jeb_bud

We were in a Penthouse on Splendor in July, and there were binoculars and a speaker in the room. While I was in COVID jail my wife was moved to a Concierge suite. When I was released I went to her room to let her know I would be joining her on the day’s excursion. I noticed the binoculars on a shelf. You should be good to go this winter.

I think the Gold status benefits go to the occupants of the room and not the booker, so you would still receive “entry level” benefits in your room even if your mom booked it. You definitely want to make use of the Ambassador program to get some discounts on your fares. Most of the Penthouse suites on Voyager are larger than the Concierge suites, which might be the biggest selling point for the three of you. We have been on two cruises in Concierge and one in a Penthouse. We found that the value of the butler is dependent on how much “use” you make of his services. The room stewards in a Concierge suite provide almost all of what we got from our butler, but then we didn’t ask for many services beyond what we had on the earlier cruises. we have only cruises Regent so we can’t compare it to mass market cruising but I suspect the difference between your other cruises and Regent will be bigger than between categories on Regent.

Don’t know about AAdvantage but we do get mileagePlus miles for our United flights. When you log into the airline website to select seats make sure to add your frequent flyer number.

Last time I checked the Suite Amenities list for Concierge included binoculars. The Bluetooth speaker doesn’t appear until Penthouse. We upgraded to Penthouse in July and never used the speaker. We usually had the TV tuned to the bow cam or map and just listened to the Muzak.

We normally self-insure too. Before our Splendor cruise in July I bought a partial-cruise policy to get some medical coverage along with trip interruption coverage in case we tested positive at disembarkation and had to quarantine before returning home. Not long after the disembarkation testing requirement was discontinued. I did come down with COVID and was prescribed Paxlovid along with cold/allergy type meds. The cost was $800 for the Paxlovid. No charge for the medical service or OTC pills. So assuming insurance eventually comes through with reimbursement I paid $600+ And the hassle of dealing with the insurance company to get back $800. I did not submit a claim for trip interruption. I knew the risk going in and still made the final payment. My wife tested negative and with my encouragement moved to another suite and enjoyed solo cruising until I was cleared.

Thanks for the link Lonedaddy. The site says I need 60 minutes for the connection. I'm not sure I completely believe that but with a scheduled 135 minutes I should have some leeway.

The itinerary I’m looking at is Turkish Air into LHR and United from LHR to DEN. I will have to do a little research on which terminals will be used. We will be in Business Class which should help a little. the good news is that it will be a homeward bound trip so I really don’t care if our luggage arrives with us as long as it does eventually arrive.

We're booked on an Athens to Istanbul cruise in May. We have a use it or lose it air credit that we don't want to lose so we'll be taking the Regent air credit and booking our own flights. Getting from home to Athens is looking pretty good with reasonable connection times in Denver and Toronto with a good arrival time. My favorite flight home is through LHR with a 2.25 hour connection. We don't put anything in our checked luggage that we need at home right away so I don't mind if our luggage gets waylaid, but of course I don't want to miss our connection during that long trip home. What experiences have y'all had connecting through LHR lately? Thanks for any wisdom you can provide.

We found both the bottles and the ship’s water to be just fine. It’s clearly a matter of personal taste. Our Baltic cruise was in cool weather so our water didn’t have a chance to get hot. We might feel different on a tropical cruise.