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Built by cruise lovers, for cruise lovers, Silver Moon is the epitome of 21st-century luxury travel.
Building on the phenomenal success of Silver Muse, Silver Moon mirrors her sister ship and establishes a new era of Silversea. At 40,700 gross tons and with capacity to accommodate 596 passengers on board, Silver Moon maintains the small-ship intimacy and spacious all-suite accommodation that are the hallmarks of the Silversea experience. Silver Moon also features the all-new Sea And Land Taste (S.A.L.T.) program —an immersive culinary concept that enables guests to travel deeper through a range of destination-based gastronomic experiences. Get ready for a new world of travel.
Cruise from Melbourne to Auckland on Silversea Silver Moon: Mostly Great, With a Few Unforced Errors My wife and I are in our 70s and we’ve been cruising long enough to know what matters and what doesn’t. We’ve done roughly twenty cruises, ocean and river, and we tend to gravitate toward the higher-end lines because, at this stage, we care far more about comfort, food, service, and the general “ease” of the experience than we do about water slides, bingo marathons, or being herded like cattle. This was our second Silversea cruise, and overall it reinforced why Silversea remains on our short list—while also reminding us that even an “ultra-luxury” brand can occasionally trip over the basics. The Bottom Line Up Front: Silver Moon is a modern, comfortable, well-designed ship that delivers excellent service and truly outstanding food. We never felt crowded, we slept well, we ate extremely well, and we were treated the way you want to be treated when you’re paying luxury prices. If you cruise primarily for dining, cabin comfort, and a generally civilized onboard experience, Silver Moon is a very strong choice. That said, there were a few annoyances that didn’t feel “ultra” or “luxury,” and a couple of them were unforced errors. None of these ruined the trip, but they were noticeable precisely because Silversea positions itself as a top-tier product. Embarkation and the Ship Itself Embarkation in Melbourne was exactly what it should be on a ship this size: seamless, quick, and stress-free. Silver Moon carries about 596 guests, and that smaller scale shows immediately. There was none of the chaotic, elbow-to-elbow vibe you get on the big ships. You show up, you get processed, and you’re on board without feeling like you’ve just participated in a municipal evacuation drill. If you’ve ever stood in a winding line of a few thousand people with overheated tempers and an airport-style sense of urgency, you’ll appreciate how civilized a 596-passenger ship can be. Silver Moon feels new and modern without being flashy. The layout is easy to learn, the public spaces are ample, and the ship never felt cramped. There are enough venues and enough places to sit that you’re not constantly hunting for a quiet corner or a decent seat. The ship also manages that tricky balance of feeling lively without feeling noisy—another benefit of size, design, and crowd distribution. While I consider it a design flaw and Silversea would consider it a design choice, there is no forward facing observation lounge with significant space on this ship. The observation library at the front of deck 11 is tiny, and that is what seems to be consistent with the design trend of newer ships, concentrating passenger quarters in the front and public spaces in the rear of ships. Regardless, Regent, Ritz, Explora and Seabourn still have newer ships with significant capacity observation spaces in the front This would not be a big deal unless you are cruising areas like fjords, where a forward view is desirable. On this trip, for cruising Milford Sound, my wife got the last front seats at 6 AM. The Cabin: A Real Strength Silversea does cabins right. Even the standard suites are large by cruise standards, and the fact that every suite has a veranda matters more than I expected on this itinerary. The extra light and private outdoor space make the cabin feel like a real room, not a cleverly engineered closet. Storage is excellent, including a walk-in closet that actually functions like a walk-in closet. Beds were comfortable. The bathroom setup worked well. Everything you touch feels solid and well maintained. Housekeeping and cabin service were also consistently excellent. Friendly, efficient, and dependable—exactly what you want. Silversea includes butler service in every suite, which in the industry can range from “useful” to “nice idea on paper.” Here it was genuinely useful. Butlers will run errands and smooth over little logistical issues, but the best part is the quiet, daily rhythm of service that makes life onboard feel easy. We received canapés daily, including caviar, and it wasn’t presented like a gimmick—it was simply part of the experience. One small example says a lot: I needed distilled water, and it was refilled as needed without me having to keep asking. That’s luxury in practice. The best service is the service you don’t have to request twice. And there were other small touches that reinforced that same point. When our room was made up in the morning, the cabin stewards routinely filled our water bottles without being asked. It’s a