Editor’s note: TPG’s Erica Silverstein accepted a free trip from Silversea to attend the christening of Silver Ray. The opinions expressed below are entirely hers and weren’t subject to review by the line.
Silver Ray is a cruise ship designed to appeal to both classic and modern luxury travelers. Whether you love it or not will depend on your definition of luxury at sea and whether you can find your happy place on board.
On the old-school side of things, the ship still embraces Silversea Cruises‘ commitment to fine dining, all-inclusive beverages, a tuxedoed butler in every suite (all cabins are suites) and attentive-yet-formal service. Silver Ray’s design aesthetic is understated luxury. In most public areas and suites, the decor is elegant and rich but not cutting-edge or designed to wow. (There are a few exceptions.)
On the modern side, the ship has traded formal afternoon tea and a classic-style pool deck for restaurant menus that reflect today’s culinary trends in Italy and France, a resort-inspired sun deck with an offset pool facing the ocean and a craft cocktail bar outside a high-tech demonstration kitchen. The ship’s physical layout, which embraces light-filled spaces by placing venues and elevators along the sides of the ship rather than in the center, is revolutionary but won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.
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I was on board for five days during a preview sailing before the ship set sail on its maiden voyage, so I could not ask any actual Silversea guests how they felt about Silver Ray, though it is identical to the 2023-debuted Silver Nova. While guest demographics will vary — a weeklong summer Mediterranean cruise will always attract a different crowd from a 70-night South America voyage — my take is that the ship’s amenities can appeal to both the retiree crowd and middle-aged and even millennial affluent travelers.
You just need to know which menus to choose and which spaces to make your own.
Overview of Silver Ray Silver Ray in Cadiz, Spain. ERICA SILVERSTEIN/THE POINTS GUY
The 728-passenger, 54,700-ton Silver Ray is small by today’s megaship standards, but it’s packed with 10 restaurants and eight bars and lounges, a demonstration kitchen for cooking classes, a spa and fitness center, and two levels of sun deck with a pool and hot tub.
Fares are all-inclusive, so all drinks, most restaurants, standard Wi-Fi and crew gratuities are included in the price of your cruise. Certain fares also include airfare and port transfers; you can pick how inclusive you want to go.
The luxury cruise ship has an especially high space-to-passenger ratio. Silver Ray is about 34% bigger than Silversea’s previous class of ships — Silver Muse, Silver Moon and Silver Dawn — but it holds only about 22% more passengers. Executives claim that if every passenger during a sold-out cruise were on the pool deck, they’d still have plenty of space to themselves. Even the smallest suites are large, with huge bathrooms, walk-in closets, full living areas and plenty of space to walk around.
With 544 crew members, the ship also has a crew-to-passenger ratio of 1:1.3, which leads to a high level of service on board. Crew members make a point to learn your name and preference, and every suite is attended to by a formal butler.
What sets this ship (and its sister Silver Nova) apart from other luxury ships is what the line refers to as its asymmetrical design. That means that many key elements of the ship are offset from the center. For example, instead of putting the standard elevators in the middle of the ship with corridors to the left and right, Silver Ray has two all-glass elevator banks on the exterior of the ship, with one on the port side and the other on the starboard side. The pool is not in the middle of the sun deck, but placed on the starboard side; the infinity-style hot tub, one deck up, is on the port side. So is the ship’s smokestack — it’s not centered as it would be on every other ship you’ve sailed. All of the deck chairs are oriented toward the sides of the ship rather than facing in toward a central pool.
Combine these elements with the ship’s extensive use of glass windows, and the result is an abundance of spaces with sea views. When you’re in the pool, you’re looking out to sea or at the port where you’re docked. When you’re riding the elevator, you’re staring at the world beyond your ship.
