jeb_bud

Checked luggage.

Same thing May 8-14. Maybe a lot of work to do this spring?

I bring along a bubble-wrap wine carrier for that very purpose.

Paying with OBC is automatic. If you select a Regent Choice excursion and you have enough OBC to pay for it Regent just does it. As I recall you need to enter your CC information to pay by card, although my memory is a little vague on that point. As rallydave said it’s best to check out every so often while selecting excursions. I do it every few free excursions and after every paid excursion.

The list of spreadsheets is in Post #1 at the top of the first page of this thread. Click the double left arrow to the left of “PREV” on the page list.

The Regent website doesn’t show all available cabins unless the ship is nearly full. They show six or seven cabins for each search. You can get more data by selecting decks and port/starboard but if there are more than six rooms available in any category you won’t get a full count.

Dave, I think maybe you don’t understand how Regent brochures are organized. At the back of the brochure is the contract, which is the legal document with the terms of the cruise. The front of the brochure is marketing hyperbole, not actually legally binding.

I won’t speculate on future promotions but I will note that the cost of canceling a booking more than 121 days before departure is only $100 per person, which can actually be applied to another booking. If you know when you would go but are not certain if you will be able to, you are only risking $200 to book it now and locking in a price you are comfortable with. If the deal gets better later I have found Regent willing to apply the new deal to my existing booking.

I NEED my service horse, and he can’t function properly without his comfort pig so…

We’re you generally happy with the itineraries Regent assigned?

You can do that already simply by booking a cruise with Oceania or any of a number of other cruise lines. 😉

My understanding is that if you don’t deviate Regent Air doesn’t think about you until the 75 day point, then they look at contracted flights available and cobble together an itinerary. Maybe luck of the draw gives you a perfect routing, maybe not.

You can use ITA Matrix to get the best answer to your specific situation but as a general rule SFO will be your best bet. back in 2019 we flew SFO to BCN on United with a connection in Newark. That gave us first class on the first leg in addition to the business class into Barcelona. It was also the only way to get into Barcelona early enough to do some touristing on the same day we arrived.

We’re booked on the Athens to Istanbul cruise starting May 14. I was just looking at Voyager’s schedule and the cruise before ours arrives in Athens May 8. In my fantasy world she’s in dry dock being renovated or having Starlink installed. Does anybody know what’s actually going to happen?

We received an email from Regent a few weeks ago giving us a choice of receiving the full package or just the paperwork and bag tags. We have plenty of bags and folders so we requested the minimalist list. We should find out what they send in a couple of weeks.

The letter from Regent focuses on phone calls. I infer that email communication is still free. If you can exercise patience you should be able to negotiate without incurring the extra fee.

If you decide to fly out of Rochester deviating is especially important. If you get the same airline for the domestic and international flights you will likely be in first class for the domestic legs. Otherwise your domestic legs will be coach.

The ship sails at 10:00pm. All aboard time is probably around 9:00pm so in a perfect world 2:50 is probably fine. If this year is any guide February is far from perfect for air travel. We are retired and have the time so our policy is to always arrive at least the day before embarkation so if Murphy is working overtime we can still make it on time.

I got my prescription and filled it two weeks ago. No charge.

This month Paxlovid became eligible for prescription without first testing positive. Here in the US it is “free” for us old folks. On our last cruise I tested positive and a course of Paxlovid cost $800. It took over six months and a lot of communication for our travel insurance to reimburse. Having a box of Paxlovid on hand takes one bit of anxiety out of my cruise experience. An easy decision for me.

Of course you could get away with it. The waiter might complain or try to shame you into tipping, but you wouldn’t get arrested 😉. Bearing in mind that waitstaff are underpaid I tip, but service quality determines the amount. Tipping 20% for a three-step delivery sounds high.

What is AI?

Which west coast airport will you be departing g from?

Thanks for the review and the objective observations. Fortunately for us most of your negative experiences were things we don’t care about. We generally dine early and don’t spend time at the pool. Based on your experience I think we’ll make sure to continue that way. I empathize with your sliding door issues. Our last cruise was on Splendor in 2022 in a Penthouse. Both doors were very hard to open. Restaurant service was generally fine but on average not quite as good as our previous cruises. We’ll be on Voyager in May. Hopefully as we exit the COVID era service will get back to normal.

In a classic case of YMMV, we are also booked on a fall 2023 cruise and last week asked our TA to check out the 2-cat upgrade, 20% discount and $1000 OBC. She got us a $2000 price drop plus the OBC. You might have received a better deal when you initially booked your cruise than we did.