.00pm)…which caused a lot of anxiety. Once onboard we had expected to be shown the room but weren't (is that normal?) and our room keys weren't working so that had to be fixed at Seabourn Square. We had a quick sandwich and egg roll there which tasted like they had been hanging around for days (caused a bit of tummy trouble that evening). On top of that, and a delayed sailing, it started thundering and lightening with heavy rain all evening. And the first destination was changed (without us receiving notice) from interesting-looking Sibenik to (boring) Vodice. Luckily that's all the bad news out of the way on day one. After that, everything was pretty much perfect! We were really impressed with the look and feel of the ship…modern, sparkling clean, luxurious without being over-fancy. But the service was just amazing. I've stayed at hundreds of five star hotels all over the world for business and pleasure, but the service on board was in a different league and does deserve that 'six star' accolade. Whilst all that stuff about everyone remembering your name didn't seem to work for us (it happened twice), who cares? Almost all the staff seemed engaged, committed and to really care. And apart from the initial hiccups, everything worked like clockwork. If only Seabourn were in government. All restaurants were good but our favourite was the Patio Grill. Great steaks and Mariej runs it like a military operation…but with charm! The Thomas Keller chicken night at the Colonnade is just as fantastic as people say it is. The Thomas Keller Grill is beautifully appointed but - as everyone notes - the food is bizarrely over-salted (and I love salt). The rib eye was a real great piece of meat though. Service there was too quick - we'd finished our meal within 45 mins. Having said that we'd go back again. We only went to the main Restaurant on the final night and liked the way ladies are escorted to table. We'll go there a lot more on our next trip on the Odyssey but wanted to keep this trip as informal as possible. Gabor at Seabourn Square bent over backwards to make sure people got the drinks they wanted and always with a smile. And yes, Caviar is available on tap and is pretty good too! Passengers were all age ranges but most were 50-80. Mostly US/Aus/NZ with some Brits. Good to see some LGBT couples and a get-together for them. Quite a lot of young people on board from Australia who didn't look like Seaboard regulars :-) as there was a group booking for a Daikin dealers' conference. I had been a bit worried about this in advance, but it was actually nice to have younger people on board really enjoying themselves. As we don't stay up late we never saw any entertainment in the Grand Salon nor did we visit the Club. We loved Seabourn Square, usually a nice quiet place to hang out and get a coffee. Tours were OK to good, but most of the time we liked the fact that (Vodice aside) we were visiting some pretty interesting destinations for strolling around. Disembarkation was a breeze but we were soon back to earth with a bang, twiddling our thumbs at Athens airport waiting for the flight home. All in all, the perfect holiday and we can't wait to get back on the Odyssey. It's great that the ship's excellent for people who want to socialise but just as good for those who want a quiet and interesting holiday in the lap of luxury. Read Less

Fantastic Cruise - did not disappoint on our journey to try all top luxury ships. Seabourn Odyssey is our 3rd luxury cruise and she did not let us down in any way, just ending too soon. The food was for a mixture of fine dining to casual grill. Pick up the phone and order whatever you like, and you will be presented with just that! A smaller ship with staff to passenger ratio almost one to one. The staff had a few characters that became your friends for the duration. What was most appealing, was in seeing the Captain walk around and chat to fellow passengers, I have never really seen that before, very friendly and part of the family. The suites were very large, largest we have experienced, with a great movie channel for when you just want to relax in your room. The shows were entertaining, but they did start late, around 9.45PM. Highly recommend this cruise, with many faces from all over the world and all aged different... Read Less

Check-in in Barbados was an indication of what was to come. there was just on member of staff on the quay side. No champagne or cold towels and certainly not the line of staff used in the advertising and this was 15 minutes after check in opened. I carried my hand luggage round to the ship and up the gangplank. I was not offered a glass of champagne until after I'd had my photo taken and handed over credit card details. Booked a gty balcony cabin and was allocated 650. This is mid ships and fine, although it had an adjoining door I never heard the people next door and they said they'd never heard me. I was offered lunch after boarding although only at the Patio grill which didn't have any menu and when I asked the chef went to list all that was available and the weeks specials. I settled on a burger and discovered I had to do it all myself, so then had to ask for the bun to be toasted and a special order of fries. A waiter then appeared and took over so that I could get a table in the shade. he also got me a drink so avoiding another queue. After the emergency drill I went to the Sky bar for the sail away party.....the poor individual there was only assisted by an equally overworked girl who could.t keep up with the demand for ice and more glasses. They were totally overwhelmed. It was as if this event had come as a surprise. The helpfully located clock told me I waited 10 minutes to be served. The cabin set up didn't have the alcohol requested as part of the on line check in and that took over 24 hrs to arrive. I went to the Solo travellers get together which wasn't hosted an neither was the LGBT one, no canapés, just a sign at the door to the bar. I had a reservation for R2 on the 4th night and had a thoroughly enjoyable meal and managed to get another booking which was equally enjoyable along with the wine pairing for which you do pay extra. I learnt that sadly R2 was to be removed in place of Thomas Keller. Some of his dishes were available on the main restaurant menu but for me they weren't a patch on R2. This will be a sad loss. Dinner in the main restaurant was a bit hit and miss. I have unsalted butter and on the first couple of nights I waited twenty minutes and then it didn't arrive at all and neither did any bread. Only when I let the soup go cold did someone enquire what was wrong. Needless to say I arranged to see the Hotel Manager and things did improve. I never went to any of the entertainment/ shows so cannot comment on them. Ship décor is good and well maintained. Due to weather conditions we didn't call at Marseille but Toulon instead. If you've never been here it's worth a stroll ashore. Disembarkation was quite a long drawn out affair. Sadly not the line of officers on the quayside to wish you well and safe onward travel although the captain and hotel manager were there, the latter by now knowing my name. Did I expect too much? Only if doing what you advertise is too much. I'd rather they under promise and over deliver. Read Less