What's It Like to Sail on an Ultraluxury Cruise Ship? We Investigate
Photos above: Grandeur's Compass Rose restaurant, pool, bedroom of a Concierge category suite, and Senior Executive Chef Michael Meyepa.
The attraction of cruising for me has long been the way a ship can take you multiple places without the need to repeatedly pack and unpack—the joy, in effect, of luggageless travel. So I was skeptical when I boarded the Seven Seas Grandeur in Miami last January. This sailing, on Regent Seven Seas’ sixth (and newest) vessel, wouldn’t be taking me anywhere at all. It was a showcase cruise—in this case, a two-day, two-night jaunt from the port of Miami out to sea and back again. Onboard were mostly travel pros, there to assess the experience before recommending it to their clients. I was on a mission of my own: With no terra firma experiences to consider—guides, itineraries, activities—I would zero in on the hothouse onboard world of an “ultraluxury” ship (as the current lingo has it), everything that might help me make sense of an intriguing rumor I’d heard: that some Regent passengers find the onboard pleasures so compelling, they don’t bother disembarking at ports of call at all.
Grandeur has 15 categories of suite, the top being the brand-defining, atmosphere-setting Regent Suite, on the ship’s highest deck: 14, above the bridge. It seemed the right place to start my orientation. “If I were staying in the Regent Suite,” my guide says, “I’d never leave it.” Interesting… I start to take it all in. The vibe in the suite’s 3,151 square feet of indoor space is serene, hot, comfortably contemporary; the 1,292-square-foot deck is wraparound, with a hot tub and the same views as the bridge; there’s a private spa with a treadmill, a treatment room, a sauna, and heated marble loungers looking out to sea.I can picture myself reposing on them.
The private bar, built out of a particularly beautiful deep gray, white-flecked Italian marble (which, oddly, I find myself caressing), has a dedicated mixologist (“so you can easily entertain friends you make onboard”). And the mattress in the master bedroom is a Hästens, entirely handmade of horsehair, cotton, and wool, and, with its $200,000 price tag, “the most expensive mattress at sea.” What does this mean, I wonder. I sit down. I stretch out. (No one stops me.) The sensation has me imagining what floating on a cloud while being fully supported might feel like. The pillow menu offers six choices, and you can pick among four brands of linens.
Contemplating this new world of hedonistic possibilities, I spot something familiar on a wall. “It’s a Picasso lithograph,” my guide says. “A copy, you mean.” “No, no copies here. It’s a Picasso. The private dining room on deck seven has a Miró over the fireplace."
It turns out the former CEO of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Frank Del Rio, is a collector, and he handpicked many of the 1,600 objets on Grandeur. You can take a guided tour of the collection with the help of an app. It includes the ship’s much ballyhooed Fabergé egg, Journey in Jewels. Commissioned from Fabergé, purveyor to the Romanovs, it flaunts its intricate, pearl-and-diamond-studded beauty—hypnotically opening, closing, rotating—in a glass display case in the ship’s central atrium.
My actual suite on deck eight is in the midrange Concierge category and of course is much less grand than the Regent Suite. The pale, serene interior, however, is not dissimilar; a white orchid blooms on the coffee table in the sitting area; my minibar is customizable (although it hadn’t occurred to me to make my wishes known preboarding); the well-organized walk-in closet Marie Kondo–izes me (when is my stuff ever so perfectly in its place?); and the bed, while not a Hästens, is, well, fabulous.
As Franco Semeraro, SVP of Hotel Operations, tells me, brandishing some sketches and charts, “We are constantly analyzing everything. Such as closets—we already know we’ll make some adjustments. And mattresses. In the entire Regent fleet, we are now on mattress generation seven. The goal, in everything, is 100 percent comfort.”
Just a few hours in, and I’m starting to get it: bottomless coddling (if anything is not to your liking, the GM’s door is always open), plus the deep sea soughing just beyond your own veranda. Life ashore cannot easily compete.