minor thing, but it’s also exactly the kind of detail that makes you feel taken care of without having to narrate your needs. Service: The Silversea Standard Mostly Holds Service was excellent and, after the first few days, many staff knew us by name. That’s one of those things that sounds trivial until you experience it consistently. It changes the tone of the trip. You stop feeling like a room number and start feeling like a guest. When you combine that with a crew that’s attentive without being intrusive, it creates the relaxed atmosphere that people pay for. I’ll come back to the one service-related weakness later—language proficiency—and it’s important enough that I’m not going to gloss over it. But in the overall day-to-day experience, service was a major strength. Food: This Is Where Silver Moon Shines Silversea has always had a good reputation for dining, and Silver Moon largely earns it. What impressed me is not just the quality but the variety. For a ship of this size, there is an unusually high number of dining venues, and that variety matters on any itinerary with multiple sea days or evenings aboard. The Grill, in the evening, does the “Hot Rocks” experience—essentially a cook-at-the-table concept where you cook your own steak on a heated stone. It’s fun, it’s interactive without being cheesy, and the quality was very good. You can make it as casual or as “serious” as you want, and it’s a nice change of pace from traditional dining. One unexpected highlight was at the pool grill. I’m not easily impressed by cruise-ship “burgers,” because they’re usually either dry, weirdly seasoned, or engineered to taste like nothing at all. Silver Moon was the rare exception. The cheeseburger was genuinely good in the American sense of the word: simple, satisfying, and properly put together. I honestly haven’t found a cheeseburger like that on a cruise ship in a dozen years of doing this. Silver Note is a small supper club with live entertainment and a more intimate vibe. It is also the hardest reservation on the ship, which tells you something. There’s a reason people chase it. It feels like a real venue rather than a cruise-ship approximation of one, and it’s one of those places where the combination of setting, food, and atmosphere becomes greater than the sum of its parts. The surf & Turf at Silver Note was excellent Despite it being a tough reservation, we managed to snag a second night at Silver Note, and that produced one of those moments that reminds you you’re on a luxury line. We walked in and there was a bottle of my favorite wine sitting on the table, already opened, breathing, and ready to pour. It was a pretty special bit of treatment, and it also raised the obvious question: how did they know? Maybe it was noted somewhere from a prior order, maybe our butler quietly made it happen, or maybe Silversea has a better internal memory than I do. Whatever the explanation, it felt personal, and it landed exactly the way these “little surprises” are supposed to land. Kaiseki, the Japanese restaurant, was another standout. The fact that there is a large selection of sushi and sashimi available at lunch every day, at no extra charge, is exactly the kind of “quiet luxury” detail that separates premium from luxury. You don’t feel like you’re being upsold. You feel like the ship simply offers better options as part of the fare. The Arts Café, with Illy coffee and snacks throughout the day, sounds like a minor thing until you realize how much you use it. It’s an easy, pleasant space, and good coffee matters more than cruise lines like to admit. The breakfast buffet was nothing special, but it did have a made-to-order smoothie station. Again, a small detail—but it speaks to the ship’s overall approach: give guests choices and do the basics well. The buffet also served a sumptuous seafood brunch near the end of the cruise. S.A.L.T. Kitchen emphasizes local foods and recipes, but the food was only average. We didn’t do the cooking classes, but we heard favorable comments from others. Even if you skip the classes, the venue itself delivers something different from the typical cruise “international menu” approach. The “local” wines available at the S.A.L.T. bar, however, were not great. Atlantide, the main dining room, had a large menu, and the food was quite good. I had a great steak there, even though my prior experience on multiple cruise lines is that you can’t get good beef outside the US (and Argentina). And then there is La Dame. La Dame: Worth Every Dollar La Dame is the French gourmet restaurant with a $60 per person upcharge. French fine dining is not everyone’s favorite, and if your idea of a great meal is a giant steak and a baked potato, you may not be the target audience. But for those of us who enjoy classic technique, careful service, and a dining experience that feels genuinely elevated, La Dame is the one of the best specialty restaurants we’ve encountered on any ship. That’s a big claim, but I stand by it. The food was superb, but what really made it exceptional was the combination of food and service. The pacing was perfect, the staff handled the room with confidence, and the entire experience felt like the ship was showing you what it can do when it’s trying to be great. We’ve eaten well on many ships. This