golfgirls

The Canopy Hilton in city Centre is far superior to the Hilton Regent(Nordica?) often includes.  Canopy is perfectly located for walking to great restaurants, Opera house, downtown, etc.  We are taking the hotel credit and staying there in July on points, hotel pricey otherwise.  

Interesting that the name of the web site was blocked out!  Started with sea. Ended with scanner.  Hope that works.  

Regent website is not particularly user friendly to find all of the available suites in a specific category.  We used to use *****.com to see what is available but now that website seemingly has changed to book suites vs. seeing what is available.  
 

Any suggestions for a website to see what the available inventory is?  
 

thanks in advance

We will be on the Explorer for Christmas this year as well.  We have sailed on Regent over the holidays for many years.  The ship will be decorated beautifully with many trees decorated with different themes, gingerbread houses and last year there was a very creative competition between the various departments on the ship for best decoration.  They did an incredible job.  We also usually have a door decorating contest amongst the guests. 
 

As I recall, there has been more activity on Christmas Eve than on Christmas Day itself. Typically beautiful Carol singing at cocktail hour and a lovely dinner - well that happens every night.  They do a lovely job.  We would typically do a traditional dinner in Compass Rose both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.  
 

Then like magic, the trees will all be changed shortly thereafter to a New Year’s theme.  The party on New Year’s is fantastic.  I am hoping it will be out on the deck as it was last year.  A definite forever memory. 
 

Bottom line is, it will all be just lovely. 

Thanks Aloha 1.  I see that you are from the Villages…we are heading there in a couple of days.  Small world indeed.  

Ok a few questions, not earth shattering but I like to be prepared.  Are there any nice French white wines being served on the Explorer at present?   Chardonnay, Chablis, Sancerre?  We have been on Mariner and Navigator in the last 6 months and were disappointed that there were little to no options on that front.  Did that ruin our cruises, of course not but I sure would prefer those options…especially for a 73 night sojourn.  Just wondering.  
 

Would also appreciate knowing who the senior staff onboard is at present, Captain, GM, CD, Head Sommelier, etc.  

Thanks and cheers!  

Chartreuse is my pick for my birthday this year.  The beet salad and Dover sole are fantastic.  Nice to have options!  

Not sure how many days you have left on your cruise but please ask for Mukesh’s section next time you dine in CR.  He is outstanding and if Cyrel is still the sommelier working with him, you will be very happy campers.  We too were on the Copenhagen to Amsterdam leg and were spoiled rotten in terms of service.  Can’t understand why you are having issues but if you can, please try this section.   Hope it works for you.  

Well we haven’t quite made it to Copenhagen yet, now in Riga, Latvia.  Should get to Copenhagen late tonight.   All reports of airport travails are true BUT our Air Tags show that luggage has made it to Riga after a cancelled flight from Munich to Copenhagen.   So far so good on that front.  

So looking forward to this great itinerary and of course all of the Regent pampering….See you at the Pool Bar on Saturday!  Pat and Marg.  

????

Perhaps we were able to book the return because we booked the outbound at the 270 day threshold.  Not sure of all the ins and outs of flight bookings.  

Yes they did🙂.  I think that is the norm when combined with a biz class transatlantic, at least in our experience, though not guaranteed.  

United to San Francisco and San Fran to Orlando.  

I just finished working with Regent Air to confirm flights for our Spice Route cruise in October.  I did lots of research ahead of time and in between my two calls with two different agents.   The return from Auckland was relatively easy but flying from Orlando to Istanbul proved to be a challenge in terms of ensuring adequate times between flights, seats, carriers. Etc.   Thankfully the Regent Air folks were patient and we persevered to find a route that gave me hopefully stress free connections and were within the Regent ‘contract’.   A nice outcome but it was certainly some work by all three of us.  Kudos to Mikey and Carmen for their help! 

