Golfess

We were told it was too late to change. We booked our cruise late. Yes, we are lucky we had insurance, but it just seemed wrong to me that insurance had to pay for a problem that could have been easily avoided with a reasonable itinerary.

But we didn't get our air itinerary until much later.

About 60 days.

Absolutely agree. On previous cruises, when we booked our own air, we ALWAYS traveled at least a day prior to embarkation.

Yes, but we were less than 210 days out.

I don't understand "booking by default a day prior to embarkation". Regent booked air the day of embarkation and we were told we had no option to change or deviate or get a credit in order to fly the day prior.

Just catching up on some of these informative posts. And, yes, I understand that a refund from insurance provides more flexibility. But, given that we had no option to deviate (cruise booked late) and were stuck with a bad Regent itinerary, I think it is wrong that insurance had to pay up instead of Regent.

Agree. We have now learned not to book cruises that include airfare. And, if we do, we will be sure that we book the cruise early enough so we can pay the up-charge to change to a day earlier. In this case, we booked the cruise too late to have any options - so we had to go with what they offered.

Nothing. We wrote them multiple times, finally telling them we wouldn't use Regent again, and still nothing. We were shocked. We were fortunate we had insurance. I ended up thinking that Regent didn't care that we missed the cruise - two less people to house and feed. And Regent kept the fare while the insurance company paid the price.

Very helpful. Thank you.

Would love the name of your TA if that is possible to do on this forum. I don't see any option for a private message.

An experienced Regent cruiser can give you a definitive answer here (or perhaps Regent). But I do know that you need to be outside a time window even to make a change in their itinerary. We missed that deadline by the time they gave us the 2nd bad itinerary, so we were stuck - unless we paid for our own air entirely without any credit from Regent. Good luck.

Righto! Lesson learned. We'll always book our own flights going forward - as we have done previously. Not only is it less stressful to get to your embarkation destination ahead of time, but also a chance to explore one more location. In any case, it won't be on Regent.

Great suggestion. You can see that we have not used this forum much. I think the only previous time was when we were preparing for our first cruise (Azamara Baltic, which was fabulous). Based on the helpful comments in this forum, I will always check in here before we plan our travel. Our next is Windstar (Scotland/Norway), so I'll be heading to those forums before we book air or excursions!

Thank you. I think you captured our situation accurately. We had high expectations, reasonable or not, and now Regent has lost a customer.