Onboard, unlike in real life, you’re also never more than a three-minute walk from eight vastly different dining venues, all included—several gastronomic, a handful casual, some indoor, some out, with all wine, champagne, and cocktails likewise included. “Once our guests step onboard, they don’t have to worry about anything,” a crew member tells me. “Everything is here for them.”
Bernhard Klotz, VP of Food and Beverage for Regent, is another man obsessed, in his case with “flow”—how seamlessly dishes are delivered to tables (the new kitchens on Grandeur are all designed with that in mind)—and with the “authenticity” of the ingredients, a perpetual challenge of ship cooking. “Long-lasting items we stock up on. Perishable ones are delivered to us in containers throughout the journey—so long as there are reliable ports to fly them into. If there aren’t, we may request a change of itinerary.” And there’s always the search for the local. “If our ships are sailing the west coast of Africa, it’s super-challenging to find things like arugula or fine herbs. But in South Africa and South America, the vegetables are incredible.”
Each evening, an hour before dinner service starts, tastings are held in the kitchens—not for passengers but for the chefs. “We’re looking for the consistency of quality of certain dishes,” Klotz says. “Then the chefs have 45 minutes to adjust things.”
I take part in three such tastings: at Compass Rose, the main and largest restaurant; at Pacific Rim (pan-Asian); and at Sette Mari (Italian). The chefs, up to two dozen of them, gather around a long, gleaming aluminum counter, and dozens of small plates start arriving in rapid succession, the process presided over by Senior Executive Chef Michael Meyepa, who is Mauritian. We sample everything from caviar and foie gras appetizers to desserts. (Speaking of which, one Regent creation, the 14-layer chocolate cake from Prime 7, was featured in the April 2023 issue of Bon Appétit.)
Stand-Out Amenities
• The Faberge Egg Want to see what the Romanovs saw? The latest iteration of these mini-masterpieces is now part of life onboard. As in, “Meet me by the Fabergé egg.”
• An Open-Door Policy You can walk into the general manager’s Deck 5 office at any time, to vent about anything, however small. “We always listen.”
• Free Daily Laundry If you so desire, your laundered lingerie (or whatever) will be deposited daily in your suite, wrapped in tissue paper.
• 36 Types of Bread That’s the number served across the eight dining venues. Baking goes on 24/7.
• Plates by Versace Each restaurant has specially designed dinnerware. Versace’s is at Compass Rose, the main dining room.
• Your Wish Is Always Someone's Command If, say, you fancy a particular restaurant dish but want to eat in your suite, it shall be done. “There is never a no on this ship,” I was told. And I believe it.
“This is laksa. You know it?” Meyepa asks me. I don't. “It’s a curry-based Singaporean seafood dish with tofu, sweet potato to add volume, basil, cilantro, scallion, fried shallots for crunchiness and flavor, then shrimp, squid, and scallop, and a sauce of ginger, garlic, and lemongrass.” (Whatever supply challenges exist are clearly conquerable.) Meyepa shouts instructions to his team. “Gentlemen, this duck needs a bit more stock. But the skin must remain crispy!”
I have had a peek behind the veil, but I also sit down to meals. A crew member advised that I should always be looking up at the ceilings on this ship, to see the light fixtures (striking), and down at the floors, as the carpets, tiles, and marbles “are everywhere different, to keep your interest.” It’s true—and it’s true as well of the restaurants, which all have their own atmosphere, tableware, colors, textures.
At Compass Rose you sit among a forest of illuminated stylized “trees” and eat off plates specially designed by Versace. Prime 7 is all leathery clubbiness, dark red and earth-toned. To enter the moodily modern Pacific Rim, you skirt a life-size glass sculpture of a pink-flowered cherry tree. Chartreuse (“modern gastronomic French cuisine,” as the waiter puts it) is visually remarkable for its chartreuse velvet upholstered chairs and pillows (wonderful to touch, I note, and especially beautiful against the blue of the sea) and its floor-to-ceiling bas-relief of giant camellias done in black leather, a riff on Coco Chanel’s favorite flower. Strong design statements are part of the onboard experience—and they’re effective.
