First time I have had a tour canceled nine days before cruise

[Spud1]

On 4/26/2023 at 9:59 PM, angela miller said:

I have traveled with Regent several times and  also with the number of other cruises.We are leaving on the fifth of May on the Navigator and this morning I got a notice from Regent for the second time an additional tour has been canceled. I was told to go online and book an additional tour. Of course, at this late date, there are not any tours. I did call Regent and was told that they had no solution at this point. Has anyone else had this problem?

We have had 3 of our tours cancelled for this same cruise 😥

[pappy1022]

Sorry to hear that. Where are you cruising to? This is the exact situation where I don’t think it’s fair to the customers who are paying for excursions in their fares. Cancellation for safety concerns or even a single excursion cancelled is within reason but to have multiple excursions cancelled without any choices goes beyond reasonable to me.

[flossie009]

On 4/26/2023 at 9:59 PM, angela miller said:

We are leaving on the fifth of May on the Navigator

 

10 hours ago, Spud1 said:

We have had 3 of our tours cancelled for this same cruise 😥

The cruise has many late arrivals and some early departures. Has that impacted excursion scheduling?

Have the port timings changed since the cruise was first offered?

 

Hope you have an enjoyable cruise despite the late excursion cancellations.

 

[Spud1]

11 hours ago, Spud1 said:

We have had 3 of our tours cancelled for this same cruise 😥

Times have changed, but for 2 tours that were later in the day it shouldn’t have made difference.

We are not overly concerned, but I would have liked an explanation as to why cancellations occurred. We are still super excited to experience our first Regent cruise 🤗

[papaflamingo]

We've been lucky (or more likely just don't care enough) in that our 84 nights on Regent, only had a few excursions cancel. There are lots of reasons but don't really care enough to try to find out.  But we waitlisted for a different excursion of interest after the cancellation and cleared every time.  On a couple of the ports a new excursion was added a day or so prior to the port so we got on those.  When an excursion was cancelled and we didn't want a replacement, we simply went into the port and enjoyed the local scenery, culture, and food/drinks.  In fact ports we just wandered around in often became our favorite port stops.

It's a cruise, it's all good.

[Kwaj girl]

4 hours ago, Spud1 said:

Times have changed, but for 2 tours that were later in the day it shouldn’t have made difference.

We are not overly concerned, but I would have liked an explanation as to why cancellations occurred. We are still super excited to experience our first Regent cruise 🤗

 

The tour operators have had huge post-covid problems trying to restart their businesses- previous employees likely had to find other work to support their famies since 2020 and may not be willing or able to go back to being guides or vehicle drivers.  Could be lots of reasons such as this, which of course are totally out of the cruiseline's control.  Perhaps tour operators offered them back when you booked....in the expectation that by now things would be back to normal....but had to do a close-in cancellation notice to Regent when they realized they could not provide the drivers/guides/vehicles for your chosen tour.

[Steve Q]

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are scheduled to depart this Friday on Navigator from Miami to Montreal. We just received an email from Regent with another itinerary change (I have lost count of the number of port and arrival time changes). Today, they cancelled Great Stirrup Key and substituted the Bahamas. Obviously our excursion has been cancelled. We have not received notification of any new excursions in Freeport.

[Kwaj girl]

1 hour ago, Steve Q said:

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are scheduled to depart this Friday on Navigator from Miami to Montreal. We just received an email from Regent with another itinerary change (I have lost count of the number of port and arrival time changes). Today, they cancelled Great Stirrup Key and substituted the Bahamas. Obviously our excursion has been cancelled. We have not received notification of any new excursions in Freeport.

 

Interesting!  I never received that email. I'm on Navigator now and will see if I can find out what's going on.  We'll be on board thru most of June.  Guess we'll see if anymore changes come this way.

[Steve Q]

1 minute ago, Kwaj girl said:

 

Interesting!  I never received that email. I'm on Navigator now and will see if I can find out what's going on.  We'll be on board thru most of June.  Guess we'll see if anymore changes come this way.

