Embarkation Day newbie question

Our Alaska cruise on Mariner(Vancouver to Seward) in May will be our first ocean cruise. We have a Concierge suite and have decided to use the pre-cruise hotel.

 

I know that the pre-cruise hotel includes baggage transfer to the ship. I'm curious about the mechanics of getting our luggage from our possession to Regent's. We plan to leave the hotel in the morning to do tourist things in Vancouver and make our own way to the ship in the afternoon. How, and how early, can we give our luggage to the Regent representatives?

 

Thanks.

Our Alaska cruise on Mariner(Vancouver to Seward) in May will be our first ocean cruise. We have a Concierge suite and have decided to use the pre-cruise hotel.

 

I know that the pre-cruise hotel includes baggage transfer to the ship. I'm curious about the mechanics of getting our luggage from our possession to Regent's. We plan to leave the hotel in the morning to do tourist things in Vancouver and make our own way to the ship in the afternoon. How, and how early, can we give our luggage to the Regent representatives?

 

Thanks.

In our experience, you register with the on-site Regent representative at the hotel the night before departure and give him/her your room number. Regent will then tell you by what time your luggage must be packed and tagged and left in your room. It will be collected at that time and transported to the ship.

Welcome to the Regent board.

 

When you take the bus (with your luggage) to the ship, your luggage will automatically be transferred for you. We once wanted to leave our luggage with them and take our own transportation and they said that this was not permitted. Likely this is a security issue -- they do not want someone getting luggage onto the ship when the passenger isn't accompanying it.

 

Vancouver is one of the most difficult places to embark (we just did it last month). Another option would be taking a taxi to the ship around 11:00 a.m. and dropping off your luggage. Not sure why this works but a friend of ours did that and was able to go into town and board at her leisure.

 

Note: I know that my comment about security in the second paragraph doesn't exactly match up with what I said in the third paragraph but sometimes the procedure don't exactly make sense.

 

My one recommendation is to keep in mind that it could take an hour and a half to get to the ship. Passengers from all ships in port are massed together into lines that go through different places including immigration. One past immigration you are with only Regent passengers so the lines suddenly disappear. So, make sure to leave yourself enough time.

 

P.S. IMO, May is the absolute best time to visit Alaska! Enjoy your cruise (as well as the anticipation of it over the next several months).

Our Alaska cruise on Mariner(Vancouver to Seward) in May will be our first ocean cruise. We have a Concierge suite and have decided to use the pre-cruise hotel.

 

I know that the pre-cruise hotel includes baggage transfer to the ship. I'm curious about the mechanics of getting our luggage from our possession to Regent's. We plan to leave the hotel in the morning to do tourist things in Vancouver and make our own way to the ship in the afternoon. How, and how early, can we give our luggage to the Regent representatives?

 

Thanks.

 

Hi we had Regent included hotel for a few nights last year in Vancouver. Our luggage had to be outside room door in morning of cruise and we walked to the ship as did many other guests. The luggage was taken by Regent to ship.

It did take a long time to board Mariner, longest we have ever taken. There was only 1 other ship in port that day, and dependant on how many ships are in port can make the length of time even longer. Jean.

jeb_bud, the issue that I had with luggage was in Miami. It obviously differs in other ports.

Still suggest that you speak to the Regent Representative after you check into the hotel.

Welcome to the Regent board.

 

When you take the bus (with your luggage) to the ship, your luggage will automatically be transferred for you. We once wanted to leave our luggage with them and take our own transportation and they said that this was not permitted. Likely this is a security issue -- they do not want someone getting luggage onto the ship when the passenger isn't accompanying it.

 

Vancouver is one of the most difficult places to embark (we just did it last month). Another option would be taking a taxi to the ship around 11:00 a.m. and dropping off your luggage. Not sure why this works but a friend of ours did that and was able to go into town and board at her leisure.

 

Note: I know that my comment about security in the second paragraph doesn't exactly match up with what I said in the third paragraph but sometimes the procedure don't exactly make sense.

 

My one recommendation is to keep in mind that it could take an hour and a half to get to the ship. Passengers from all ships in port are massed together into lines that go through different places including immigration. One past immigration you are with only Regent passengers so the lines suddenly disappear. So, make sure to leave yourself enough time.

 

P.S. IMO, May is the absolute best time to visit Alaska! Enjoy your cruise (as well as the anticipation of it over the next several months).

TC2, what you say is true, but it must be pointed out that Regent does not take attendance boarding the bus and does not know if you take it or not. In theory, you could say you were taking the bus, have Regent pick up your luggage, and then make your own way to the ship. Your luggage would still arrive at the ship in a separate conveyance.

 

Not that we would do that, of course. In fact, we get quite nervous any time the luggage is out of our sight . . .

We just boarded in Montreal a month ago and sent our luggage on the bus (picked up in our hotel room in the morning) while we walked to the ship.

 

 

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Thanks all for the helpful replies. This was just the information I was looking for.

 

I will be sure to check with the Regent representative when we arrive to make sure I understand the procedure.

 

Our only other cruise experience was a European river cruise on Scenic in 2015. I failed to read the instructions to leave our bags in the room. After lugging everything down to the lobby I finally found the CD who took care of us. This time I hope to make it easier on ourselves.

