Silversea Expedition Cruise Tips & Advice
Silversea cruises offers a luxurious fleet of ships including those designed for expeditions, allowing you to explore deeper into the environment and surroundings. Most notably, expedition ships are equipped with zodiac boats that are stowed on board, making them accessible at every port of call and destination. These small boats allow passengers to disembark in more remote parts of the world without the need for an official port of call, particularly useful in Antarctica and sub-Antarctic regions.
Thank you for being here! Prince Adventures is a luxury travel agency. Hi! I’m the CEO, Jakki, and nice to virtually meet with you. Together with my husband, Jamie, we regularly sail on cruises in various parts of the world as a means of ensuring quality control.. This allows us to offer informed advice and guidance on which cruise lines may be best for your travel style and expectations. We pay for these opportunities, they’re not free or offered complimentary. Most importantly, like you - we love to explore new places and travel. Travel is our passion and is what drives us to excel at what we do.
Spending our time and our money allows us to inform ourselves, thereby better serving you. Ultimately, our goal is that you enjoy better holidays based on our support and research. You can already reach our travel advisor experts, based in Canada, by emailing travel@princeadventures.com. We are a team of advisors here to help support people from all over the world. We currently have clients in The United States, Canada, The United Kingdom, and Barbados.
Silversea Venetian Society members may find that some of this information is familiar to them, but I hope travellers who are new to Silversea Cruises or have sailed with them once or twice, still have the opportunity to learn something new.
Currently, Silversea has four bespoke expedition vessels and six luxury cruise ships, each hosting less than six hundred passengers. Expedition ships hover around the 200 passenger mark.
Here are five of the key distinctions between luxury cruising and expedition cruising with Silversea.
Expedition vessels have a an Expedition Leader, not a Cruise Director on board as with conventional cruise. This crew member coordinates the 18+ expedition experts that host informative lectures periodically on topics related to the region of the world you are visiting. For example, we sailed most recently in South Africa and the presentation topics related to the geology of South Africa, explaining for example, why Table Mountain is flat. Other lectures focused on different types of species of wildlife such as rhino, elephant and birds. An informative guest speaker, Zelda la Grange, also joined us for two dates speaking about her experience working personally for Nelson Mandela. If you do not plan to attend such lectures, and do not believe these would add value to your vacation, then perhaps consider whether this is the right type of experience for you.
The Expedition Leader also provides a near daily brief and debrief - forecasting the next days’ adventures and summarizing the highlights of what happened on the voyage that day. You don’t want to find yourself at sea for two days where there are limited cruise style activities to do, and you feel bored our disinterested in what is being offered. There is lots to explore when you’re on shore, but on the ship, especially sea days, it is of great value to attend these educational opportunities. These daily presentations by the Expedition leader are important to watch live steamed to your suite through your television, or attend in person in the Explorers Lounge, as there is important departure information regarding your complimentary excursions and tours. Remaining flexible is key for expedition cruising with Silversea. If you feel that punctuating your day with this event may be an irritant, or that not knowing when your tour leaves in the morning until day before, perhaps a more traditional cruise may better suit your travel style. That’s okay, expedition cruises may not be ideal for everyone. That’s why we’re here to support, to ensure we ask you the right questions to help pair you with the best possible experience for your holiday.
Expedition sailings do have some limited on board activities hosted by an Entertainment Host(less), but they are not leading a full crew of activities hosts or entertainment staff. This crew member’s role is not the same as a Cruise Director who managers a team of entertainment folks. Guests are able to enjoy some limited live solo musicians. If you are a passenger who likes to attend evening shows, and look for dancers and production cast performances, these expedition style cruises are not for you. None of that type of entertainment is available, and in our personal experience, Silversea expeditions do not cater to invest in social entertainment of this nature. The limited musicians aboard our vessel performed daily but only briefly in two sessions, once before dinner and once after. There was however, regular almost daily team trivia hosted by the Entertainment Hostess on our expedition cruise with Silversea.
Expedition ships are purposely smaller than the already smaller capacity within the category of luxury cruise ships. They hold less passengers, and are lower in overall tonnage. A smaller tonnage means the ship is overall smaller and has less square metres or feet of public areas. This means there is less variety of lounges and dining options overall. Being small vessels, they are more agile and nimble to go to remote and smaller destinations - which is an advantage to visit less common parts of the world! However, if you are the type of person who wants to have many different restaurants, bars, and lounges to choose from daily, perhaps reconsider. If one were to be closed due to inclement weather, like we experienced during high winds and a storm in Southern Africa, would that be a major problem for you? On the Silver Cloud when we sailed, there were two main restaurants open for breakfast, lunch and dinner. An additional one was open for lunch and dinner weather permitting, as it was an outdoor space. Ask us to recommend an expedition vessel that may be right for you, as Silversea may not have what you’re looking for. Email us to connect, travel@princeadventures.com.
Compared to other expedition vessels we have been on we felt the Seabourn Venture was our personal stand out favourite. Everyone has a unique travel style and preferences, what is best for us, may not be your first choice. The Silversea Silver Cloud we sailed on is a luxury cruise ship that was converted into an expedition vessel through refurbishment in 2017. If you would like to have a phone call or conversation to ask us questions why we liked the Seabourn Venture compared to Silversea, do not hesitate to reach out, we are more than open to chatting, please call us 519-362-3672.
See our Expedition highlights, room tours and travel tips on our YouTube channel here, we have loaded both shorts and videos, so there is lots to explore.
If you’d like to set up a time to speak about a custom itinerary for your future Silversea cruise or how we can support any Silversea Expedition cruise around the world, contact us by email, travel@princeadventures.com.
Safe travels to you and yours!
Jakki Prince
Chief Epic Officer of Prince Adventures
Why do we say #epiclist rather than #bucketlist travel? Simply because we believe all travel should be epic, no matter your travel vision, we believe you deserve it to be everything you desire and more!
Jakki Prince is a luxury travel advisor who personally advises on travel and manages a travel agency team of five expert, well-travelled advisors. Having been featured in national and international news regarding her work as a travel agent, she has personally travelled to over 70+ countries, has been named Top 40 Under 40 and is Forbes Endorsed globally. Proudly she shares her Virtuoso membership benefits with the hundreds of travellers she works with.