Grandmaanne7

10 minutes ago, TomBeckCruise said:

Thanks, I still would not want to be on one of those ships.  Like my grocery store, I think many unvaccinated people feel they have the right to ignore rules. Maybe that's just true where I live.

Tom, I don't believe that it's true just where you live.  I believe it's true in most places that many people feel they have the right to ignore rules.  At this point, I would much rather be on a 100% vaccinated ship.  Much less chance of being stranded or other inconveniences.

I hope Regent chooses to move embarkation ports rather than cancel upcoming cruises out of Florida if the law suit is unsuccessful. I want to cruise!!!

2 hours ago, Pcardad said:

I think Regent would be happy with a cruise with 1 passenger on board and no issues over a fully booked cruise with a single case.

Well, I do hope that's the case and not something more sinister.  I don't think I'll believe we're sailing until I actually set foot on the ship.

I have noticed that Regent's advertising doesn't appear to include any 2021 cruises.  The email I received today mentioned Explorer cruises from December 20th onward.  I know that there are several cruises prior to that.  Ours leaves December 9th and, the last time I checked (yesterday), there were 94 suites available so it's not sold out.  There are 6 categories showing availability.  Do you suppose that they are okay with sailing at a lower capacity for the first few sailings until all the kinks are worked out?

When the final payment date is extended, will it show up correctly on your account on the RSSC site?  Apparently, our group booking has an extended deadline for final payment but the date hasn't changed on my account.

13 hours ago, Eager2Travel said:

I have complete trust in what we will experience onboard the ship at sea.  I am sorry to have alarmed you.  We love being onboard Regent and are looking forward to the two cruises we have booked.  I poorly expressed myself.  The way Regent of today handles the business end of things could use some finesse .  We go way back to when it was a small company and things were handled differently.  Fortunately for all of us being on a Regent ship is the happiest place to be for many of us.

 

please forgive me.  I tend to have strong reactions🤭

Thank you for that reassurance.  We are definitely looking forward to getting back to cruising and especially our first Regent experience.

23 hours ago, Eager2Travel said:

I am sorry to hear that Regent treated you in the manner that they did.  It disappoints me in my thinking of Regent.   I would not like them treating us like that.  I do not find it surprising with the company Regent is today.   Given their high end client they would be wise to rethink their current customer service approach.

Given that we have not yet tried Regent but hope our sailing in December goes as planned, your "The company Regent is today" statement concerns me.  Do you think it has changed significantly enough to affect the onboard experience?

Sorry it worked out this way for you, Jay.  Thanks for letting us know of your experience.  Safe travels no matter what!

I think that RCCL has come up with a very clever solution.  I don't particularly enjoy wearing a wristband, however, it would be a very small price to pay to feel safe on a ship.  I would prefer if Regent stuck with the 100% vaccination policy but would not cancel if they adopted RCCL's approach.

I thought that I would come back on and give an update.  Today, 26 days after Regent announced the cancellation of our original cruise, we have received written confirmation of our transfer to the new cruise from our TA.  My account on Regent had registered the cruise many days ago but since I had no invoice or confirmation from my TA, I felt in limbo.

So, the answer to the original question of "Is 16 days and counting too long?" is yes, however, that is only my opinion and that really only matters to me.  It does not change the situation nor the outcome.  It only diminished my sense of joy in the anticipation of my next cruise.  I still don't have all the information I would like, however, I do have all the information that I need.  Thank you for a lively discussion which helped kill the time as I waited for confirmation.  Safe travels!

4 minutes ago, annapolitan369 said:

Anne,

I agree with Pcardad that you should enjoy the Regent experience onboard.  We certainly did.

However, I strongly disagree with his suggestion of calling the executive offices.  A luxury line ought to have trained staff who have sufficient authority to take care of their customers.  I'm sure that most Regent customers have sufficient skills to deal with the company's executives, but, if they are like me, they are retired and expect a luxury company to take care of their needs without having to resort to using their business skills.  I have no desire to have to go to that extent with a company that I am paying to take care of my needs.  To put this into perspective, I have a business degree from Wharton, law from Harvard and medicine from Johns Hopkins.  Among other things, I have been the CEO of a large hospital and know how to deal with companies.  I have no desire to do that it planning a luxury cruise vacation and, if that is what is needed, I'm not interested.

I hope Regent does monitor this site, whether they respond or not, as I believe that many of their potential customers would feel as I do.  They have a good product and I really hope they don't ruin it, as they have done for us.

