SWFLAOK

If I had 400 nights onboard, I would expect to be seated before someone who was on their first cruise and had not made reservations. That's why Regent has a loyalty program to reward repeat customers We're only gold members after 6 cruises and never expect to make it to 400 nights. Unless we've made reservations in advance, we eat at Compass Rose and always enjoy enough of the meal to overfill us.

Since this seems aimed at me, the service and lunch at the Pool Grill was either bad or terrible every day of our 24 night cruise, including the day we boarded Splendor in September this year. Because of that we never considered eating there for dinner. Service at lunch was very bad, and it was impossible to order drinks or something from lunch and reliably receive it. We often had to flag down servers numerous times and ask about our order. Sometimes this helped, but often we had to go to the buffet items which were never very good, and never received anything to drink with our lunch, not even water or iced tea. Our dinners, including our first night in Compass Rose were all very good or excellent, so why would we want to eat dinner there.? Did you try the lunch at the Pool Grill, or did you just go there for dinner? In the past, we haven't had poor service at the Pool Grill, but that was totally changed on our first Splendor cruise. We did find our least favorite female bartender from past cruises on Regent, was often at the pool bar. She wasn't working there, but was distracting those who were, rather than being at the bar where she was supposed to be working (which was often "open" but with no bar tender visible). Perhaps she was trying to find the liquor she was out of at her bar by "borrowing" it from the pool bar. Our future cruises are not on Splendor, so I hope she stays where she is.

If I want to miss all activities onboard the next day, ordering very spicy food would be the way to do it. Some of us can only eat mildly spicy food, and a few not spicy at all, and don't want to take a chance on missing a day while onboard.

Since informal on Silversea means jacket required at most restaurants, and I believe all bars in the evening, my husband and brother did not agree with Silversea's definition of informal. They do, however, now own some nice informal jackets. I don't remember the pool bar being open after dinner, and the "hot rocks" didn't work for us for dinner so it was one and done on that cruise and any future ones.

We always eat as early as possible for dinner since we are alao early risers, and ready for dinner as soon it's available. We found that wearing a jacket to dinner and putting it on the back of the chair in a warm environment worked for men. The dress code for women was easy to follow. We would like to see Silversea have a more relaxed dress code, We don'r want to see the restauranrs filled with people in shorts, T shirrs, sneakers and flip flops for dinner. but dinner jackets should only be expected on in the upscale restaurants, and not required in the bars after dinner.

We've done quite a few cruises on Regent, and it's our favorite cruise line, with a 2 week cruise booked in 2023, and a 20 day cruise in 2024. We always enjoy the Compass Rose for our dinner since there are so many choices that change each night, and the specialty restaurants are free. We did however think that the specialty restaurants on the larger ships, such as Splendor, are too large to feel special with large tables of loud diners, and slower service. We didn't bother booking any extra dinners at the specialty restaurants on our last B to B cruises, but we did go for lunch a few times when the specialty restaurants were open for lunch (check your daily Passages for info). We've only cruised once on Silversea, roundtrip from Barbados to Manaus. We enjoyed it the cruise, and the food and service were excellent. We loved the food and service at La Dame, and ate there several times. The dress code, however, is more formal than we liked. I don't think anyone wants to wear a jacket to dinner every night. The pool grill is more casual, but I hated the smell of the hot rocks, with a lot of smoke from it, and I had no desire to cook on it. On one of our formal nights, we came close to our requirements with navy jacket and pants that looked like a suit, and a fancier dress with nylons and heels. But on the second formal night we ordered room service. Our butler as excellent in every way. We've had a butler on Regent for 2 cruises, and for one on HAL, and they were not as good. But eventually it comes down to the itinerary on cruise lines that you're already familiar with. And that's why we booked Silversea for the 2025 World Cruise on Silver Dawn. It's not too big or too small for a very long cruise, with a large selection of restaurants and bars. We think we will miss having the restaurant as an option. And I hope they have less formal nights by then, but we'll have the clothes for it, and laundry is included for the world cruise. The itinerary covers all of the places that we haven't been before, and wanted t go to. The few areas that we visit again stop in different ports than we stopped in the past, or where we didn't have enough time for everything we wanted see on our first stop. We hope it works out, because this would be the high point of our lives.