These design changes follow from Silversea’s commitment to delivering an immersive destination experience for its passengers. Instead of cocooning in a shipboard world (like you might on some of sister cruise line Royal Caribbean’s attraction-laden cruise ships), Silver Ray encourages guests to explore the world beyond the vessel. The aim is to accomplish this predominantly with food through the line’s Sea And Land Taste program. S.A.L.T. has many elements, including hands-on cooking classes at S.A.L.T. Lab, regionally inspired meals and craft cocktails at S.A.L.T. Kitchen and S.A.L.T. Bar, and shore excursions that introduce participants not only to local flavors but to the people who produce them.
The ship was also built to be more energy efficient. Its snub-nose hull design alone reduces fuel needs by 15%. It’s a hybrid vehicle which uses liquefied natural gas power but also has batteries built in. The ship has also eliminated most single-use plastics. You won’t find disposable water bottles on board, but you will find reusable ones in your cabin, as well as bottle-filling stations throughout the ship.
Silversea executives hope that Silver Ray’s modern style will attract younger guests, but Silversea passengers are generally affluent retirees. Children are welcome, but there are no spaces dedicated to them. However, if a higher-than-normal number of kids are sailing, the ship’s activities staff will transform a small room off the tender-boarding area on Deck 2 into a play space and lead the young cruisers in games and age-appropriate activities.
Related: The best luxury cruise lines for elegance and exclusivity
What I loved about Silver Ray I stayed in the smallest suite — and it was still huge Silver Ray veranda cabin. ERICA SILVERSTEIN/THE POINTS GUY
My Deluxe Veranda Suite was not the lowest-category room, but only because of its central location. It was still the smallest-sized suite on board. Even so, it was enormous, with a whopping 357 square feet of space, including the 56-square-foot balcony. Consider that many megaship balcony cabins are around 200 square feet, and mine was nearly double that size.
The extra space was especially appreciated in the bathroom, with its wide glassed-in shower (I didn’t bang my elbows against the wall once!) and generous floor space that could easily accommodate two people getting ready at once. Both the desk and the sofa were full-sized, with plenty of space to sit or store items. A walk-in closet had all the drawer, shelving and hanging space I could need, and a separate vanity area meant I did not have to put on makeup on top of my laptop.
The ship’s design brings light into every space Observation Lounge on Silver Ray. ERICA SILVERSTEIN/THE POINTS GUY
I appreciated Silversea’s use of glass everywhere to bring views and light into spaces that don’t always have them. The sauna and spa pool in the Otium Spa have floor-to-ceiling windows for sea or port views while you relax. Thanks to an entire back wall of windows, I could watch the sunset during my Chef’s Table dinner at the S.A.L.T. Lab cooking class and dining space. Even waiting for an elevator is pleasant because you can look outside through the glass exterior walls.
I loved the views for days I could get on the pool deck. The way the pool bar is oriented, you can see through to the sea beyond no matter which side you’re sitting on. And, of course, it’s lovely to gaze out to sea when you’re floating in the pool or sitting in the hot tub. (If I come back on vacation, I would take my Kindle to the Orangerie, curl up on a plush, oversized patio chair and face the ocean while I read.) I also loved the alfresco dining and drinking spaces of the Marquee Restaurant and Dusk Bar. I didn’t want to be anywhere else when the weather was nice.
Related: 7 extremely decadent things you can do on a luxury cruise vacation
What I didn’t love about Silver Ray Navigating the ship is harder than it should be Glass elevators on Silver Ray. ERICA SILVERSTEIN/THE POINTS GUY
The asymmetric design has unintended consequences. It makes the ship more difficult to navigate than I’d expected.
The ship has a frustrating number of dead ends; often, I’d go one way around a stairwell and end up at a wall. I could never figure out which way was forward or aft, and often would walk through a bar or lounge only to realize I was going the wrong way and have to retrace my steps. (Lest you think I just have a bad sense of direction, I can tell you that I mastered the world’s largest cruise ship, Icon of the Seas, in just a few days.)
I was completely mystified about which way to turn toward my suite when I exited the elevator banks. It should have been easy because there were large photographs at each entrance, but I got confused because no matter which photo I was at, my cabin was to the right. It took a few days for me to realize that the two elevator banks are on opposite sides of the ship, not the same side as it would be in a symmetrical design with two corridors, not one, of rooms on each deck. The positioning of the elevator banks made me confused about forward and aft on other decks, as well.
