Spirit of Discovery - Saga

portExplore was onboard the Saga ship Spirit of Discovery for her first post-Covid Cruise which left Tilbury at the end of June ’21.

Just a week earlier the UK Government had delayed the expected lifting of restrictions on the number of guests allowed on board and then the Scottish Government barred any cruise ships from dock in their ports. This caused Saga an enormous amount of work, re-scheduling as well as re-routing and was completely outside their control. I mention this because our pre-cruise experience was poor but I do appreciate that not all of it was ‘normal’.  This the reality of cruising at the moment - every Government's Covid based decision has a knock-on effect on other arrangements - we all have to try and be patient, I think it will be a while yet before any of us can be certain that we will get the cruise that we have booked!

Socially distance loungers ready and waiting for us…

The Ten Second Version of this Ships Report 

We loved Spirit of Discovery, we loved a lot of things about the experience and we would almost certainly choose to cruise with Saga again -  but we would make sure that we booked direct!

Why we originally chose this cruise.

We are the right age group for Saga (50+ which isn’t SOOO old!) and are very much their target market - cruise companies have to keep attracting new customers or they will fail. Spirit of Discovery was launched in June 2019 to a flurry of activity from our friends in Cruise Blogging world and whilst we would never have previously considered Saga for a cruise, the coverage that the launch had made us quite sad that we hadn’t been invited and sowed the seed that it might be a ship for us. I definitely had some preconceptions about what a ‘Saga' ship would be like and watching the content created about the launch I was genuinely intrigued to see this new ship. We had never sailed on a ship so small so this seemed a perfect opportunity to investigate a smaller all inclusive, ‘boutique’ style ship . 

Lido Bar

What we felt before the cruise

I am usually SO organised with my re cruise organisation and this was absolutely NOT the case this time! We had made a HUGE mistake by booking through our usual Travel Agent , this meant that we were treated differently to those who had booked direct. The first problem was that we were not able to access our onboard personaliser or complete our pre-boarding paperwork ourselves - something that we have managed to do on every other cruise line that we have sailed with!

This was irritating but of course the last minute changes I mentioned above made the situation even worse and communication over all the changes was very poor. Saga wanted to speak in person to everyone who was being cancelled and whilst this is admirable it is also slow. It was only when a post appeared on the very helpful We love Saga Cruises Facebook Group that I learnt that everyone who was being removed from the cruise had already been contacted directly, if you hadn’t heard then you were still onboard. Honestly, no one would think that email had ever been invented!!

A friendly soul posted a copy of the proposed, revised excursions on the Facebook group which meant I could phone and (after being on hold for over an hour) reserve the ones we wanted - which was lucky, as our own excursion brochure - which had apparently been posted to us, or to our agent? - never arrived!

An answerphone message on our landline two days before departure gave us a pickup time from our driver but no contact details so if he hadn’t arrived I’m not sure what we would have done! As Saga newbies with no idea how things worked, with telephone lines at full stretch and no access to anything online I’ve got to be honest and admit that I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised to find that we weren’t expected when we arrived at Tilbury. I’m not saying this to moan but to give you an honest idea of how I felt on the morning of the cruise.

The Library

What we loved

The Onboard Customer Experience - there is definitely a bit of Saga ‘magic’ - EVERYONE, from arrival at check-in onwards, was absolutely lovely  and nothing seemed to be difficult or too much trouble. The were friendly greetings and smiling eyes from pretty much everyone we came into contact with.

Happy smiling faces were almost always hidden behind their masks!

The Decor - the whole ship is very stylish - contemporary, modern, bright and colourful. I’m going to single out the Spa and the Library as my favourite areas but to be honest the decor everywhere was very ‘me’. As was the artwork - in fact there was some ceramics I loved so much that I came home and tracked down the artist! Everything was of extremely good quality and very comfortable  - especially in our cabin. This was a Twin Deluxe Balcony ( there are no inside or outside cabins ), which was well equipped with loads of storage, excellent lighting, an interactive TV,  USB charging points points and a very impressive shower with top quality toiletries in full sized bottles - luxurious and eco friendly!

The Hydrotherapy pool in the Spa

The ORCA team of wildlife experts - always to be found on deck watching for whales, dolphin and porpoise from early in the morning until sunset. The team gave talks and any one of them was happy to talk at any time about what they had seen and what they expected to see. The whole group was so informative, positive and upbeat that they really enhanced our cruise. I would definitely seek out cruises with Cruise Conservationists onboard in the future and think that Saga deserve top marks for making it possible for them to be on Spirit of Discovery.

Our ever patient and positive ORCA team at work

What we liked

The food and restaurants - as well as the Grand Dining room there were three others which on other ships would have been billed as ‘speciality restaurants’ - here they were included. The standard was excellent and, although their menus remained the same throughout the week,  we were happy to eat in East to West more than once as their was a wide choice.  The buffet was temporarily repurposed as a ‘sit down’ venue and Grill - so there were lots of options for meals and the standard of food was excellent. We had a little confusion over how and when to book restaurants which was due to us being newbies but a quick conversation with some ‘Saganauts’ put us on the right track. This was a bit of a theme - not everything is obvious and you do have to learn to just ask!