 

Jay,

I totally agree with you.  I think that I am more upset for you than I am for myself.  I am not at the frustration level where I have cancelled my cruise like you have felt forced to, and hope not to get to that point.  I still have hope that the information we need will come through.  I'm really not that concerned with the location of our suite although I do have my preferences.  I'm very happy with the price that we paid for this cruise so I am willing to overlook some things but that doesn't mean that I won't complain about them and voice my opinion.  I am truly sorry that we won't be cruising together.  I imagine that we would have enjoyed a chat or two along the way.  Take care.

Anne

5 minutes ago, Pcardad said:

No need to beg. Calling is a final step if you disagree with the cruise line policy. I am only trying to help you achieve what you believe is a fair shake. 

 

If you don't want my advice, perhaps you would be interested in my experience. With over 500 nights on Regent as a paying customer, before becoming a specialty TA, I have found them to be very good at meeting the needs of their clients....and I an extremely picky.

 

Either way, I hope you find what you seek. 😃

My frustration, and that of my TA, is that the information is slow to come from Regent and changing constantly.  Many of the changes are probably out of Regent's control due to the fluid nature of restarting cruising in these unprecedented times, however, when I still can't even find out which suite I have been assigned 23 days later, that seems a little far fetched.  I have no idea if I am unhappy with the location nor if I can do anything about it.

As I said, I am really hoping that the onboard experience makes up for all this unnecessary angst.  I just want to be able to look forward to and plan my cruise until I actually step aboard.  Then, I want to be pampered.  That's what I have paid for.

21 minutes ago, Pcardad said:

If you don't achieve satisfaction the regular number, call the executive offices and leave a detailed message with booking info and a return number. Also, your travel agent, depending on their volume, has access to an inside executive. That is another path. Good luck!

I am new to Regent, hoping to enjoy my first cruise with them in December so my experience with Regent is quite limited and occurring at a difficult time for everyone.  However, I have to think that a line that advertizes itself as the world's most luxurious cruise line would and should do better at customer service.  The need to beg to get what one has paid for belittles everything about the experience.  One should not have to "call the executive offices" in order to be heard.  That should be done on first contact.  I truly hope that the onboard experience is far superior to what I am seeing prior to embarkation.

There is obviously so very much more than we could ever consider going on in the background at all times.  Our December Caribbean cruise just had a change of ports again.  I suppose that if we do actually sail, it will be a bit more of an adventure than originally hoped.  Things might change day to day.  I think I can talk myself into being okay with that as long as we are safe and we are sailing.

8 hours ago, Pcardad said:

I think they will cancel but held off to spread out the bad news.....how can they even go to Australia and NZ when they are still shut down...not to mention Asia.

Although I am not booked on any, I truly hope they don't have to cancel the world cruises again.  Obviously, ports will have to change but cancellation would be so disappointing to all those involved!  If they do have to make that dreadful decision, I certainly hope that they will wait until all those affected by the last round of cancellations are satisfactorily dealt with.  I can't imagine the customer service folks trying to deal with all of that at once!

2 hours ago, annapolitan369 said:

Just wanted to let everyone know how this did not work for us.

We had a Horizon View Suite on the Mariner.  There is no directly comparable suite on Explorer, so they offered a Seven Seas Suite.  When it was offered, I told Regent that we do not want a suite in the bow (just our personal preference) and was told not to worry, that there were other locations that we would find acceptable.  It took a long time to get any real response and today we were told the we could upgrade to an Explorer suite for almost $7,000, which is much more that anyone can upgrade today from a Penthouse to the Explorer Suite.  We were also offered a Penthouse, a downgrade for us, but with no other compensation.  We have canceled this cruise and are not happy with Regent.

So unfortunate!  I'm very sorry this did not work out for you.  It seems that it is becoming easy to be disillusioned with Regent's customer service.

1 hour ago, annapolitan369 said:

We have been assigned a suite, but it's exactly the one that I told them in advance, twice, that we did not want.  Now waiting to see if we can be moved to something that works for us.

That's unfortunate indeed.  I hope you are able to be moved to your satisfaction.

21 minutes ago, 1982CruzStart said:

I have no skin in this game. I feel for what everyone is going through.

I suspect that Regent is taking longer and scrambling a bit more than expected because they mistakenly assumed the process of changing people would go smoothly. Think about it, if every client they contacted, mostly through the client's TA, took even a couple of days to work out what suite they would accept, that makes the whole process long and drawn out.  They probably hoped that when someone was offered the new suite they would accept and just move on to the next but comments here show that people aren't necessarily going to just take what they are offered. They can't just throw staff at the problem because they can't have staff and TA's fighting other the same suites.  They have to work through process in a methodical way to ensure there is as much fairness as possible. 