We always buy travel insurance, and in recent years it's covered Covid but we haven't to need to use that in the cruises that were cancelled by the cruise line, or that we rebooked. The 3 cruises that we've taken would have had insurance coverage for us if we had gotten Covid, but luckily we did not. I don't think our insurance would cover a coup or a terrorist event. We now look very carefully before making our final payment, especially when it comes to when it comes to what will happen if the cruise is cancelled by the cruise line. Any pre or post hotel reservations, parking reservations, or flights that we've had to make on our own need to be evaluated for the cost to us if the cruise is cancelled. We are willing to pay 10 or 20 dollars extra for a hotel reservation if we can cancel it without penalty at least a few days in advance.

We've had our share of cruises that ended up being poorly timed, but the more cruises you book seems to make it more likely to happen. And in some cases, we've been lucky as well. After successfully completing back to back cruises in SE Asia from Singapore to Vietnam and Singapore to Sydney, in December 2019 and January 2020, we just missed the start of Covid. And it also gave us a chance to cancel our Fort Lauderdale to New Zealand cruise in February and March in 2021, and get our deposit back. After that, we found out that the Easter Island stop that we were looking forward to rarely happened, but you could see some of the heads from the ship. Someone knocked them down with a truck, and they could not be seen when our cruise was scheduled (but I'm sure it didn't sail due to Covid). Unfortunately, we held out until our Paul Gauguin cruise from Fiji to Bali in April 2020 was cancelled and were only offered a future cruise credit that expired before the next cruise with the same itinerary. In mid March, we received an e-mail that said we could cancel with a refund that day. It was sent the day after the offer expired. We rebooked numerous times for other cruises, but they were for an itinerary that we had done before, and they were all cancelled. Sometimes you just have to give up. But we didn't, and tried one more time for our original itinerary in January 2023. This time, there were problems with booking air back from Bali, since they were still contracted with Cathay Pacific through Hong Kong (we had booked our own airfare from Bali to Sydney back in 2020). Since they couldn't confirm our flights before final payment, we cancelled and got our money back. We had booked back to back cruises in the UK, continuing on to Barcelona. Our reservation was for September 2020. It was cancelled so we rebooked to September 2021. That cruise actually sailed as Regent's first post-covid cruise, with many missed ports. But we were able to rebook to 2022. We had booked 3 nights pre in London since we had not been there before. We were in a nice hotel across from Hyde Park, with a nice chance to see the area by foot. The Queen died right before our trip. Everything that wasn't closed was unbelievably crowded. We still, however, enjoyed our time there, and we watched the ceremonies on TV, while seeing the amazingly long lines in person, but didn't wait in them. We had booked a 4 night post from Barcelona to Madrid (where we needed to go to fly home), but it was only available in 2020, and 2021, but not 2022. We spent a very long day arriving at the Barcelona airport (with the worst signs to find your airline check-in, and the business class security had the longest line and the strictest requirements). The flight was, or course, delayed. We have transited through the Madrid Airport before and knew what to expect. We had just enough time to make it to our flight back to Florida, and were able to help another couple from our cruise make it there as well. After watching a travel show, we booked a Scenic River Cruise in Myanmar. We had booked one of the best cabins, and it looked really nice. The cruise had several nights in Yangon (Rangoon) in a very nice hotel included, with included excursions for the best sites. Then we headed off (by air, which was a little scary) to a very nice lake front hotel for several nights before heading to the river cruise portion. Amazing excursions were included before returning to Yangon. Three weeks after we booked, the president of Myanmar was arrested and jailed. We waited a while, but then cancelled. We used our down payment to book a cruise that started with 3 nights in Paris, then a fast train to Bordeaux, with a river cruise from there. A few months later, they cancelled the Paris portion, and required us to get to Bordeaux and back from Florida on our own. We cancelled and they eventually refunded our deposit. But we did successfully complete 3 cruises this year, with one being to back, and have 2 recently booked next year, 1 in 2024, and the world cruise on Silver Dawn in 2025. If you w3ant to cruise, you have to try.

