Mariner - Vancouver to Anchorage June 15-22

Getting ready. View from our room

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Bon Voyage! We're scarcely back, and I wouldn't mind being right there again.

Love Alaska cruise!

Tina, Fair Winds and Following Seas, have a terrific Alaska cruise.

Tina,

Hope you and your Mom have a great trip and a good lunch!

Peggy

Hey Tina, have a great cruise! Hope your embarkation is smooth!

We enjoyed our first evening very much. Unpacked in the afternoon in time for muster and joined a couple for dinner. Service in Compass Rose was fantastic. Food was just ok, likely a function of what we chose. Being back cruising after opting out for a year is amazing. I never realized how much I missed it and this part of the world is amazing.

Attended Terry Breen's lecture this morning. As always, it was great.

Rested my brain after Terry Breen's lecture (aka nap). It is a cold and rainy day. Lunch was a buffet of international stews. They featured traditional beef stew, Indian lentil stew, lamb stew, Thai chicken curry stew, curry beef stew, fish stew....I'm sure there were more.

Then came up to the Observation Lounge. Mom decided to attend the relexology lecture in the lounge. I gave it a miss after hearing some of the tougher questions being asked...Who has plantar fascitis? Who knows what sciatica means? Needless to say I did not need another nap so decided to sit on the other side of the room and compose this post.

The email is the fastest I have ever experienced. There are lots of new staff onboard but generally very lovely.

Tall ship, have a wonderful cruise!

Nice to hear the email is fast! Hope the weather improves. Unfortunately I know what both sciatica and plantar fasciitis is, lol! Sounds like something I would have enjoyed.

How does the ship look? I know it's not going to get a refurb until next spring, but hoping it's still in fairly good shape.

Am missing your reports, Tallship. Hope everything is OK and you are having too good a time to post.

Sorry for the silence. I will post more tomorrow. The internet was just too hit and miss and there were full days without satellite connection (Ketchikan, Skagway, Sitka, etc)

Tina,

Glad all is well

Peggy

Thx for your patience. We got back home on Thursday ....almost 30 hours after departing. It was a very long way home. Next time I think I would definitely book a 14 day round trip.

I will share my thoughts a little backwards as that is how I remember things. We booked ACT Transportation to Anchorage Airport. It was very easy (around $75 pp). They arrived at the Seward Terminal at around 7:40 am and we departed at around 8:35 as we were waiting on one couple to board. About two hour into the trip we stopped at a Wildlife Park where we saw reindeer, wolves, black bears, etc. It was a lot of fun and as is usual we had one straggler that held us up 15 minutes past our agreed upon meet-up time. We did get to the airport a little after noon and had no problems making our flight to Vancouver. Security was a breeze with TSA precheck.

The day before we disembarked we had a sea day and they had a Gold, Platinum, Titanium event - viewing of Hubbard Glacier. I was told that there were 22 Gold and 1 Titanium onboard this cruise. They had a lot of wonderful breakfast items beautifully presented as well as lots of hot beverages, specialty coffees, etc. Attended well by the senior officers and staff. We also had a special order Indian meal that day for lunch. So good - lots of variety.

PORTS -

SITKA - The day prior we were in Sitka. We did the Sea Otter and Wildlife Quest. We saw lots of eagles, tern, otters, and a single gray whale that was huge but only raised its back a little from time to time. I have to say that this was the roughest excursion I have been on in multiple years of doing this. The weather was bad (raining and cold) and the water rough. A kid got sick and a few of us went outside so as not to watch them clean up the mess.

They ran a shuttle from downtown Sitka back to the boat. Several of us were surprised as we had been picked up directly from the boat and thought that they would drop us off there as well but they itold us that Regent Destination Staff insisted everyone wanted to be dropped off downtown so that is what they did and we walked a bit to the bus and boarded that to return to the ship.

SKAGWAY - We did the train ride excursion. Great weather but I felt this could be much shorter. Also the gangway was located on Deck 4 which meant that anyone (even those with a handicap) had to someone walk up a very steep incline. We managed but it was hard on my mom to do this.

JUNEAU - This is a great port. We did the afternoon whale watching excursion. Has to rate as one of the top two whale watching trips I have done. We saw about 15 orcas and several humpbacks. The orcas danced for us and were so playful. The weather was sunny, cool and crisp. Just a perfect day. They did not offer Tracy Arm in this port. More on that below.

KETCHIKAN - This is also such a fun port. We did the Cruise George Inlet and Crab Feast. The boat ride was so so and fairly cold but it ended with a fantastic crab feast. The crab was delicious - best I had on the trip. We shared the dining room with cruisers from two of the Holland America ships in port that day. I caught a glimpse of someone wearing a "Build a Wall, Trump 2016" shirt...happy to be living in Canada

SEA DAY - The first day was a sea day and quite pleasant.

CABIN - Our cabin was well maintained and I have to seriously say I only saw our stewards once during the cruise.

TEA and TRIVIA - Really enjoyed this but the questions were seriously very hard a lot of days. That is OK. We won twice, came in second once and played a total of 5 times. The Horizon Lounge was seriously packed and it was often hard to get a seat after 3:45 pm. The chocoholic tea was one of the best I have ever seen. I will add some pics to another post. The pastry chef onboard is one of the best we have ever experienced on a cruise.