I hope it all works out satisfactoriy for everyone and that you all have a great cruise. 

Well, it's 20 days now and I still can't find out if I have even been assigned a suite in order to see if it is acceptable or not.  I will be so happy to finally be back at sea, I doubt that I will quibble over what I have been assigned, but this not knowing is quite difficult for me.  I wish they would just finalize this whole fiasco and get on with it!!

11 hours ago, mrlevin said:

 

I agree with your concerns; just one more reason that Regent should have stayed with Mariner instead of switching to Explorer.

I suppose that the decision makers thought that the increased number of suites would allow for an opportunity to appease more disgruntled customers while having no idea of the enormity and complexity of the actual work involved.  Also those doing the work are likely part of a depleted workforce (who hasn't scaled down their staff during this crisis?) who are dealing with countless calls from unhappy guests and their travel agents while trying to sort out this mess.

1 hour ago, ronrick1943 said:

Why shouldn’t you have control of your suite, after all you are paying full price.  I mean if you were buying something, paid for it and then you were told—Oh, you can’t have that one, you’ll have to take this one.  Would you?

What I do not have control of right now is what Regent is doing and how long they are taking to do it.  Once my suite is assigned, if I am not happy with the location, I will absolutely do everything I can to rectify the situation.  I am happy with the category that I paid for and have been promised.  I just don't have an actual suite assigned yet and it appears that many others are in the same boat.

17 minutes ago, annapolitan369 said:

Anne

If you have a choice of location, please consider being closer to the forward elevators.  On the Explorer, the aft elevator only goes down to the 5th deck, so there is a flight of stairs to walk down to the main dining room on deck 4.  Those steps have been difficult for many people and there have been several falls at the base of the stairs.

Jay,

I'm actually a stair person and prefer to use them to burn up the extra calories I enjoy on cruises.  I have prided myself on being on several 14-day cruises and never setting foot inside an elevator.  Is there something particularly difficult or challenging about the stairs you mention or just stair danger in general?

"We will be (hopefully) back on Explorer late this October for TA to Miami.  This was to have been on Mariner.  But---

Our exact Penthouse Suite assignment remains in limbo.  Frankly, whether A, B, or C. makes little difference.  It is the interior layout we like."

The quote above from GOARMY on another thread makes me realize there are many, many of us in this position and we will likely be waiting a long time to get our suite assignments.  I will do my best to focus on the fact that we can look forward to being on a beautiful ship in less than 6 months and not be concerned with what I have absolutely no control over. (This is my biggest challenge as I am a huge "control enthusiast".)

20 minutes ago, ronrick1943 said:

It should good, but if you booked with a TA I’d call them asap.  If booked by the office of Regent I’d call them asap and get everything worked out to your liking.

I have called my TA.  They say they are awaiting info from Regent.  All Explorer cruises which were transferred from Mariner are still waitlisted on the Regent site so obviously things are not yet sorted out.  This must have been a much larger undertaking than originally estimated.  I'm having difficulty understanding why.

This is my first experience with Regent.  We have cruised many times, recently mostly with Celebrity.  We have a December cruise booked (now on Explorer after the Mariner cruise was cancelled May 26th).  The message received from Regent (the only actual correspondence directly related to the situation) asked for understanding while things were sorted out.  The expected date was June 2nd.  It's now June 11th and things don't really appear to be sorted out.  I know that, with Celebrity, the pre-cruise experience was not wonderful as the website and other services left much to be desired.  However, once onboard, everything was wonderful!  I am truly hoping and expecting that this will be the case with Regent.  My question is "Is 16 days and counting an acceptable time frame to put into place that which was expected to take 7 days?"

On 6/6/2021 at 3:04 PM, johng75370 said:

Seems like Regent underestimated the time it would take to get everyone settled and moved over; doing it right before a holiday weekend probably didn’t help either.  Nonetheless, does not speak well to their off-ship customer service and communications.  Keeping fingers crossed you’ll have better news soon!

We were finally able to access our booking number this afternoon from our TA, a full 2 weeks after our original booking was cancelled.  No other information, however, we can now see that we are indeed booked on our December Explorer cruise.  Relieved and excited to have our cruise to look forward to once more.

On 6/2/2021 at 7:53 PM, johng75370 said:

I hope you post back on here that everything got sorted out.  We got our revised information this morning - it did have a different reservation number that our original itinerary, but otherwise everything transferred over including excursions already booked and OBC.  

Just a brief update that we are STILL waiting.  Nothing from Regent or our TA other than a brief response to my emails asking for patience.