was something else. If you’re on Silver Moon and you enjoy fine dining, book La Dame and don’t think twice about the surcharge. The only negative at La Dame was the overpriced wine pairing with the degustation menu. The specialty wines were simply not special. To be fair, not every venue hit that same high note. The one clear miss for us was La Terrazza, the Italian specialty restaurant. The night we ate there, the osso buco was genuinely inedible, and the tiramisu had a strange, almost chalky texture. We didn’t go back. The only reason I’m hesitant to make too much of it is that other guests raved about La Terrazza, so it’s entirely possible we just caught it on a bad night. Still, on an ultra-luxury ship, “bad night” shouldn’t mean “inedible,” and it was the one dinner that felt out of character for the overall food program. Entertainment, Enrichment, and Excursions: Fine, Not Special If food is where Silversea shines, entertainment is where it’s merely adequate. Nothing was bad, but little was memorable. That’s not a dealbreaker for us—we don’t choose a cruise for a Broadway-caliber show—but on a luxury line you do hope for a bit more originality or polish. The same general comment barely applies to shore excursions. The shore excursions, discovering and exploring new places is why most people cruise in the first place. When we booked our trip, Silversea offered one or more included excursions in every port, and more elaborate paid excursions. They have since changed that model to a credit system based on fare type. In Adelaide our travel companions booked a very pricey food/wine experience in the Barossa Valley, and they were very satisfied with everything except the cost. Meanwhile, we booked one of the “included” excursions, a bus ride to a touristy German themed town, Hahndorf, where we were left on our own. The next day, at Kangaroo Island, we went to what was advertised as a wildlife refuge, but which turned out to be a children’s petting zoo. Unacceptable. The shore excursions in New Zealand, however, were pretty good. On every cruise we’ve ever taken, with the possible exception of included excursions on a Viking ocean cruise from Venice to Istanbul, I felt shore excursions were an overpriced rip-off. Third party vendor excursions are almost always a better deal, with the important caveat that if, for some reason, the third party vendor doesn’t get you back to the ship on time, it will sail without you. For a line that advertises experience and enrichment, the “enrichment” lectures on this cruise were uneven. Some were interesting; others were not always enriching. When you’ve cruised a lot, you develop a low tolerance for lectures that sound like Wikipedia with a microphone. To put a sharper point on it, a couple who delivered a substantial portion of the “local enrichment” material came across as essentially amateurs. My guess is they were working for a free cruise, and if that’s true, they were overpaid. The content felt thin, the delivery felt informal in the wrong way, and, except in Milford Sound where they read their text, sometimes stumbling over the words, it didn’t add much to the experience. Even worse, some of the lecture topics were bizarrely disconnected from where we were. A session on NATO and ISIS might be interesting in the abstract, but it was completely irrelevant to a cruise through Australia and New Zealand. If you’re going to sell “enrichment,” give me a geologist or natural historian who can explain the formation of the New Zealand fjords, or someone who can put the local ecology and settlement history in context. That would have been genuinely enriching, and it felt like a missed opportunity on an itinerary that practically begs for better content. The Other Bumps in the Road: Annoying, and Mostly Avoidable Now for the part that kept this from being a glowing, unqualified rave. First, English language proficiency among the staff was inconsistent. Most crew members were perfectly understandable and did their jobs well. But a noticeable minority struggled if you got them off script. On an English-speaking cruise, that shouldn’t be a recurring issue, and it’s especially frustrating on a luxury line where the entire point is a smooth, effortless experience. Related to that: at minimum, Silversea should have a native English speaker as the Cruise Director on an English-language itinerary. The Cruise Director is the ship’s voice and the front-of-house manager of the onboard experience. If that role isn’t carried with confident, fluent communication, it affects the whole trip. This is not a place to cut corners. Second, the interactive TV system didn’t work properly for the first half of the cruise. That may sound like a minor complaint, but it matters because the TV system is a key interface for information, planning, and onboard convenience. When it doesn’t work, you feel it every day. Again: not catastrophic, but not what you expect. Third, a small but telling point: not having hors d’oeuvres at the reception for previous cruisers felt cheap. This is an ultra-luxury line. Repeat guests are the lifeblood of luxury cruising. A modest, well-done reception with proper hors d’oeuvres is not a major expense; it’s a signal. Not doing it sends the wrong one. Fourth, the dress code. The “no jeans