Not related to the ship design but also unnecessarily confusing in cabin hallways is that the room numbers are misaligned. They do go up by twos if you’re just looking at the odd or even side of the corridor. But because numbers aren’t skipped when there’s a suite on one side of the hallway and not on the other, the cabins across from each other don’t match. For example, I was in cabin 8022 and the cabin across the hall was not 8021 but 8039. If I wasn’t paying attention and was looking at the odd-numbered side, it was easy to walk right by my cabin.
To top it all off, you can’t find deck plans on your in-cabin TV or informational tablet, nor does Silversea hand out little cards with the decks marked. You can find the layout of each floor on the wall by the elevators, but that doesn’t help you know whether you’re at the correct elevator bank for your destination on another deck.
Service was uneven Arts Cafe on Silver Ray. ERICA SILVERSTEIN/THE POINTS GUY
Service is never 100% up to speed on a shakedown cruise, but its unevenness was especially noticeable because attentive service is a hallmark of Silversea.
Every suite has a butler, and I’ve never gotten a great one on Silversea. My interactions with my butler on Silver Ray were always awkward. One morning, we had agreed he was going to set up the Otium shower experience (with candles and scented shower bombs), but I called twice to request it and he never picked up or called me back. Another time, when I was running late and asked him to pick up my laundry from the launderette, his response was passive-aggressive; first, he said he couldn’t do that for me, then said he would make an exception just this once, leaving me uncertain as to whether I’d put him on the spot somehow.
But also, I never saw him in the hallway (my room stewards on Carnival — a much less pricey line — have always been more friendly, attentive and present), whereas butlers for my friends’ suites would materialize out of nowhere to open their doors for them whenever they returned to their suite.
In addition, the reception desk staff not only did not know the answers to most of my questions but also had trouble understanding what I was asking. I imagine this would be a liability when you have demanding, paying passengers on board who will get frustrated and impatient easily.
On the other hand, sometimes the service was simply too much. At the buffet, there was always someone hovering at my elbow, asking to take my plate or escort me to my seat. Yet it took a long time for them to bring me tea or notice that my water needed refilling.
I realized that Silversea’s formal style of service might simply not be my cup of tea. I prefer the friendliness of Viking or Carnival crew members, even if they don’t provide all the services Silversea’s crew does (or is supposed to). Still, I found the service lacking compared to its reputation, and I hope the staff will be able to work the kinks out after a few more sailings.
Silver Ray cabins and suites Suite on Silver Ray. ERICA SILVERSTEIN/THE POINTS GUY
Every cabin on Silver Ray is a spacious suite with a private balcony, palatial bathroom, walk-in closet and separate sleeping and living areas. Given that the smallest suite is a generous 357 square feet (megaship cabins are commonly smaller than 200 square feet), you won’t feel cramped in any suite on the ship. That said, I toured some of the larger suites, including the top Otium suite, and while they are sizable, they don’t have the wow factor of a Royal Caribbean Loft Suite or Regent Seven Seas Cruises Regent Suite.
Unlike older Silversea ships, where there are suites on nearly every deck, Silver Ray consolidates all its guest rooms on decks 6 through 9.
I stayed in a Deluxe Veranda Suite, which is different from the Classic, Superior and Premium Veranda Suites mainly by location. The Deluxe Veranda Suites are centrally located, while the Classic and Superior are farther forward and back. The Premium suites are either midship or at the very back of the ship with wake-facing balconies.
The layout of my balcony suite is the standard cruise ship one. The bathroom is just to one side as you enter, backed up to the closet, with a sleeping area then a living area then the balcony. But Silversea enhances that basic design with its own luxury touches.
