Thank you so much for posting this review. We are booked on the 33 day cruise Auckland-Singapore in Jan 24 and have been debating whether to cancel or not following the debacle this year. We assume that lessons will have been learned and the same thing won't happen again and, so far, have decided to proceed with it. The excursions, though, are a worry. We have never been to this part of the world before and would like to make the most of it through excursions and if they are a bust, then it will be disappointing to say the least.
Excursions aside, I enjoyed reading your review. We have been on several Regent cruises, and would agree that the weak link is always the excursions. Often it isn't a deal breaker as we have the opportunity to revisit/re-do ports where excursions have been disappointing, and we have done this many times, but this is probably not an option when we have to travel 24 hours to get to the embarkation port!
I'd also agree about the entertainment, although I don't think it's any better or worse than other ships we've sailed on.
We, too, used to sail 'old' Crystal and will probably try the new Crystal. There were many aspects of Crystal we enjoyed, with the lectures/speakers being high on the list, but in our opinion the accommodations and ships generally were showing their age and we do enjoy the general ambience and decor of the 2 new Regent ships.
Anyway, enjoyed reading your review and pretty much agreed with all of your comments about Regent.