If you're both referring to my post, the crowding and running our of food was as lunch. In my opinion, the problem was caused by destination services scheduling the shore excursions as close together as possible. They finished their job in a limited amount of time when passengers were leaving and returning to the ship, but when hundreds of passengers return to the ship just as lunch service is about to end, the result was not good. And it wasn't just once or twice. After that lunch experience, Compass Rose would always be my preference for dinner.

We've never been on a cruise where your fridge was filled with little bottles of liquor. We've cruised on Regent many times), SilverSea, PG (now Ponant), Sea Dream, Holland America (Neptune Suite), and Viking River. We've never seen small bottles of liquor in our fridge onboard. We have seen 2 large bottles of our favorite liquor in our fridge, and when either starts to get near empty, a new one appears, on all but Viking River. On Viking River, we had a Veranda Suite. which was very nice, with a separate living room and bed room. It had a nice balcony off the living room, and a sliding glass door with a railing looking our from the bedroom. We had a bottle of red and a bottle of white, along with soda and beer included with the cabin. There was no selection (it was the same bottle of so so wine served with meals), but you could bring your own bottle on board from the local port. We did not expect to have time looking for a bottle of wine in the local ports rather than seeing the local sights. Most people who did not have a cabin with wine included, and didn't purchase the beverage package, took a full glass of wine with them back to their cabin at dinner. We had already decided to purchase the beverage package when we boarded, and we did so. If your purchase it ahead of time as part of your cruise fare, and purchase insurance for your cruise, your insurance will cost more to cover the bevarage package. After boarding (and testing negative for Covid back in May), we had lunch, and tasted the included wine. It was not good. We were offered something else that tasted better, and thought we were having 2 glasses. As it turned out, we had unknowingly payed for the bottle, and it cost more than the beverage package for the day. When we stopped at the bar for a pre dinner cocktail, we found out that our onboard registration for the beverage package hadn't been put into effect. Since it was obvious that we would not be happy with the included wine, and that we would often want to visit the bar for a before dinner cocktail, or an after dinner drink, or both, the 40 dollars a day for the 2 of us was insignificant, just as we had expected it to be. We have our first Viking Ocean cruise booked for next December through the Panama Canal. We're in an Explorer Suite, with alcoholic beverages in our cabin, but we will still purchase the beverage package for better wine with our meals, and drinks outside of our cabin to socialize before and after dinner.

We were on Splendor for 24 nights from September to October this year, and never considered eating at the Pool Grill for dinner. It was not good for lunch, with seating often being unavailable, and extremely slow service for drinks and menu items. They were not able to keep their buffet adequately stocked. I usually only ate pizza when having lunch at the Splendor pool grill, and often had competition from the crew when trying to get a few hot slices. If I wanted a casual dinner, I would order room service with a great menu to choose from. But I do agree that it would be a nice option on the Navigator where there are fewer dining options, and it would be easy to at least offer a casual menu and atmosphere for those that aren't looking for a multi course dinner.

We were on Splendor from mid September through the beginning of October a few months ago on Southampton to Southampton to Barcelona cruises. We had a lot of big seas, from Atlantic storms, and missed a port here and there on both legs. The windows boarded up in Compass Rose for quite a few days. They closed the curtains. Since it was dark at dinner time, it wasn't noticeable. At breakfast, however, it was very strange, but it was much better eating down low on the ship than going up to deck 11. I'm very prone to sea sickness, and was able to control it with meclizine (Bonine) knowing that the seas would be high ahead of time. The Captain's reports on sea states were very accurate. I"m sure we will encounter bad weather again on the cruises we have booked in the future, but I'm avoiding the Drake Passage.