The first thing I noticed when I stepped inside was how spacious the room was. It didn’t have that tight, everything-squeezed-together feeling you sometimes get when you first enter a cruise ship cabin. The corridor from the door into the sleeping area is wide, with enough room for a mirrored vanity across from the bathroom door. Don’t get so distracted by your gorgeous face in the full-length mirror behind the vanity that you miss the mirrored doors that hide a narrow cupboard with useful shelving and a pull-out laundry hamper.
All suites on Silver Ray have a walk-in closet with both half- and full-height hanging closets, large open shelves and drawer space. In the Veranda Suites, the entrance is angled to give more space between the closet and the bed. In the closet, you’ll find thick Italian cotton terry cloth robes and slippers, an umbrella, a soft throw blanket, sewing kit, shoe mitt and lint brush. The safe is hidden in a drawer; I searched and searched for the number pad to set a code, only to discover that it lights up only when you touch the “enter” button on the lid of the safe.
The queen-sized bed, which can be split into twins, has cool soft sheets and a duvet that feels silky on my skin every time I slide into bed. Apparently, the mattresses are custom-made for Silversea.
Ask your butler to show you the pillow menu, which is not a piece of paper but a box of mini pillows; you can choose from a selection of five down, hypoallergenic and memory foam pillow options. (Honestly, they were all nice and I’m not sure I could tell the difference.) You can even ask for an extra-soft mattress to replace the standard one.
The bed is flanked by marble-topped nightstands with three open shelves, bedside lamps and reading lights, and a U.S. 110-volt, European 220-volt, USB-A and USB-C plug on each side. A phone is set on one of the nightstands.
The living area is separated from the sleeping area by a curtain you can pull across should you have a third guest sleeping on a sofabed. The sofa can fit at least three people and has a movable ottoman to seat a fourth or to prop your feet on. A marble-topped table is wide enough for in-room dining and is set with real orchids and a basket of fresh fruit.
Across from the sofa, the desk area, also marble-topped, is wide. Here, you’ll find a phone, more outlets (U.S., European and USB) and a tablet with ship information and settings for your suite’s lighting. My butler would leave the tablet on my bed at night to indicate tomorrow’s schedule was now available; call me old school but I miss the paper newsletters.
The desk has four drawers, one with divided sections and another with leather padding to protect your delicate belongings. A minifridge is stocked with soda, beer and water, and you can request to have your favorite drinks added. (You could also ask for a bottle of complimentary liquor or wine from your butler, but it won’t be set up for you when you arrive.)
Above the desk is a large TV that can swivel to orient toward the bed or toward the couch. In addition to live TV and a large movie selection, it has interactive elements for viewing your onboard bill, dinner and shore excursion reservations, messages and other ship information. Additional shelving includes a cabinet with a bottle opener-corkscrew and glassware.
My 56-square-foot balcony had two upright metal-and-mesh chairs and a small round drinks table that didn’t strike me as overly luxurious.
Balcony of Deluxe Veranda Suite on Silver Ray. ERICA SILVERSTEIN/THE POINTS GUY
My bathroom was huge; it was bigger than my master bathroom at home (which, notably, is small). It has a spacious glassed-in shower with a rain showerhead and wand; select Veranda Suites across categories come with bathtubs. The bench in the shower is a nice touch for storing toiletries, or for shaving or washing while seated.
In the shower, you’ll find a clothesline and full-size bottles of Silversea’s own Otium brand of shampoo, conditioner and body wash. I have curly hair and never use cruise ship-provided hair products, but know that you can request high-end Bulgari or allergen-free Sebamed toiletries from your butler if you prefer those brands.
The long marble-topped bathroom vanity has a wide sink with two faucets (instead of two separate sinks), two deep drawers with sliding dividers (one contains the hair dryer) and four glass shelves. The bathroom is stocked with bar soap, Otium body lotion and liquid soap, makeup remover pads and wipes, cotton buds, a loofah bath pad and shower cap. The outlet in the bathroom is for shavers only. Two hooks and a full-length mirror are set on the back of the door, so if you hang your towel up, you can no longer check your reflection.
As I said, all suites come with a butler to service them, as well as a..