Upcoming Cape Town to Cape Town cruise

[mj_holiday]

Final payment has been made and getting excited about a cruise finally happening this time.  Excursions are booked.  Flights are made. Not much traffic on the Roll Call for this cruise, wonder how many people will be doing this cruise.

Edited September 3, 2022 by mj_holiday

[JBL919]

Hi!  My husband and I are going. VERY EXCITED!! Yes, very little action on cruise critic. We r on the December 21 cruise. You?  Plane booked. Excursions booked. We r doing 4 nights in capetown first. Then two night safari at sanborn. Second time

on regent. Only been on splendor so hoping this older ship is nice. Wonder if it is full?? Where are you from?  

[mj_holiday]

We are on the December 8 voyage.  We start out going to Victoria Falls for a pre-cruise land tour. And after the cruise we have the wine wonder out of Cape Town.

We have been on Navigator, Explorer and Voyager and have had a great time on all three, but they are all different. 
We were originally booked for this cruise in 2020 and the wait has been long. 
Both of the sailings show a lot of suite categories as “available “, don’t know what this really says about how many passengers are signed up. 
Let me know if you have any questions about the sailing when we get on board. 
 

[Port Power]

I felt I must ask, have you both joined your respective Roll Calls?  You should find more activity there, both about the cruises and land tours. Have a great cruise.

[mj_holiday]

Our Roll call is not very active - just about 5 couples.  I posted here to try to find other passengers that are on our sailing.

[Lonedaddy]

3 hours ago, mj_holiday said:

Our Roll call is not very active - just about 5 couples.  I posted here to try to find other passengers that are on our sailing.

I found that with most of my roll calls.  I just don't think many RSSC travelers use CC.  seems the same with SS.  On our last cruise there were only a handful of CC people.

[bitob]

IMO - the best part of the roll call in the past was for organizing private excursions.  When excursions are included, as they are with RSSC, there is not much purpose for the roll call.

[RosieRuby]

On 9/3/2022 at 2:37 PM, JBL919 said:

Hi!  My husband and I are going. VERY EXCITED!! Yes, very little action on cruise critic. We r on the December 21 cruise. You?  Plane booked. Excursions booked. We r doing 4 nights in capetown first. Then two night safari at sanborn. Second time

on regent. Only been on splendor so hoping this older ship is nice. Wonder if it is full?? Where are you from?  

 Hi  we are on that cruise - getting so excited! We have booked all our tours as well. We have 3 nights in Cape Town before hand. I have never been but my husband has visited South Africa a  couple of times. We have been with Regent 4 or 5 times and enjoy the ships, the staff and the service. I'm loving the idea of being away for Christmas and new year too 🙂

[hamasgirl]

We did this cruise pre-Covid on Explorer.  We did the pre-cruise 3 day Safari add-on which was fabulous.  It was not free (I think it was an additional $1500 or so) but it was worth every penny.

 

Please note that during this time (we did the cruise over the holidays too), S Africa basically closes down.  Everybody is on vacation so most of the public places and stores are closed.  A lot of the open-air venues (beaches and public parks) are mobbed with these folks enjoying their time off.  

 

Regent did a good job of arranging to have the museums on the cruise-provided tours we took open.  We would literally be the only ones in the museum which was weird but kind of nice.  On a couple of other tours we took to a soccer venue and a small historic building site we were also the only ones allowed in.  So if you are planning to do touring privately please make sure that the places that you want to visit will be open for you.

 

Lastly, the weather on both coasts of S Africa was atrocious...high winds and therefore waves...which prevented us from docking in two ports.  When we could dock, it was rainy and very humid making tours very uncomfortable.  So not as delightful a cruise as we had hoped but I am certainly glad that we did it!

 

[mj_holiday]

Thank you for your comments. I have only heard from a friend regarding a suggestion for an excursion, no other comments until from you now.  
We will be prepared for the weather, thanks for the info. 

[captn337]

11 hours ago, hamasgirl said:

We did this cruise pre-Covid on Explorer.  We did the pre-cruise 3 day Safari add-on which was fabulous.  It was not free (I think it was an additional $1500 or so) but it was worth every penny.

 

Please note that during this time (we did the cruise over the holidays too), S Africa basically closes down.  Everybody is on vacation so most of the public places and stores are closed.  A lot of the open-air venues (beaches and public parks) are mobbed with these folks enjoying their time off.  

 

Regent did a good job of arranging to have the museums on the cruise-provided tours we took open.  We would literally be the only ones in the museum which was weird but kind of nice.  On a couple of other tours we took to a soccer venue and a small historic building site we were also the only ones allowed in.  So if you are planning to do touring privately please make sure that the places that you want to visit will be open for you.

 

Lastly, the weather on both coasts of S Africa was atrocious...high winds and therefore waves...which prevented us from docking in two ports.  When we could dock, it was rainy and very humid making tours very uncomfortable.  So not as delightful a cruise as we had hoped but I am certainly glad that we did it!

 

 

[captn337]

Why is South Africa mainly around December if this is the worst time to visit?

[JBL919]

Yikes we had no idea things would be closed. Nor that weather would be bad. Yes agree with above note as to why South Africa is planned in December. Am hopeful that since COVID took a hit on many businesses that perhaps more things will be open. We are doing touristy things like penguin beach and table mountain but hoping to be spontaneous and walk around

capetown exploring. Hoping the safari wont be any less incredible than usual. Same

with regent. How does regent do over the holidays? Hoping entertainment, food, service  etc is still high quality. ????

[1982CruzStart]

Both of our cruises that ended in SA just before Christmas had great weather including the safaris we were on.  Weather can be hit and miss no matter when you go. We were told on the first safari that we were just hitting the end of the dry season and the wet season would be beginning soon. I guess sometimes it starts sooner than expected.