ENTERTAINMENT - We did not go to any shows...just too tired. We did go to the Krew Kapers - So good. This show just keeps getting better and better over the years.

REGENT REWARDS GAMES - I guess I am skilled at Baggo. Kind of strange to be discovering I have this skill so late in life but I really had a lot of fun and went to play whenever I was onboard. Met a lot of nice people playing the games.

SHOPPING - Did not do any. This is the first cruise in over 10 years of cruising Radisson/Regent that we did not have any onboard/shipboard credit - we booked so late and at such a great price that we traveled "cruise only"....I have to say that this was truly liberating. No more visiting the shop daily to find those great bargains (not) or stylish outfits (not) or buying myself yet another Regent jacket, hat, etc.

DINING - We had great meals in Compass Rose made even more great by our regular server Hendro. He was terrific and by the second night we knew we could dine in under an hour or stretch it out longer. He took cues from us and delivered fantastically.

Our meal in Prime 7 was great as well. We were served by Shah who was very good. The crab was disappointing as it had a bit of a smell (they did offer to change it out but I was already very full) but all in all our meal was very well done. We had our favorites here - Onion soup - ask for more broth, less bread; Halibut; Filet; Truffle Fries and Dulce de Lece cake.

We cancelled our reservation in Signatures and did not dine in Sette Mari although we wanted to. Most of our disappointments in dining came from our experiences in La Veranda at Breakfast. There was only one day that our eggs were cooked as we wanted - on the morning of Day 2. After that, this was a struggle. We also noted a significant number of new staff (some great such as Gennaro, others not so great who I will not name) but I also noted a few lapses in hygeine here and that concerned me. The guy at the Pool Grill Breakfast in the morning also had to be the unfriendliest person...I never went back for fresh squeezed juice after the first day.

Lunches were good - they had wonderful fare at the Pool Grill - Stew medley, stir-fry noodles, salmon-bake, etc.

CHILDREN - I was told there were approx. 70 children and teenagers on the cruise. The children were great, the teenagers were not as well behaved - feet on furniture, eating off the buffet with their fingers instead of tongs, etc. "It is summer, It is Alaska"...enough said on this topic.

BEST PART OF THE CRUISE - spending time with my Mom and re-experiencing the Regent Experience after a break for a year. A great example of this is the care and kindness everyone showed to my Mom. In particular, a big shout out to a lovely Security Officer named Ramesh who greeted her by name each day and took the time to ask about her day. I loved seeing staff we had sailed with before- their friendly, smiling faces make for very happy cruisers.

It is not just one thing that makes a cruise great but rather the combination of many small things that come together well to make magic happen. We had a great cruise and cannot wait to be back cruising on Regent again.

Lovely report, tallship. So glad you and your mom enjoyed the cruise.

DESTINATION DESK - ok but not overly great. Two things...advance info about getting on/off the ship in places with steep inclines would have been great. The other was the cancellation of the Tracey Arm excursion. When I looked for this online it was not listed so I assumed it was sold out. I guess Regent forgot to load it into their system and it never appeared as an excursion offering. I checked the day before to see if there were any spots left only to be told that it had been cancelled due to low uptake. I have been three times but my mom hadn't ...some communication with passengers prior to cancelling either in Passages or some other means would have been pro-active and appreciated.

Thanks so much for your report - very enlightening!

Thanks, tall ship for your great report. always amazes me that we can be on the same ship with different experiences...and in this case...it seems that we were both on the whales and sea otter quest, on the same excursion, and lucky for me I missed a sick kid or any sick people! Whew! Yes, the seas were choppy, but we were all ok. So pleased that you and your Mom enjoyed....yes, it was a really fun trip!!

Such a good report! Really enjoyed reading it. Glad you and your Mom had a great time!

Hi Tina,

Glad the trip went well for you and your Mom!

Peggy

Excellent review! We were on the Mariner for this year's South America Grand Voyage plus the next 2 segments....we were fortunate to have Hendro as our waiter the entire time. He was on our '15 Grand Voyage from Tokyo to Southampton on the Voyager so we were thrilled to see he was on the Mariner this time around. Was not a problem to get his section each night, but if there were no open tables we simply relaxed with another martini 🍸 before dinner.

Thanks for the detailed report - we'll be taking my mother next April (Med, not Alaska) and it's good to hear that the crew tried to make her trip a little extra special. This'll be my mom's first cruise, and I want her to see why we love Regent so much.

Thanks everyone. A tip for traveling with elderly parents was to adjust my expectations and really let her dictate our schedule with no pressure to do anything.

It was good to read your report. We are very glad to hear that your Mom is still up to traveling.

Is it appropriate to ask if last minute cruise only deal was throug Regent or a travel agency? I am never sure of the protocol and I lost your email address.

Ann

Thanks everyone. A tip for traveling with elderly parents was to adjust my expectations and really let her dictate our schedule with no pressure to do anything.

Good point...maybe I should rethink signing mom up for the mountain biking, parasailing, cliff-diving, zipling, and scuba classes...

:eek: :D