jeb_bud

The items you asked about in your 2nd paragraph are all included. Also a steam room IIRC.

What did you buy with the OBC? We just booked the 8 day Douro cruise in June of 2025. A Royal Suite was available and we decided to book it. We have a €250 OBC coming. I wonder if I can use it in the gift shop. Also I saw a $187pp discount on my booking confirmation. I wonder if that was our previous cruiser discount.

For our June cruise our reservation shows Fairmont Vancouver.

You don’t need to pay a fee to take the air credit. If you don’t want to use Regent Air just call your TA and tell them you don’t want the included air and they will update your booking, and your cruise price will go down by the amount of the credit. there is probably a deadline to make that decision but I don’t know what it is.

What hotel did you choose?

We are working on a Southampton to Southampton cruise. We will probably be arriving in London two days before embarkation. We are planning to book a F1 Suite now that we are SS Gold and will get multiple wifi logins. However, after glancing at some hotel prices in London the premium for Cat E might not be as much as I thought it would be after factoring in the hotel and transfer. I did some searching and scanned a year of topic titles and I didn't find much information about pre-cruise hotels in London or Southampton. Where are the pre-cruise hotels for Southampton departures, London or Southampton? What hotels did Regent put you in and what was your impression? I will appreciate any advice you can provide.

My wife brewed tea using hot water from the espresso machine. There was a thread a year or two ago that included mention of a passenger asking for and receiving a kettle. It sounded like kind of a rare event but if you ask the answer might be Yes.

Your best resource might be your wife and daughter. The main difference between Splendor and Explorer dining is the sculpture at the entrance to Pacific Rim. If they are in all the restaurants on their Alaska cruise last year they also had the Splendor experience.

If they have the larger pods onboard you can also make a cup of coffee with the coffee makers on Explorer and Splendor.

Thanks for the link. It looks like a useful app but I feel for those with one login per suite.

New Regent app?? Will it be on Grandeur? Is there a link to learn about it?

Thanks for the replies. The videos were very helpful. As I read the excursion descriptions I was envisioning more of an open water experience. Seeing the videos relieved some uneasiness and helped us choose the dolphin swim.

We're cruising Los Angeles to Miami on the Grandeur in January. We just got notified that the excursion we had booked in Grand Cayman has been canceled so we need to pick something else. We are zeroing in on a dolphin and stingray encounter excursion. One of our choices is all wading with both the dolphins and stingrays while the other includes actual swimming with the dolphins. In my youth I was a diver but age and health issues have made that harder. I can still paddle around with a mask and snorkel but I think serious diving with fins is beyond me now. My question is for anyone who has been on the Dolphin Swim & Stingray Sandbar excursion. How much swimming is there and what equipment is needed? The description mentions wearing a snorkeling mask for increased visibility. Is that a mask and snorkel? And how intense is the activity? One last thing. The Dolphin Swim and Dolphin Encounter(wading) are both five-hour excursions and both start at the same time. It makes me wonder if the excursions take place in parallel but with different dolphin experiences. I would be happy with low intensity snorkeling but DW doesn't snorkel. We want to go together but separating for the dolphin segment would be easy enough if we got back together for the stingrays. Any (helpful) input appreciated.

I was on the cruise before this one. We were on deck 8 and although we didn’t have any plumbing problems I saw repair work being done elsewhere on our corridor. There were several notices in Passages on Page 2 or 3 reminding us to be careful what we put in the toilets.

We didn’t have any problems ourselves but we saw some plumbers with drain snakes and drying fans from time to time on deck 8 starboard during the last Montréal to New York cruise.

In your original post I read Voyager needing a refresh and Starlink as two separate points, in addition to the regional conflict. In my high school grammar classes the word “and” at the end of a comma-delimited sentence served as a final comma.

I saw a ATM-like machine on Mariner a couple of weeks ago, but I just noticed it as I was giving myself a tour on embarkation day.

We’ve sailed on Voyager once, earlier this year, in a Penthouse. I won’t argue with any of Lonedaddy’s issues but I will say that the only item on his list I really considered to be a weakness was the tiny shower. We assume there will be a lack of plugs where we want them so we bring multi-port chargers and multi-outlet extension cord on all cruises. I like the intimacy of the smaller specialty dining venues on Voyager.

I don’t know that they’re throttling. It just seems suggestive when every time I run Speed Test I get very similar results. But in answer to your question it would make the up charge for the “streaming service” more attractive.

How does StarLink affect your decision? I’m just ending a cruise on Mariner which now has StarLink. They appear to have the basic internet throttled to about 1Mbps but it has been consistent.

We have used Regent Air for two cruises, one pre and one post-COVID. We deviated both times choosing United/Star Alliance. We got our Mileage Plus miles both times.

We're getting off in New York. We wouldn't mind the chance to experience some warmer weather but it's not to be this time.

We had that happen on our current cruise. We had booked a non-sharing table in Prime 7 on embarkation night and when we got there is was a sharing table. It turned out great though, we were paired with a very nice couple and as we started talking we realized that we had been conversing on the roll call before the cruise. It was a very enjoyable experience.

Boarded Mariner on Friday. There's a new-design tote bag. So far I think I like it.

That’s interesting…. In May on Voyager in a PH we had the best internet we have had since our first Regent cruise on Mariner in 2018. Explorer in 2019 and Splendor in 2022 were abysmally horrible. Voyager by comparison was wonderful. Obviously YMMV. We’re boarding Mariner this Friday and looking forward to giving Starlink a try. I agree that the shower in a Voyager PH is tiny although ours did have both a regular and hand shower. No USB ports but really, who doesn’t carry chargers?