Having your cabin number as you come in to the restaurant definitely helps them remember your name, and it usually doesn't take long before they know your name without needing your cabin number, expecially in Compass Rose .I also think they keep notes about your preferences and experiences. If you ask for a certain waitperson, they put that in your notes. If you've had a bad experience with a sommelier, they add that to the notes. And that will keep you happier while onboard, based on our experience.

We've sailed on SeaDream several times in the Caribbean. On our cruise last March, they had a special that they were recommending; John Dory (or St. Peter's fish). We tried it, and it was not edible. The head chef tasted it, and agreed. He pulled it from the menu, and said they would be throwing the rest away. The chef apologized to us every time he saw us after that, which was often. Since we were onboard for 2 weeks, and this happened near the beginning of the cruise, we eventually felt embarrassed about that we had complained, but it really was terrible. The chef also told us that they were not allowed to have any fresh fish onboard. And to make their life easier with officials, they were being stocked with fish that isn't available fresh in the Caribbean since they could more easily prove that their fish was not freshly caught. We're able to buy vacuum sealed fresh salmon in Florida, that's sourced from Norway or Chile, depending on the time of year, and we enjoy it, but I wouldn't eat it raw. Our kitchen, however, isn't regulated and inspected the way the are on cruise ships.

On our recent B2B cruises on Splendor cronuts were available almost every day. We preferred the strawberry filled cronuts, but after the first week, they only had other varieties.

The OP is definitely not talking about Regent. We have only been cruising on Regent since 2017, but have been onboard for 79 nights and have booked another 34 nights and have never heard of Refections. Passages has always been left on our bed at turndown. I have never hear of Refections on any cruise line that we have been on. Passages has always been available on the TV in our cabin as well as being left on our bed. The Destination desk has not had copies of Passages, and in general is not always very helpful, but has had information available, including a map of the local port. If you try to go to the Destination desk in the morning to find an excursion that you haven't signed up for, you will either find them unavailable at the desk, or you will delay those who have booked in advance by trying to book an excursion that's already boarding. At that point the destination personnel are very busy trying to get those who signed up in advance from getting on their buses. We've never sailed on Seabourn, so we don't know their procedure for delivering their bulletin which I assume is actually Reflections, and not Refections. We've looked at Seabourn, but it doesn't seem to work for us as well as Regent does, and we don't plan to book them in the future.

Actually, I like my duck medium at most, and prefer it medium rare. I cook it at home, and often leave it rare before it rests. And i will admit that after trying duck entrees in most of the restaurants on Regent in the past, I didn't order any duck on our B2B Splendor cruise because I expected it to be well done. That might work in a spring roll, or a dumpling, but not much else. I would also love to see some of the dishes from the wine lunch that we enjoyed added to the regular menu at PR. It was the same Chef that prepared it. But I think that there are many people onboard that would have found some of those dishes to be beyond what they were comfortable with ordering.

That's fine with me. Please don't take any reservations from those that like it.

I would rather they serve excellent Asian cuisine, than serve something that everyone would like. Some people just don't like Asian cuisine, and those of us who do should be able to have what we like. There are other restaurants onboard where you can eat if you don't like Asian food. I don't care for having Italian meals onboard, especially when served family style with lots of bread and pasta. We have eaten at Setta Mari twice in 79 nights onboard, once on our first cruise, and again on our B2Bs at the end of 2019. There was nothing special about either meal (one on Mariner, the other on Voyager) and both times we found there to be too much food, and it was mostly not worth eating. I doubt they would fix Setta Mari so that we would like it, because there are those who love it, and we won't ask for that. So please leave Pacific Rim for those of us who prefer it as our favorite restaurant onboard.

And after 3 cabins are combined and made into 2 cabins, the you will be paying at least 1 and a half times as much for a cabin than you are now. Since they have to cover the costs of the upgrade, it's likely that you will be paying twice as much for a cabin as you did before. Since most of the post seem to indicate that Crystal fans valued the money saving they got from having a small cabin, will they still book Crystal if they have to pay twice as much for a cabin that is still minimal size for the other cruise lines in the small luxury ship business.

