Traumatizing Experience

Cruises: 4-6 cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 70

Review summary

We were not able to visit any ports due to the conditions that I mentioned below. This "Vacation" was not ust horrible.....but TRAUMATIZING I cannot really say in words well enough to describe the experience that my wife and I had on the Silver Shadow Ship belonging to Silversea Ltd. I took my wife on this Alaskan cruise after she had treatment for Cancer and to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. We had to leave the ship early because it was so bad and my wife did not feel safe after she became ill on the ship and was mistreated by the ship doctor. We both knew something was wrong when we got on the ship and it smelled of stale smoke but assumed that the "smokers" would only be allowed outside in certain areas. Not only were they allowed indoors and it is almost impossible to stop cigarette and cigar smoke from permeating the entire indoor area once it's there. We could not attend the dining room nor the card room because the smoke had infiltrated those rooms so heavily that both myself and my wife had a very bad reaction. For days our eyes felt that there were shards of glass in them IN OUR OWN ROOM and then my wife began to break out in welts. We called the ship doctor in the middle of the night when she started to wheeze and we just wanted to make sure nothing more was wrong and try to find out what we could do. When this woman showed up it was CLEAR she had it out for her and she laid into her like nothing I have ever seen in my life. She talked to her like she was trash, like she didn't believe she was sick and even shrieked "OH PLEASE!" when my wife tried to show her the welts. When I tried to intervene, my wife said no because she was FRIGHTENED of retaliation! The doctor then insisted "Well I'll CHECK your back, LEAN OVER!" and pushed her back forward to check her breathing. She never once asked my wife if she could TOUCH her and then proceeded to shove her around like a rag doll to "examine" her. At this time she was in tears and just wanted to wait until she left to talk to the person in charge. The doctor was not finished and ASSUMED her weight outloud and barked at her nurse to "JUST GIVE HER A FEW CCs of X." She said "no thank you please leave." She left us a bill of 230USD and walked out. I have never in my life seen any kind of professional treat another human being like this...EVER. My wife and I were standing there stunned and called immediately to report that she has just been treated this way. She cried all night long. We were able to talk to a very nice man name Marius who was very understanding and kind but he obviously had no authority to do anything. As if things could not get worse, the next day we called about a trip to Denali that I was specifically told was "by air." It's a;so called 'DENALI BY AIR." Well, we found out, it involved about 10 hours on a bus for 4 days and a lot of walking. Not only would I have never booked this because my wife tore her ACL at that time, but she just had surgery for Cancer. I wanted to take her to see this park without hurting her. When she called and cried and begged the man in charge of this expedition to help us out (we spent $4k on this excursion alone), he rudely and coldly said there was nothing he could do. And when she told him that she was ill and could not physically do the excursion especially since getting sicker on the ship, he simply said "YES YOU CAN!" Well when we tried to look in the written description of the executions, there was one for EVERY SINGLE ONE EXCEPT THE "DENALI BY AIR!" They insisted that it was always discoverable on their website but "I" booked this and "I" was told by the sales agent that it was ONLY by air. They refused any refund whatsoever and other than Marius and our nice butler, no one really seemed to care that we were in misery. After the manager let hq know what happened with all this we waited for a call but nothing. We said if we don't get a call back, we will just leave. The next morning, they were at our door to help us off the boat. Over $20k, no apology from headquarters, no refund, NOTHING. They had their money. Period. Repulsive. I would also like to add that if you are someone of color, you may want to think twice before taking this cruise. It didn't take long before we realized that we were being seated separate from "those who were of caucasian background." We did not really mind who we sat with but the fact alone that they would seat us in different places was just not a good feeling.

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