after 6 PM” policy feels outdated. I understand wanting to keep standards and avoid the “theme-park ship” look. But good jeans with a jacket or a smart top can look better than plenty of alternatives people wear in the name of “formal.” It’s one of those rules that feels like it exists because it always has, not because it improves the experience in 2026. Finally, the beer selection was weak. This is not unique to Silversea; we’ve encountered it on other lines as well. But it remains a puzzle. You can have outstanding wine, excellent cocktails, and a beautiful bar program—and then treat beer as an afterthought. For many guests, especially in a world where craft beer has been mainstream for years, that feels unnecessarily behind the curve. Would I Sail Silversea Again? Yes. Absolutely. The comfortable suites, the excellent service, and the overall dining program—especially La Dame—are enough to bring us back. Silver Moon does many of the things that matter most to us exceptionally well. The ship is modern, spacious, and easy to enjoy. The staff, in general, delivers the kind of personal attention that makes cruising restful instead of tiring. But the shortcomings I’ve mentioned are real, and they’re the kind of irritations that we don’t encounter as often on a few other ultra-luxury lines such as Crystal and Ritz-Carlton. Those lines have their own quirks, but they tend to avoid certain “how did this happen?” issues that should be easily fixable at this price point. If Silversea wants to remain in the top tier, it should treat these as unforced errors and clean them up. The foundation is excellent. The ship is excellent. The food is often exceptional. With a bit more attention to the basics—communication, systems reliability, small loyalty signals, and a modernized dress approach—Silver Moon could be not just “mostly great,” but truly outstanding. As it stands, we came away satisfied, well fed, and well cared for—and that’s the core of what we want from a cruise. The bumps were annoying. The overall experience was still, very clearly, worth it.
Silversea’s suites offer one of the highest space-per-guest ratios of any luxury cruise accommodations. All Silversea suites have ocean views, and most include a private teak veranda so that you can breathe in the fresh sea air simply by stepping outside your door. And regardless of the ship or suite category, all guests will be pampered with the personalised services of an attentive butler.
For a truly personal experience, customise your suite with an abundance of thoughtful options and luxurious amenities from Bvlgari toiletries and personalised stationery to a bar with your favourite wines and liquors. Settle in with a complimentary movie or choose instead to simply watch the ocean swim by. You can even have dinner in-suite served course by course by your butler. Then, when it’s time to retire, curl up beneath Egyptian cotton linens and a fluffy duvet, with your choice of nine different pillow types. The ultimate in luxury cruise accommodations, Silversea’s suites are your home away from home.
With the importance of food in Italian culture, you would expect dining to be a high priority at Silversea. And it most assuredly is. Moreover, gastronomic excellence is a given thanks to Silversea’s partnership with the prestigious Grands Chefs Relais & Châteaux. No matter where you dine, their influence is readily apparent in the great diversity and presentation of culinary selections on board your all inclusive cruise.
Local Immersion, Lasting Impressions
Authentic Cultural Connections
Every destination tells a story — and Silversea Shore Excursions reveal these stories inviting you to venture beyond the ordinary. Enjoy privileged access to cultural treasures and natural wonders often out of reach for independent travelers. Each excursion is thoughtfully designed by experts to foster genuine connections with local communities, customs, and landscapes. From intimate small-group adventures and signature S.A.L.T. Experiences to personalized private tours, we offer diverse options to match your interests and desired level of immersion — making every moment meaningful and memorable.
The ocean views and soothing sound of the surf can be quite intoxicating at sea, so it’s not surprising that daydreaming on deck is one of the most popular pastimes. However, every Silversea all inclusive cruise also includes a considerable number of more active pursuits — some for the body, some for the mind … and some just for fun.
While on your luxury cruise, embark on a personal journey of wellness to complement your global adventures. Work out in the well-equipped Fitness Centre, take a class in circuit training or Pilates in the aerobics room, and let the sauna and steam rooms work their magic to soothe every muscle.
Silversea offers seminars ranging from aromatherapy and nutrition to how to burn fat. A holistic approach to wellness fully integrates exercise, fitness and spa therapies with health lectures and nutritious dining to help you maintain a healthy lifestyle, even while away from home.
Please note: Although Silversea accepts guests over the age of six months, there are no special programmes for children on board, and Silversea does not provide for the care, entertainment and supervision of children.
