1982CruzStart

Yikes. We board in just under a month so i am not happy to hear your report from Grandeur. Hope it gets straightened out soon so your cruise improves and ours doesn't have the same issues.

We booked suntransfers for our upcoming transfers in Barcelona. We used them years ago with no problems and decided to give them another go.

So i decided to just take a look at our 2025 cruise and price it now. We booked this cruise in Feb 2024 including BC airfare and in Concierge. The booking for 2 came to a total of 34438 CAD. I don't know what the air credit would have been as i always book with air included. When i went in today to do a booking for the exact same cruise in concierge and added BC airfare the cruise price came to 35488 plus BC airfare to/from YVR quoted at 22060 for a total cruise cost of 57548, all CAD. Before going through the booking process the base fare for the cruise is 36498, the difference from the above 35488 i assume is the discount for being returning guests. The BC airfare is priced at 18240 for YYZ to embarkation port and back so the additional cost to go to/from YVR is 3820. They appear to use YYZ instead of New York City for Canadian airfare pricing. So the cruise only is more than the cruise with BC airfare so a pretty big price increase. It is a cruise with wide open availability so the price increase doesn't look like a result of high demand. By the way this cruise is only 10 days. As i said before, baring a miracle, this cruise will likely be our last with Regent.

With this new model our cruise booked for 2025 will likely be our last with Regent. We were attracted to them because of the included BC airfare that made flying BC affordable. When they averaged out the airfare across the US and Canada, it was virtually impossible for us to get BC airfare anywhere near the offered air credit so included airfare was a godsend. Now that we have to add on airfare from NYC to our gateway city it is likely Regent is priced out of our range. It probably means the end of cruising for us. I am so glad we booked 2025 before these exciting new options.

If the ship overnights in Montreal then you can take any flight you want as you can get off the ship anytime after the ship clears on the 19th though I am guessing your ship cleared at an earlier Canadian port so no delay at all. Don't know your itinerary but have rarely heard of Montreal being your first point of entry and last port in Canada at the same time. There is no problem with the 11:14 flight and wouldn't have been a problem if you had kept your 9:20 flight other than having to get up very early to get to the airport and go through security and US pre-clearance.

We are doing that on our cruise in August. The cruise leaves from Barcelona but we wanted to spend a few days in London beforehand so had the included BC air from YVR to London. They also handled our flight from London to Barcelona though we had to pay for it. We could have done it ourselves but when i looked up the cost of flights it wasn't any more expensive to have Regent handle the whole itinerary so we booked through Regent. We are flying on BA and the advantage for us is we can select our seats right when we deviated for both flights and not pay to pick them had we booked the one ourselves.

I didn't mean that if they offered you something and you didn't do anything about it and the offer expired there might not be an additional charge. However if you are going back and forth with them it can certainly take more than 3 days and you shouldn't get charged. When we did our latest deviation we took longer than 3 days to get to what we wanted and we were not charged a second $75 fee. We were working through our TA and she would send us something, then with time differences it would be the next day before we responded etc over a number of days.

It can take mutiple phone calls to finalize an acceptable itinerary. Once you/your TA initiate discussions with Regent Air on a booking, you pay the $75 and then you can have as many phone calls as you need to try and finalize your air. All calls are under the same $75 fee. If you don't agree on an itinerary you forfeit the $75. If you finally do agree on an itinerary the $75 is deducted from the $175 fee for 1 person on the booking and you pay the balance.

They have a number of posts lately where people have posted copies of the liquor lists. You should be able to search for those posts. I was commenting on my perception of Regent's position. I do not represent them and I am not stating their position, just what i believe is their perspective. I have read many times of people taking alcohol onboard with no issues. Usually it is wine but also liquor. If someone wants to bring something onboard and are concerned that there may be a problem, i recommend they contact them to see if there is a prohibition to doing so. To me there just doesn't seem to be any upside for Regent to object to bringing your own liquor onboard.

Because all but premium liquor/wine is included in the cruise price, I believe Regent is happy for you to bring your own liquor onboard as that means you are not consuming theirs. If you are not taking money out of their pocket i don't think they have a problem with you bringing what you want onboard. If you are not bringing something onboard that they supply at a charge, it shouldn't matter to them.

Thank you fro taking us along on your trip. As always your pics and commentary were fabulous. Sorry that it has come to an end. I will really miss my daily read. In particular, I appreciate the review of some of the ports that we will be visiting this summer as we do the Barcelona to NYC on Grandeur.

I think it depends on the cruise. We were able to book the classes on Grandeur this summer over a year before our cruise. it was well before the shore excursions.

Voyager vs the explorer class ships. Explorer class ships are newer and more updated though they have their issues. They have an extra specialty restaurant. In the F class suites and I think the Concierge suites the bed faces the ocean and though it may seem minor it really is an improvement over the older ships. The concierge suites on explorer class ships have larger balconies and to me better locations on the ship. Having remarked on the above all our cruises except 1 have been on Voyager and we have enjoyed them all. In the past, we booked almost solely for itinerary and Voyager was going where we wanted to go except the 1 cruise where Explorer was going where we wanted to go. We have made the decision now to book explorer class because we like the extras of that class though we still make sure the itinerary is the most important thing. We won't book Mariner because their basic suites are smaller and that doesn't work for me. Size of cabin is more important than larger public rooms.