I went casual, too, eating under an umbrella at breezy La Veranda and at the buzzy Pool Grill. I meant to try out room service breakfast—some 250 meals are delivered every morning (a remarkable number given the ship’s 372 suites; people unwilling to get out of those beds, I’d wager). But I lost track of time. And I wasn’t alone. Sitting over coffee at the midship Coffee Connection on my last day, I overhear a passing woman ask her companion, “Do you know what day it is?” I don’t detect any urgency in her question.
Dining is prelude to partying. It’s like being on a good times roller coaster, most of it centered on deck four, and one slip-slides easily among venues—lounges, bars, theater, casino, boutiques—barely noticing the hour, or caring.
Barnendu Paul presides at the Meridian Lounge’s craft cocktail bar—although that’s an inadequate description of the state-of-the-art mixology lab it appears to be, dedicated to a single mission: further elevating passengers’ mood. Everything about it feels top tier: the spirits and tonics, the infusions and reductions (of which there are a great variety, all made onboard “for quality control”). “And with Grandeur,” Paul says, smiling, “we got some new toys.” He demonstrates: smoking dome, flavor blaster, torch. It’s all as amusing to watch as it is to drink. I sample a Spicy & Passion (Patrón Silver, passoa, lime juice, passion fruit, agave nectar, and chili pepper— “it’s the most popular cocktail onboard”), then Virgo and the Volunteer.
I could stay all night, but the show at the Constellation Theater is starting. During the day the venue hosts guest speakers from various industries, scientific fields, and the arts. But in the evening, “think American Idol, the Video Music Awards, and Dancing with the Stars, all put together into a professional, polished show,” says David Nevin, the cruise director. By the time we emerge, music is drifting from other venues. There is dancing in the Grandeur Lounge (this, I’m told, “is where the party is really at”). Later, the Observation Lounge on deck 11 is the perfect wind-down: a pianist at the grand piano, sitting areas both communal and private, and views exactly like the ones from the bridge and the Regent Suite—just shimmering water.
Mornings are tranquil on Grandeur. A few runners jog nonchalantly on the track on deck 12 (“On Alaska sailings,” a crew member says, “it’s a great place from which to see the whales”). Some early risers are having consultations at the well-equipped fitness center. I’m at the spa, aptly named Serene. After my quartz bed massage, my masseur, Peter Verkin, from Slovakia, noting my advanced state of relaxation and reluctance to rise from the warm stones, is necessarily ruthless: “I’m afraid I’m going to have to kick you out, my dear.” Sigh.
A Few More Favorites
• Fitness Breakfast With all the grande-bouffing ahead, this was a Zen-like way to start the day: early help-yourself plant-based fare near the deserted pool, looking out to sea.
• Culinary Arts Kitchen I learned to make pasta limone and classic French crèpes and picked up countless cooking tips—fun! On a regular cruise, I’d sign up for as many classes as I could.
• The Picassos The Regent Suite’s Picasso lithograph is for occupants’ eyes only. But the three behind the bar at Prime 7 steakhouse add a definite kick to predinner cocktails.
• Craft Cocktail Bar I’ve never had so much fun watching a master mixologist at work. Run, don’t walk, to the Meridian Lounge: Word is out, and it gets lively in there as the night unfolds.
• Quartz Bed Massage A Grandeur spa specialty: a 75-minute full-body massage administered as you lie on a pile of heated quartz pebbles covered by a sheet. Deliciously elemental.
After the summer season in the Mediterranean, Grandeur will cross the Atlantic and sail Canada and New England, followed by 12 Caribbean and Panama Canal voyages. A new “Immersive Overnights” program offers stays in every port of call.
This story appears in the Summer 2024 issue of Town & Country. SUBSCRIBE NOW
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