PONANT - Glasgow to Reykjavik

[drcam]

I went to the Geelong Travel travel expo yesterday in Geelong and seemed to find the perfect itinerary, from Glasgow to Reykjavik starting 10 May.

It seems to go to all the places I planned to go, taking away the hassle of driving and booking accommodation, and including excursions that I wanted to do.
This itinerary comes with a waived single supplement AND they are offering an additional 5% off and $200 onboard credit if I book using Geelong Travel within the next 10 days.
However, I have never been on an expedition cruise. The following are some of the questions I would like to ask those with experience here:

(1) At north of $15k, it is still a very large outlay. While I am grateful that I can in theory afford it, I could grow that money into a lot more if I set it aside, skipped this journey, and waited until I was retired in 20ish years' time. Is it worth the price? And the loss of compounded earnings? One thing I noted that there were VERY few people under the age of 60 at the travel expo, and the few that were there were generally accompanying their elderly parents.
(2) As a small (well, smaller) ship, how likely is it that I will get seasick? Seasickess is the bane of my existence. I have never been seasick anywhere in the four cruises I have been on in my lifetime (and the boats were not huge except for one of them), but I have had SEVERE seasickness on public ferries, and even on sightseeing whale watching tours in Nelson Bay, NSW.
(3) Is it still worth travelling on Ponant if I don't speak French?
(4) How much in gratuities do I need to pay per day?
(5) How does the back to back promotion work? Do you get 20% off the least expensive price, and do both cruises have to have the back to back promotion to qualify? Not that this is all that relevant because the voyage before this one does not have a single supplement waiver.
(6) Has anyone been able to wrangle a deal lower than the web advertised fare through an agent or asking nicely?
(7) Is the food edible? I'm not expecting gourmet on an expedition food, but is it comparable with Holland America? Oceania? The Mudville Grammar School boarding house?
(8) Does anyone aside from wealthy retirees and people on seven-figure incomes go on it? Would I feel comfortable as a mere pauper who's out of my league?

If anyone's able to assist it would be great.

I'm thinking about possibly doing a cheap and nasty cruise immediately before it, just to taste the difference. And with my low expectations, perhaps I wouldn't find MSC or Costa that bad, amongst my own financial grade.

 

[drron]

Expedition cruises are very different to classic cruises and have become more popular plus smaller ships so always more expensive.
The best time to do an expedition cruise is when you are young enough to enjoy it. Fortunately all our expedition cruises we did were the first 10+ we did. Couldn’t do them now.

As to putting it off until retirement I saw way too many people who did that but never made it to retirement or died soon after. That’s why we did this before retirement.
On the better expedition ships including Ponant food is better than the mass market cruise ships..
Passengers on expeditions cruises are younger than on classic cruises. We have done an expedition cruise with grand kids 10 and 12. Caused consternation amongst the other passengers at the beginning but at the end they were the most popular ones.

So if you really want to go just do it.

 

[RooFlyer]

I’m doing that cruise in reverse in 2027!

Is it worth it? I guess the fundamental question is whether you want to die richer or die poorer but having lived a life.

1. Cruises do tend to be skewed towards the older demographic due to price and time availability, but expedition cruises less so. I can assure you you won’t be on a boat load of geriatrics.

2. Sea sickness. Classic case of YMMV. I have been seasick on a couple of hours journey across Bass Strait and to the Abrolhos of Islands in W.A. I didn’t get seasick going to Antarctica or all the other cruises I’ve done. You can take sea sickness pills as a prophylactic, not just when you get sick.

3. All Ponant cruises are bilingual in the announcements, the menus, the expedition zodiac trips and the lectures. The vast majority of the restaurant servers cabin attendandants etc. are not French. They’ll be Filipino or Indian. Some cruises - the ‘Smithsonian’ ones - are English only! If there is a heavy preponderance of French speakers versus others, the experience may be less than somewhat for the Anglos but you won’t miss anything essential.

4. They do give you a suggestion gratuities but I forget it now. You can either pay a lump sum into the box they put on the counter at the end of the cruise - it’s anonymous of course. Or you can personally tip your Cabin attendant. I did the latter and I think I gave them about €10 a day.