For someone without loyalty status on Regent you may want to consider the Concierge suite inspite of the cost because of the following: 1. fly in 1 day early with Regent air otherwise you fly in the same day unless you deviate 2. hotel room included along with the transfers from the airport to hotel and then to the port 3. same booking dates for shore excursions and dining reservations as the passengers with loyalty status which means you have better access to them than if you book a suite below concierge 4. in suite coffee machine 5. as Jeb_bud says you have 4 wifi logins instead of 1 As everyone gets free laundry now it may not be as important for you to be near the laundry.

If memory serves and it has been awhile we had generally pretty good seas on both our cruises to SA. I don't remember any really bad seas on either the east coast of Africa or the west coast.

Thank you so much for all your time and work to take us along on your trip. Great pictures and commentary. Sorry you won't be joining us on Grandeur for the transatlantic in August. Save travels home.

to add. Lunches in the speciality restaurants are only on the Explorer class ships. It doesn't happen on Navigator, Mariner and Voyager. Lunch is served in CR on those ships.

that must have changed. When we were on Explorer they were both open on sea days and 1 of them was open alternately on port days. As CR isn't open for lunch at all they need both of them plus La Veranda and the pool grill open on sea days to accomodate all the guests.

I agree with 'mom says'. If you have too many bags to comfortably take on the train then drop your passengers and baggage off at the port and then drive back to the airport and drop the car off. The train cars that go to and from the airport or designed with extra room as they expect baggage with their passengers. i have family that use the long term parking at the airport if they stay in downtown Vancouver rather than pay the expensive hotel rates. If you are staying over 1 night in Vancouver before or after the cruise you can sometimes find hotels out near the airport that will allow you to leave your car at the hotel for the week. You can take the hotel shuttle to the airport and catch the train or if you can't be bothered just take a taxi or rideshare down to the port. Have a wonderful cruise.

We just renewed in 2023 so we are spared the increase until 2028 but by then we might not need one. I think at $50USD for 5 years it is a steal and we don't use it that much but still well worth it. At this point if i was renewing right now i still consider $120USD for 5 years a pretty good deal for the convenience.

We have done at least 2 or 3 cruises with Regent that required a yellow fever shot and for each one we got the official exemption form as my DH couldn't have the shot and had no problems. That is not a confirmation as i have no authority to give you that but it was our experience.

Thank you Carol for posting the pictures. Brought back great memories of our stay there on our post cruise also in 2018.

We did a similar cruise on Celebrity a few years ago. At that time Regent wasn't sailing to Japan so opted for Celebrity. We did all private tours except 1 as the group we participated with through CC roll call was not putting one together so we tried a Celebrity ship tour. It was so bad we swore we would never take another ship's tour. Go to the roll call for your cruise and try and put together private tours with other passengers. Everytime we have cruised with Celebrity that is what we have done and had some fabulous private tours with other passengers. Have a wonderful cruise.

We have done 2 safari post cruise tours with Regent. The first and our favorite was Kapama private reserve just outside Krueger. The lodge was lovely, the staff great and the food delicious. We could watch a few animals right outside our balcony. One of the benefits of letting Regent do everything is that when there was a flight issue from Jo'burg to the local airport, the tour company jumped in and arranged a bus so that we didn't miss any more time. Otherwise we may not have been able to arrive until the next day, missing 2 precious drives. They kept our excess luggage for us and it was waiting when we got to the hotel in Jo'burg. We had transfers to the airport from the hotel. We had 2 game drives per day. They served a light breakfast early in the morning, we did the game drive and then came back to a huge breakfast laid out for us. We had the opportunity to go to the cheetah rehab facility 1 day between game drives and it was fascinating. On another day between drives we were able to do an elephant encounter that was very memorable. These elephants are rescues only. A once in a lifetime chance to get up close with an elephant. There was the opportunity to do one game drive by elephant but we opted to not do so as the time was shorter, you tended to see less and we wanted to maximize animal viewings. We saw a group of elephants playing in the water, a cheetah that had been released from the rehab center just lounging around a tree and many more up close encounters. Half way through each game drive we stopped for a snack and drink. Morning was coffee etc, afternoon was a cocktail as we watched the sunset over the mountains. The afternoon drive was half in the dark so we were able to see nocturnal animals. The only animal we didn't see was the elusive leopard though our ranger did everything to make that happen. We even had a game drive on our way to the airport to catch our flight. They have a local airport literally across the street from the reserve. We were flown back to Jo'burg for an overnight there. It was late December and we had perfect weather, not too hot, no rain and no bugs. It was great. We recommended it to friends on another post cruise tour and they loved it as well. There was a couple at the resort that had made all their own arrangements off the ship. The 2nd one was at Shamwari Bayethe at the Riverdene facility. Luxury tents with small individual plunge pools. Each very private. We had a very good time there as well but because it is a much bigger reserve than the first one, we spent more time driving during the game drives then seeing animals. We did however see a leopard and it was just lying by the road and didn't seem bothered by the vehicles nearby. The staff was great, the food very good and the accomodation very comfortable with monkeys hanging around the outside of our door. The one downside for me is that we didn't have the same ability for extra experiences that we had at the first one. It meant a lot of downtime between the morning and evening drives without access to lodge facilities like the first one. Bill, regardless of what you end up doing it is an experience that you will never forget. I understand people telling you to do it on your own, stay longer etc but some of us don't have the luxury of the extra time to stay longer or the time to do all the research to book everything yourself.

So sorry to hear you are gone. You will be greatly missed on this forum as you were the one person we could always count on to help us out. i thank you very much for all the help you gave me. I wish you all the best in the future.