A first-time cruiser's detailed take on four nights aboard Orient Express Corinthian, covering suites, dining, service, and value from Monaco to Rome.
Woah! Very impressive, thorough review. Those sails do look super cool. Well done, Pierre (and Ford!). Since it’s Accor affiliated, did you earn a boatload (pun-intended) of points and status with them afterwards?
Great review! You're going to give Ben some competition 🙂
Even though I don't see us doing a cruise of any type in the near future (Antarctica is the only "cruise" I've done), it's fun to live vicariously. If and when we take up classic cruising, this new breed of ship seems more like the type of experience we'd want.
What a fantastic review and what an amazing experience. Thanks for sharing with us.
Fantastic review Pierre! Added to the bucket list, but between yours, @Luckys, @1990_s, and many others reviews, I'm going to need to go out and buy a bigger bucket. 🤣
Great review!! I read the whole thing and enjoyed all of it (with the constant thought of “it costs how much??”)
Unlike what I have seen in the reviews of similar offerings from other hotel brands, this does seem to be an experience that's clearly on a different level compared to a privately chartered vessel (you can certainly find a really good one for that sort of money but replicating the soft product is not going to be easy).
It still definitely isn't for me as I'm not keen on spending that sort of money and I certainly wouldn't look forward to socialising with a bunch of people who obsess over the room types available in a specific city hotel on a different continent- but it's definitely interesting to read about it all.
Agree! It’s not for me but still a great read.
My family of five rented a boat in Croatia with a captain for about 8k euros for a week. Not luxury and rustic but just so amazing. Snorkeling in bright green water. Rustic restaurants only accessible by boat. Options abound but I can see the lure of this trip.
5k a night to listen to people only booking Suites at the Aman NY. Easy pass. If I want to eat caviar I can find decent (small) tins at 20€, no need to spend 20k.
Well written review, but not my type of traveling (or people). For 20k one could garner an extremely nice private cultural or adventurous retreat in much more special places.
Great review but the experience itself is a hard pass 🙂
What an excellent and detailed review! Thank you Pierre.
Please tell me i'm not the only one who kept googling various names of food, drinks etc. Those whisky prices made my jaw drop - I'll collect it after i post this.
Now, i could possibly spend as much time as possible on a plane but not on water. Not the biggest fan or seas or oceans. My longest stay was taking a boat out to the great Barrier reef in Australia and it was about 2hrs long.
But really this one of the most memorable and fascinating reviews. But man is this bloody expensive.
That was a fantastic review… thorough, articulate, and very honest. Thank you Pierre.
After learning about all the impressive inclusions, I’m sort of shocked to come away thinking that there is actually value to be found in those high prices.
The main pause for me is that the clientele as described does not sound too appealing, however this might be a great splurge trip for us, since we are based in Italy now. Merci!
Excellent review, very thorough. Ben has competition lol.
Nice to read a review on par with Ben’s typical quality, but with different voice. Hopefully more of these come to the main feed!
You can find all the other Reader Stories here: https://onemileatatime.com/community-stories/ They are now also posted on the main feed, but with a slight delay, it seems.
Fantastic and fascinating review, you did a really great job, especially with conveying the general vibe, merci! The boat does look really stunning, and the food/beverage game looks very strong. The free flowing caviar and La Grande Dame is nice :).
I also really appreciate your description of what the crowd is like on a boat like that, I've always wondered. Even if I decided to splurge for such an experience, this would be a big turn off so it's nice to have that confirmed. I would feel completely out of place among those folks (granted this is exactly who the target audience here for these uber luxury cruises so that would be on me hah).
Well done!
Love the writing style and pictures
I'll echo others in saying what a great and thorough review this was. This is what I would have expected from Ben's Four Seasons cruise trip, which retailed for a similar nightly rate ($35k for 7 nights vs. 22.5k Euros for 4 nights), but this trip appeared better in every way - smaller (more exclusive, private) ship with about half the number of suites, better service, better food, with almost everything (free-flowing champagne! caviar!) included. Despite none of the other guests you approached having taken a commercial cruise, this inclusive model seems more typical of other luxury cruise lines than Four Seasons' model. Maybe it's just my reading between the lines, but Ben's Four Seasons review seems to describe the typical customer (or at least the customer FS Yachts is targeting) as only expecting standard hotel inclusions at sea - so only breakfast. But many of the Orient customers had experience chartering their own yachts - while usually not exactly "inclusive" (you pay for provisions as part of the charter), these charter guests would probably be used to dining and drinking on-demand without signing a bill every time.
So just based on these two reviews, The Orient experience appears closer to either "typical" luxury cruising (though at the very top end of the market) or chartering your own vessel, whereas the Four Seasons experience appears closer to just a hotel at sea. So the FS model seems like a winner, as long as those FS customers never learn about these other boat-based trip options.
Lovely review Pierre, thank you. Hope to read more from you in the future. The biggest disappointment is probably that pool, it looks really small for a boat this big. I've seen on a YouTube review a lap pool hidden under the sail mast but it feels even stranger, completely enclosed by walls on every side. Also, I love the proper super yacht tender, more classy than the lift raft looking things you find on the other boats.
Cocoa-coloured sunbeds look cool, but they heat up like a hot chocolate in the sunshine.
What the hell! it took me 5 minutes to get to the comments. too many pictures!
great review- would follow the hell out of your blog if you started one.
Interesting how these luxury cruise options are priced. From my amateur POV Ritz Carlton seems great if you want an entry price point and good experience based on Bens review. What I don't get is why anyone would choose FS over Orient at similar price points when FS nickel and dimes you? Orient seems like a top notch experience if you want to pay the top notch price
Really enjoyed this review. Hopefully you'll do more!