22 hours ago, florida23 said:

Hi all, I appreciate all of the information on the Explorer. Love reading the reviews of the dining, entertainment and experiences. We look forward to more as you continue. My wife and I are joining the ship in Miami on Feb. 4th for an 11-day Caribbean Cruise. We have suite 1000. We are long time Norwegian cruisers, but this will be the first on Regent and are really looking forward to it. 

So glad you are looking forward you your first Regent cruise, you will love it!   One note about room 1000. It is a lovely room with a great balcony and a handy location.  It is located just outside the entrance to the officers suites and the bridge.  If noise bothers you, the door to the entrance forward makes a LOT of noise all hours of the day and night.  Good news is that there should be lots of alternatives should you find this a problem and if you do, ask to be moved.  We did that on the Christmas sailing and it worked out beautifully.   You might not have a problem at all, we have friends that always pick that room as they love it.  Just wanted to share our experience and let you know that there are options.  

Mike, I like the new look.  One minor suggestion.  When selecting View Details, it would be nice to see in that page the cost of different suites in that category.  Eg. Pricing for each of Penthouse A, B, C instead of Pricing From.   I know real estate is precious but I think that would be helpful.  
 

I hope the next area that you focus on is the list of available suites.   Frankly I go to other TA web sites to see Regent’s suite availability quickly and easily.  The Plan my cruise section has become a bit worse lately, in my opinion.  
 

thanks.  I know it is impossible to please everyone!   
 

I attended a Regent presentation hosted by Virtuoso and I am sure it was mentioned there that the menus had been revamped as one of the many activities that took place durning the Covid break to improve the Regent experience.  Might not have been a video.  
 

We will find out for ourselves a month from today🤞.   

The Regent videos promoting their return to sailing (yeah!) say that there are new menus that have been developed for the restaurants.  Can anyone post any of them as I don’t believe they have been updated on the website.  Thanks!  

It is unfortunate that Lew you have had issues with Chase re: insurance.  Once I submitted the correct documents (a boo boo or two on my end), the reimbursement experience was fantastic. We were well looked after 2 years ago when we couldn’t go on the Mariner to the Amazon for Christmas due to my health issue.  Looking forward to a ‘redo’ in 2023…and some other cruises before then!

Got it, many thanks.   

Could someone please remind me how to generate a PDF with all of the shore excursion options for a given cruise.  We have Grand Voyage excursions to be booked coming up and it is too painful to look port by port.   Thanks!   

Too many choices to think of.   My fav would be lamb chops at Prime 7(potato gratin anywhere!) and Pat’s would be the ribs at Pacific Rim or  lobster tempura.  I have to admit that we haven’t been big fans of Chartreuse but are going to really try it again next cruise.  OMG, thinking about this, I could give a list of at least 20 favourites for each of us….we really love Sette Mari too…but really the most important part of the ‘favs’ is the servers and sommeliers who make it so great.  
 

Yes an unacceptable response as these cruises are still advertised at par until June 30th.  I agree 100% that you need to find a great TA to fight for you but in this circumstance, also agree that a request for escalation to a more senior staffer should also resolve the situation.  The ongoing total misses in regards to customer service experiences continue.  Time for a Regeny to circle the wagons and figure out what the heck they are doing from a customer perspective.  Randall are you listening?

We finally have our suite sorted out after a lot of back and forth between our TA and Regent.  Ok with the outcome but very unhappy with the overall experience.  Yes I am sympathetic to the challenges of every business coming out of🤞this nightmare. However, wouldn’t you think that Regent would have done some ‘mock’ mapping of suites on Mariner to Explorer? Of course the suites don’t match, so how was that to be handled?  Was a policy established or was it a ‘who’s who’ decision?  Why wasn’t the decision making process communicated to TA’s so that they could convey the info to clients?  Given that there is an incredible demand for cruise bookings and the corresponding support that those bookings require, why would a company be short staffed when deposit $ are rolling in?  Executive comp should be $0 bonuses for next year in my book, but I am sure they will be paid at record levels.  This could have all been a seamless and positive experience.  We should be happy to be sailing and not fussed about the logistics.  Regent, you need to hire some people from a company such as Amex who know how to delight customers versus piss them off!