 

 

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It sounds as if the "key" to getting your luggage to the ship and not taking the bus is not to tell the Regent representative that you won't be on the bus. I would be a bit concerned about my luggage - just in case there is a check-off list to insure that people that are suppose to be traveling with their luggage are actually doing so. Due to enhanced security, there seems to be a lot of checking and double checking going on (and I agree with what is being done).

 

In any case, when we are in Miami in November, we will take our own luggage in a taxi when we go to the ship early (before the busloads of people arrive). If we wanted to go out, we'd get onto the ship at noon - get our keycard and walk back out again. Much easier that way and we know that the luggage will arrive on the ship.

We are on voyager now and one of our party took a tour through the destination tour company which ended at the ship in Barcelona. We tagged our luggage with the regent sticky tags, the hotel delivered it to a central point in the hotel from our rooms and it met us in our suite. No one even asked who was getting there , when or how. Have a lovely time. Our cruise has been a dream!

 

C

We embarked in Vancouver on August 30th. We had two lovely nights at the Pan Pacific hotel right at the port. The hotel porter came to our room at 9:00am and took our tagged bags so we were free as birds until embarking that afternoon. The next time we saw our bags they were in our suite. Great hotel and easy breezy!

 

 

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Apparently my mistake in Miami is telling them that I wasn't going to be going on the bus. They made a really big deal about it - had to call their supervisor, etc. Glad to know that it doesn't work that way if you shut your mouth:halo:

I mentioned our Montreal experience a few posts ago. We definitely let Regent know that we were not going to be on the bus; did not want them to expect and wait for us. We also let them know that we would send our luggage on the bus.

 

 

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Our Alaska cruise on Mariner(Vancouver to Seward) in May will be our first ocean cruise. We have a Concierge suite and have decided to use the pre-cruise hotel.

 

I know that the pre-cruise hotel includes baggage transfer to the ship. I'm curious about the mechanics of getting our luggage from our possession to Regent's. We plan to leave the hotel in the morning to do tourist things in Vancouver and make our own way to the ship in the afternoon. How, and how early, can we give our luggage to the Regent representatives?

 

Thanks.

 

Hi--we just did an Alaskan cruise on the Mariner about 2 weeks ago from Vancouver to San Francisco. We also had a concierge suite and stayed in the pre-cruise hotel for 2 nights (the Fairmont in our case). We went to the Regent desk the night before and told them the number of bags we would have (6) and were told to have them inside our room by the door by 9 am the next morning. We told them we would be walking to the ship ourselves (not taking the bus), and this was absolutely no problem. I believe that Regent had sent us 6 luggage tags to fill out in advance , so we had enough for our 4 pieces of luggage we had checked on the plane, as well as 2 pieces of hand luggage that we didn't want to take with us that morning sightseeing in Vancouver. We went sightseeing with a backpack with our passports, cruise documents and some other valuables, but we did place our laptop and iPads in our checked luggage since we didn't want to carry these all over Vancouver. They arrived in our Mariner cabin just fine later that afternoon.

 

I have had 2 instances on cruises where the stick-on luggage tags from the cruise ship have gotten separated from my luggage. One time, both the cruise tag and my own luggage tag got torn off somehow, and I wasn't reunited with my bag until 10 pm on the night of embarkation, which was really scary. I had to wear jeans to dinner so this was not an ideal start to our cruise. This time, after we filled out our Regent bag tags at home, we made color copies of them and cut them into strips so they looked like the original Regent tags but we now had 12 tags instead of 6. Before we left our baggage in the room at the Fairmont to be picked up, we put the 6 sticky tags around the luggage handles, but we also had brought packing tape which we used to tape a 2nd Regent luggage tag directly on to each of our suitcases. This gave me a little peace of mind in case my tags were ripped off again. All 4 suitcases and 2 carry-on type luggage arrived by 3 pm to our cabin. We boarded at around 2 pm so we would miss some of the Vancouver rush and were still able to enjoy a nice lunch outside by the pool when we arrived. Bon Voyage--it was fabulous!

lindsay_claire, how were things inside of the terminal where you go through line-ups with passengers from other cruise lines and then customs at 2:00 p.m.? It was horrible when we went through (enough to insure that we not board in Vancouver in the future).

Well, we have boarded in Vancouver several times. It is BAD, but we went EARLY, very early, and we always got on in a reasonable amount of time. Our neighbors were in line for four hours! LOL, I would rather go early and take turns being first than stand for four hours.

Travelcat2, it took us about an hour at 1:30 pm to get onto the ship. I think we missed a little bit of the rush by going later and we were eating lunch by about 2:40.

I hope you don't mind my asking this question here, but could someone speak to transfers from the airport to the per cruise hotel? I am curious about the following:

1) Will need to wait at the airport for other flights to arrive?

2) How to spot the regent representative (I assume they have a sign)?

3) When do we place the regent baggage tags on our luggage?

I hope you don't mind my asking this question here, but could someone speak to transfers from the airport to the per cruise hotel? I am curious about the following:

1) Will need to wait at the airport for other flights to arrive?

Not unless there are other flights coming in pretty close to your arrival time. I don't recall ever having to wait for other flights, at least not more than 15-20 minutes or so.

2) How to spot the regent representative (I assume they have a sign)?

You assume correctly. They'll be right inside the terminal right after you clear the arrivals area.

3) When do we place the regent baggage tags on our luggage?

We don't put our on until just before they pick them up. So usually the night before embarkation or very, very early the morning of (usually the night before, though).