Seabourn Quest

There were three of them, and telling them apart was a fool's errand. Seabourn Odyssey arrived in June 2009, Sojourn in June 2010, Quest in June 2011 — all three from T. Mariotti in Genoa, all three to one set of plans, all three carrying 458 guests in a little over 32,000 gross tons, all three with interiors by the same Norwegian studio. When the line called Quest "the third iteration" of the design, it was being precise rather than modest.

Then the fleet started shrinking. Odyssey's sale to Mitsui O.S.K. Lines was announced in March 2023; she finished her published Seabourn voyages on 22 August 2024, ran a farewell from Seattle to Yokohama, and was handed over on 25 September 2024. She sails today as Mitsui Ocean Fuji, marketed in Japan as that country's first all-suite cruise ship. Sojourn's sale was announced in March 2025, and she finished a 129-day world cruise on 15 May 2026 before crossing the Pacific. She is in a Nagasaki yard now, reflagged Japanese, and enters service as Mitsui Ocean Sakura on 19 September 2026.

Which leaves Quest. And the interesting thing about the way this played out is what Seabourn did next: rather than treat the survivor as the one they had not got around to selling, they spent more on her interior than they have ever spent on a single ship.

Seabourn's own release, dated 4 June 2026, calls it the most comprehensive interior update in the company's history. That is a marketing sentence, but the list underneath it is not a marketing list.

The Club was redesigned around a speakeasy idea, with a new bar, a reconfigured layout and new lighting — and since The Club is where the evening actually happens on a Seabourn ship, and where the sushi is served on this one, that is the single most consequential change aboard. Seabourn Square, the concierge-and-library space that stands in for an atrium on these ships, was reworked toward a warmer living-room feel with bistro seating. The Colonnade got new flooring, carpeting, seating and a new service line. The Restaurant, new carpet and drapery. The Observation Bar, new carpet and furnishings. New water-inspired carpeting through the atrium, corridors and stairways. Renewed teak on the main pool deck, with new sound and lighting. The spa reception redesigned, new gym equipment, an updated salon.

And in every suite category, new mattresses and new wool carpeting, with new veranda furniture in Penthouse suites and above. That last detail is the one that tells you how far down the list they went.

Quest is in the Mediterranean through November 2026, running seven-day itineraries that link Dubrovnik, Fusina for Venice, Istanbul and Athens, with back-to-backs assembling into 14- and 21-day voyages. She moves to the Caribbean from November 2026 through March 2027. In 2025 she made her maiden Alaska season — eighteen seven-day runs between Vancouver and Juneau, with a team of naturalists aboard, Helly Hansen jackets for everyone and Swarovski binoculars in the upper suites.

Here is the thing to be clear about, because older reviews will tell you otherwise. Quest is not an Antarctica ship any more. She was one: a 2013 drydock fitted her out properly for polar work — Zodiac cradles and davits, holding tanks sized for five days instead of forty-eight hours, deck heaters, a changing station aft on deck five, thermal imaging, searchlights, and captains sent on a ten-day ice-pilot course. She ran Antarctic seasons for years on that basis. But Seabourn now has two purpose-built PC6 expedition ships, and Antarctica has passed to them. Seabourn's own Antarctica pages name only Venture and Pursuit.

One exception, and it is a big one: the 2028 Cape to Cape World Cruise takes Quest back into Antarctic waters and the Chilean Fjords with an eighteen-person expedition team aboard, plus the Falklands, Easter Island and Robinson Crusoe Island. If you want this particular ship in that particular water, that voyage is how.