Our favourite restaurant East to West

The shore excursions - now that probably comes as a surprise given my loathing of organised trips but actually the (compulsory but included) excursions were pretty good! I thought this was pretty impressive especially as there had only been a week from the rescheduling of the cruise for Saga to organise them. We chose mainly boat trips and paid extra for a river trip in Falmouth rather than take the coach trip around Cornwall - I was really impressed with most things but especially with the really informative and amusing free boat trip in Portsmouth. 

We loved the proper Promenade deck too…

Sailaway - there was a real sense of atmosphere with a glass of fizz in hand watching the brass bands seeing us off from various quaysides. Over the week we had ticker tape cannon and fireboat escorts both in and out of ports. Again, an impressive level of organisation in just a week! It all felt special to be a part of and again a bit more ‘us’ than a flag waving jingoistic party. 

Saga main board and management interaction - goodness there were a lot of them on board! Everyone from the main board chairman downward was there - they were very visible and actively spent time talking with passengers, asking for feedback about their experience. As the first cruise after shutdown, some level of management interest was expected but they were ALL on board! I’m not sure it was a completely comfortable experience for them all as there were many niggles and opinions aired but the polite and interested way that they listened to every single comment was hugely impressive. Nigel Blanks, Chief Executive Officer of Saga Cruises was really quite amazing, he was at the gangway to see everyone off on their excursions and to welcome them back - he went from table to table in the library and patiently listened to every comment, he was endlessly enthusiastic about his new ship Spirit of Adventure and he even took part in a hilarious edition of ‘Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook’ with Kevin Woodford alongside Group Chief Executive Euan Sutherland. I don’t think Nigel was ‘off duty’ for a moment and I must admit I was hugely impressed!

What we didn’t like 

To be fair there was little that we actively disliked but there were a few things that we were disappointed or confused by…

The bars - Saga is billed as being all inclusive and it was. However it felt a little limited or penny pinching compared to either other all inclusive lines such as Viking or to just having a drinks package on most cruiselines. There seemed to be few included cocktails or branded spirits and it was very difficult to find a real choice of wines. This was partly due to poor staff knowledge, partly to the lack of a printed drinks menu and in fact we only saw a wine list on our last evening! It was irritating to have to keep asking what was available and to be honest it just felt a bit ‘mean’ - certainly not the boutique experience that other elements delivered. I really missed the onboard app that you find on other ships!

The lack of buffet - substituted with table service in the Grill  - was understandable due to Covid restrictions but it led to a fairly limited choice during the day - actually resulting in far bigger portions than I would normally choose at lunchtime! The menu remained the same all week and it didn’t seem possible just to have a sandwich or a light lunch, although its possible that I may have missed something! I really didn’t understand why Saga had chosen to go for the full restaurant experience rather than a served buffet. The waiters seemed as confused as everyone else for a few days and the first couple of breakfasts were slow and a bit variable with various items incorrect or missing!

Onboard lectures - there was nothing wrong with them at such but I really didn’t understand what was going on!  There were two interesting lecturers onboard and eventually I found their talks were broadcast on the TV. I couldn’t work out how I’d missed their seeing the lectures live but was told that they’d been prerecorded! Maybe it was COVID related but it seemed very odd to have people onboard but let anyone see them! 

Entertainment - to be honest, whilst we were impressed to see so much live music onboard, a lot of the shows were not really our cup of tea - we have probably been spoilt by the level of Production shows in the big theatres aboard lines like Princess and Celebrity. The smaller stage here meant an altogether smaller experience from a young and enthusiastic team of singers and dancers. The guest artists were fine but not outstanding in the main although we were really impressed with a show by Peter Howarth on our last evening.

Internet Access - was included which is good, but the service was limited so that no streaming was possible. I’ve never had a situation on a ship where you couldn’t upgrade to a better internet package and of course being on escorted excursions meant there was not even the option of finding Wifi ashore - it made posting to portExplore very difficult. Apparently the service was even slower than normal because the Crew had free access to keep in touch with their families at home - Covid means that they can’t to leave the ship at all during their tour of duty. All of this was fine but lack of access to sites such as Twitter was irritating, it would have made life very difficult on a longer cruise.

ORCA team at Portland

Would we go on Saga again?

Yes we definitely would consider it, ORCA and the crew really made it special for us and I’d like to see how everything functioned post COVID — however I was a bit miffed to find that you can’t even JOIN the Saga loyalty scheme until you have sailed for 35 nights and even more so when I realised that our first cruise wouldn’t count towards those 35 nights because we didn’t book direct! Again and again I felt like a second class citizen for supporting and booking with a Travel Agent and I really don’t understand why Saga insists on differentiating! So as I said at the beginning we loved Spirit of Discovery, we loved a lot of things about it and we would almost certainly choose to cruise with Saga again - but we would make sure that we booked direct!

I hope you enjoyed reading my thoughts on our first Saga Cruise and that it will be useful to you. Maybe pin this on Pinterest so that you can come back to it later?

I would love to know what you think so please take a moment to comment below!

Happy portExploring!

Cathy 

xx

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