Q – We are really worried about a cruise we have booked for next year on Silverseas Cruises Shadow, This will be our third cruise, first on this line, but we are now quite worried because our daughter-in-law was checking the ship out online and tells us it just failed its health test. There also was a big problem with the crew hiding food like steaks in their pants and stuff and taking it to their cabins. Would you consider cancelling and trying o book something else?
A – Well, we hope the chef wasn’t cooking sausage and peppers. Let’s try to set the facts straight on this.
In its last surprise sanitation inspection, the Silverseas Shadow received its first ever failings score, an 84 out of a possible 100. The inspection, done in Skagway, Alaska, uncovered the fact that some galley crew were so discombobulated by the presence of CDC inspectors that they took some of the food carts and hid them in crew quarters. Inspectors were not happy about finding food meant for passengers sitting in an unrefrigerated state in crew cabins.
Silverseas, one of the world’s great lines, quickly instituted new crew training procedures and vowed this will never happen again. Given the negative press this incident received, you probably will find tighter food control standards on Silverseas these days than the industry standard. There were no reports of crew hiding food in their clothing. There was no evidence that the crew had even touched the food. They just sort of “hid” some of the preparation by moving it to crew quarters.
Surprise inspections are often traumatic for any crew. One of our Editors was on a Five-Star ship ion Bergen, Norway when a surprise inspection by Norwegian customs uncovered marijuana in the cabins of several of the entertainers. They were detained and there were no production shows for the remainder of the voyage.