5. They give you a back-to-back discount if you book consecutive cruises, but not necessarily on the same ship one after the other. I’ve got the B2B discount for my upcoming pair of cruises. First around the Canary Islands and then 4 days later around Sicily. Four days gap in between and I think that’s sort of the limit they will tolerate. It was booked through a travel agent.
I think the discount is applied basically to the price of the pair of cabins you happen to book.

6. I haven’t, but Captain Curtis in his Antarctica cruise thread got very excellent price on Seabourn through using a travel agent – my travel agent as it happens – it was much lower than the web price.

7. The food is excellent on Ponant - they are French. What can I say?. Have a look at my last trip report covering Indonesia to see menus and pictures. It’ll be an à la carte restaurant with a range of dishes and menus always in French and English. And there is the buffet restaurant which is usually on the pool deck ( although the ships vary a little bit) and it’s absolutely lovely.

8. You must disabuse yourself that cruises are occupied by wealthy geriatrics. There are a full range of age of ages on these things and yes you do need a decent disposable income to afford them but it’s not just the rich and famous. Look at me.

Let me add as a single you can either mix with other singles or anyone else! or just keep to yourself. In the early day or days they do arrange events for singles to meet each other and while I was reluctant to do this the first time I cruised, I’ve done it ever since and it’s always been a great group of people. You can dine together or not dine together, but you know each other and can catch up. Do you have a read of my trip report from Bali to Cairns that I did last December and you’ll see about this as well.

Please do NOT do a cheap and nasty cruise before it - it’ll probably put you off when you shouldn’t be put off. I was not a cruiser and once swore I never would be but I was convinced to do a Ponant cruise from Darwin to Broome down the Kimberley coast as my first and while it wasn’t the best one I’ve ever done, it was a fantastic introduction and then knew what the cruises were about. You can check on my trip report of that cruise as well. It’s in my signature block.

Finally, one thing you haven’t mentioned. Ponant give a discount ( ‘the Ponant bonus’) off the list price starting at 30% when they first go on sale and decreasing to say 10%. As the cabins cruise gets sold, the discount gets lower. What’s the Ponant bonus on the cruise you’re looking at? If it’s less than 20% I would reconsider not booking that one and maybe booking one further out.

Personally, I wouldn’t be looking at booking a cruise as soon as May coming up. I usually book 12 to 18 months out to not only get the maximum discount and to be able to book airfares a year out.

On Ponant, the lowest bookable deck has a window and a door to the outside balcony and these are the cheapest. All the decks above have sliding doors out to a balcony and the cabins get more expensive as you go up, even though the cabins may be exactly the same. That’s good for you because the lower, cheaper deck will be more stable. Midships is also more stable than the bow and Ponant does not charge more for a midships Cabin, unlike SilverSea.

Lastly, I would strongly recommend that you use a travel agent that is a ‘cruise specialist’, ideally one who can book through Virtuoso. Check the pricing that’s on the Ponant website for the cruise.

 

[RooFlyer]

Oh, one last thing. As I mentioned in another cruise thread, the captains do literally go out of their way to avoid rough weather. They may delay departure from a port or take another route. For instance, on the Indonesian cruise I think we were supposed to bump along the southern side of the islands but instead we went along the north side because there was a southerly sea. In Antarctica we delayed going across the Drake passage by half a day so to get onto the tail end of bad weather rather than through the middle of it.

The ships do have stabilisers of course.

 

[RooFlyer]

Why not looking at doing the Ponant cruise down the Kimberley next dry season? It’ll be a much softer introduction to Ponant, being Anglo dominant and of course cheaper as you won’t be up to up for the airfares to Europe and back. Nice calm waters and a beautiful piece of Australia that it’s otherwise hard to get to. If you really hate it then you haven’t expended as much as you might on the north Sea cruise you’re looking at.

 

[drcam]

I think it's highly unlikely that I will not enjoy the above itinerary.
I'll head to a cruise specialist travel agent in Melbourne over the next few days to see what kind of a deal they can offer me.
In 2027 my elderly folks and I are going on a Viking cruise of the Rhine River. Possibly on one of Viking's 2 exclusive Chinese-targeted boats where we all get to eat "normal food"!