Seabourn Encore

Seabourn Encore is the first of the two largest ships the line has ever built. Fincantieri launched her at Marghera in March 2016, handed her over on the last day of November, and she carried her first guests in January 2017. Her sister Seabourn Ovation followed sixteen months later. What separates the two now is deployment: Encore has been moved to the other side of the world.

What the extra deck bought

Seabourn had been building the 32,000-ton Odyssey class for seven years when Encore appeared at a little over 40,000 tons. The gain went almost entirely into accommodation. She carries six hundred guests against the older ships’ four hundred and fifty-odd, on ten decks a guest can reach rather than nine, and, the change that matters most day to day, every one of her suites has a veranda. On the Odyssey class a block of them does not. Adam Tihany did the interiors, and the result is lighter and less clubby than the ships that came before her.

She is still a small ship by the standards of anything else on this site. Six hundred guests is about a tenth of what the largest hulls here carry, and the consequences of that (the service, the absence of lines, the fare that already includes the wine) are the same as on Ovation and are set out on her page.

What is actually aboard

Five rooms and a coffee bar, which is the whole of the food operation. The Restaurant sits on deck four; The Colonnade and the open-air Patio share deck nine with the pool; a small sushi restaurant and Solis are on deck eight. Solis is the Mediterranean room Seabourn rolled out across the fleet from 2024, and it sits where The Grill by Thomas Keller used to be; the current class deck plan no longer lists the Grill at all. None of the five carries a cover charge.

The rest of the ship is deliberately unambitious. One Grand Salon that seats everyone, a small casino, a card room, two shops. The one genuinely exclusive space is The Retreat on deck twelve, a ring of private cabanas around a whirlpool, and it costs extra, the only place aboard where the all-inclusive fare stops. Deck three carries the marina: a platform that drops from the stern in calm water so guests can swim, kayak and paddleboard off the ship itself.

Alaska, and then Japan

Encore spent her first eight years in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Gulf. She made her first call on the continental United States in April 2025, in California, and in May 2026 she opened her first Alaska season: seventeen seven-day voyages and one of eight days, running until September between Vancouver and Juneau, with Glacier Bay, Ketchikan, Alert Bay and the Inian Islands on the card.

The rest of her year is Asia, and there is more of it than there is Alaska. Tokyo is now her single busiest homeport, with Hong Kong behind it, and the Japan and Southeast Asia itineraries run longer than the Alaska weeks; two weeks is the median, and the schedule stretches to voyages of seven and eight weeks that string the region together. In practical terms she is a Pacific ship with a summer job in the north.

Who she suits

Couples and solo travelers who want a small ship in places usually served by large ones. In Alaska that is the real argument for her: at 690 feet she takes narrow water and small harbors that the 3,000-berth ships cannot, and the Glacier Bay permit is worth as much on a ship of six hundred as on one of four thousand.

She does not suit families; there is no children’s program and effectively nothing laid on for anyone under sixteen. She does not suit anyone who wants a theater, a water park or a second production show; the evening is a small ensemble in the Grand Salon and a lecturer during the day. And she is expensive in a way that a headline price comparison will understate in both directions: the fare covers drinks, gratuities and in-suite dining, but it will still not be the cheapest week you can buy in Alaska, and it is not close.