The newer SS ships are still small enough to go into smaller ports, and still have a high space to passenger ratio. Silver Dawn has a maximum passengers of 596,and a crew of 411. Silver Whisper, Silver Shadow, Silver Muse (a sister ship to Dawn), the Seabourn Odyssey and Encore, and the RSSC Explorer and Mariner all have significantly fewer passengers than the Crystal Serenity, and have a higher passenger space ratio. Obviously, what's left of Crystal still has it's fans, but they're not looking for a luxury cruise. They looking for a very nice cruise at a reasonable price, and some comforting nostalgia onboard a ship they've known and loved in the past. Those that are really looking for a luxury cruise will stay with Silversea, or try out RSSC or Seabourn.

We never sailed on Crystal, because we don't like a small cabin with a lot of activities to do elsewhere onboard. We especially don't like lessons, or watching movies in the a theater type environment. While I love to cook at home, and have taken cooking lessons in the past at culinary schools, I don't want to do that when I'm on vacation. And I would rather watch a movie in my cabin. We also didn't see it as being an economical cruise compared to the other cruises we were doing. And the ships were too large for us, with over 900 passengers. We've only been on 1 cruise with that many passengers, and it was a 1 and done on HAL. We sailed to the Amazon from Barbados and back on Silver Whisper in2018. We sailed in a Silver Suite which was 500 sq feet of luxury. There were a few days at sea along the way, and long passages on the Amazon, and we enjoyed watching them from our cabin, while enjoying our favorite beverages which were restocked in our cabin whenever they became close to needing to be. My brother was onboard as well in a smaller cabin. He had a plumbing problem in his bathroom that they were unable to fix in several tries. They moved him to another cabin, and while he packed everything in his cabin, his butler moved everything to his new cabin and unpacked everything to the same places they came from in his previous cabin. We didn't always feel like dressing up for formal night, so we sometimes had dinner in our cabin. Our butler served our meals and his service was flawless, and my brother was always welcomed by our butler to have meals in our cabin. He was the best butler we've ever had.

We have stayed numerous times at the IC Papeete, since the Paul Gauguin always had pre and post hotel stays available there, and day rooms if you weren't staying there overnight. The day rooms were usually well worn, but add on nights we paid for were always nice rooms, that had recently been renovated. I had read that they had eventually renovated the wing used for day rooms (closer to the airport), but we had stopped doing the day room thing by then. From those we talked to at the hotel, the overwater bungalows were often hard to sleep in due to waves underneath. We had a great 2 weeks in overwater bungalows on Bora Bora (Sofitel Marara), and Moorea (Beachcomber which later became IC), back in 1995, and when we decided to go back in 2017, it was cheaper to take a cruise. We never ran into the Costco discount people there, but they were everywhere in the Cook Islands, and it's a good reason not to go there. We did have problems with the hotel being available for day use by the locals who normally partied at the bar all day (usually with drinks from their own coolers) while their kids filled the pool with no adult supervision. They also had a BMW dealer take over the hotel during the day, using the entire area that cruise passengers need to use after they're kicked out of their rooms and are waiting for the bus to the cruise port. They were offering test drives from the parking area so we tried to sign up for one, but they said it was open to residents only. We asked why they were at a hotel full of tourists if it was for residents only, but they had no answer for that.

If your flight is late, or cancelled, or you miss your flight connection because of a delay, and are downgraded to economy when you paid for an upgrade to business class, it's the airline that has to come up with the payback. Unfortunately, it goes back to the cruise line if they booked it on your behalf and you have to request it back from them. We had this happen on a Viking River cruise, and eventually got the money back from them that Delta paid back for having too short a time between flights, resulting in us flying economy from Atlanta to Amsterdam rather than the business class seats we had paid for.

It's a redo of the Hotel Tahiti from the 1960's. so not a new property.