Just received it 20 minutes ago. Hope you are enjoying your cruise.

[Kwaj girl]

1 hour ago, Steve Q said:

Just received it 20 minutes ago. Hope you are enjoying your cruise.

"The Bahamas?"  Did it specify WHERE?  Nassau? Freeport? Somewhere else?

[Kwaj girl]

1 hour ago, Kwaj girl said:

"The Bahamas?"  Did it specify WHERE?  Nassau? Freeport? Somewhere else?

 

Disregard...just checked with onboard Destinations.   It's Freeport and they are working it out as we speak 

[angela miller]

5 hours ago, Steve Q said:

As I mentioned in an earlier post, we are scheduled to depart this Friday on Navigator from Miami to Montreal. We just received an email from Regent with another itinerary change (I have lost count of the number of port and arrival time changes). Today, they cancelled Great Stirrup Key and substituted the Bahamas. Obviously our excursion has been cancelled. We have not received notification of any new excursions in Freeport.

We just got it too. Never had this many changes. We have done 5 cruises with Viking and two with Celebrity ships since ships started sailing after Covid. No problems at all.

[UUNetBill]

On 5/1/2023 at 6:21 AM, papaflamingo said:

We've been lucky (or more likely just don't care enough) in that our 84 nights on Regent, only had a few excursions cancel. There are lots of reasons but don't really care enough to try to find out.  But we waitlisted for a different excursion of interest after the cancellation and cleared every time.  On a couple of the ports a new excursion was added a day or so prior to the port so we got on those.  When an excursion was cancelled and we didn't want a replacement, we simply went into the port and enjoyed the local scenery, culture, and food/drinks.  In fact ports we just wandered around in often became our favorite port stops.

It's a cruise, it's all good.

Ditto - we've sailed over 100 nights with Regent since 2009 and we, too have had excursions get cancelled, ports get cancelled, and hell, even entire cruises rerouted.  It's been our experience that Regent will do whatever they can (within reason) to accommodate everyone.  

 

I remember one trip when a grown-ass man was reduced to tears because we missed a port due to weather - he was planning on seeing some long-lost relatives in that port and it was 99.9% of the reason he booked that cruise.  Although I felt sorry for him, it drove the point home that the moving parts don't always come together and you need to have a certain amount of flexibility built into your expectations.  

 

On the rare occasions when our favorite excursions didn't go for whatever reason, we almost always found an alternative that was nice.  Maybe not as nice (or maybe better, who knows?) but we always try to look at the positives.

 

We have a cruise coming up next spring going to the Middle East, with a stop in Egypt.  We signed up for the overland tour going to the pyramids and Cairo.  Would we be cheesed if it cancelled for some reason?  Hell yeah.  Would we let it ruin the other three weeks of our cruise?  Hell no.

 

Every time I get on board, I stop and thank my lucky stars that I'm able to travel at this level and be pampered for a few weeks.  Since I don't have "f@$# you" money and can't afford my own yacht, this is the next best option...so if I miss a port or a tour, so be it.

 

But enough pontificating - I hope they find something suitable for you and that you have a fantastic trip and enjoy your time on board.  😄

 

[papaflamingo]

On 5/2/2023 at 4:37 PM, UUNetBill said:

We have a cruise coming up next spring going to the Middle East, with a stop in Egypt.  We signed up for the overland tour going to the pyramids and Cairo.  Would we be cheesed if it cancelled for some reason?  Hell yeah.  Would we let it ruin the other three weeks of our cruise?  Hell no.

We have a cruise in Oct. that has 4 days in Israel and 2 days in Egypt (also going on a shore excursion to the Pyramids). These are "bucket list" ports for us.  BUT.... we recognize the instability of the region.  So if they are cancelled, will we be disappointed?  Sure, but we'll adjust.  It'll still be a great cruise.