pappy1022

Crystal hit the sweet spot for us prior to COVID. Their Asian restaurant was by far the best dining experience at sea on any cruise line. I haven’t tried them since their rebirth. I would agree with others that the steaks on Regent are subpar. It felt strange to me that the filet’s in Compass Rose were better than in Prime 7. I am itinerary driven and don’t go back to the same region, at least for a cruise, so I am not tied to any cruise line. 

Flossie, maybe Regent should hire you to be the chair hog lieutenant. 😀 You obviously have great detective and surveillance skills. Regent doesn’t seem to care about enforcing their own policy. 

Tasha, please do provide some details of your experience. Ignore some of the insensitive comments that you received as a result of your posting. It’s the norm on this chat board. For others, we want to hear the specifics to better understand what happened and how Regent responded to those issues. “Stuff” happens and when it does, the truly customer oriented companies rise up to make it right. My problems that I encountered on my recent Regent cruise are minor compared to what you experienced but I felt the lack of empathy from the management team. By the way, before people ask me to detail the issues I encountered, they are well documented on one of my previous postings. You can look it up.

And maybe some real duds. It’s a crap shoot.

15 hours ago, Pcardad said:

If you wear a shirt with a collar, you are fine.

Yep. They care less about the pants and the shoes. I’ve seen people with sneakers but a collared shirt, so they pass the test.

Agree that there are plenty of options within the Regent dress code. It’s not a big deal to bring clothes that are comfortable just for the evening. If you want to dress up, go for it. If you don’t want to dress up just follow the basic rules. No one needs to look up or down at anyone who follows the rules. 

I will add that the credit that Regent was offering to arrange my own flights from Austin to Copenhagen and return from London to Austin on our recent cruise wasn’t enough to warrant taking the credit. The credit was almost enough to book a coach ticket with extra legroom, not anywhere near the cost for me to book my own business class seats. The moral of the story is that it all depends and you should look at both options to see what works best for you. If you do use Regent’s air, definitely use the air deviation process to be able to get the best itinerary for flights.

In line once for Compass Rose, I heard the gentleman in front of us being told that a collared shirt was required but the Regent person told him that he couldn’t stop him from being served in CR. It sounded like a suggestion not a hard fast rule. The man’s shirt was very classy and looked expensive and he politely apologized and went and changed his outfit to comply with the dress code. In another situation, there was a different man that didn’t have a collared shirt but he didn’t care. It didn’t bother me but I couldn’t believe the amount of disgusted stares that guy got from other tables. Regent doesn’t seem to want to enforce their rules, so some people will always try to push the envelope. Yes, I am talking to you chair hogs. 

Despite the negative comments on other boards about PG, I am sticking to my decision to cruise with them in 2025. A lot has changed in the cruise industry, and travel industry as a whole, after COVID. Even the ultra luxury cruise lines are struggling to provide the level of service to pre COVID standards, because of cost cutting (paying for large debt), staff turnover and a shortage of workers, etc., etc. My choice did boil down to PG and Windstar because they are smaller ships that are in the FP year round. Can’t wait for our cruise next year.

Conform to the dress code and I don’t care if it’s fancy or basic. I will not judge a person based on the clothes they wear. Personally, I don’t want to wear a suit or tux on a cruise.

Actions speak louder than words so stay tuned. Regent had a policy in place that they didn’t enforce. This shouldn’t take long to come up with a new solution so hopefully we will see changes very soon. 

What is the cost of these pre and post cruise options? The website doesn’t give that information.

Not for the final survey. I should have been more clear.

If Regent was truly o interested in what we think, you would expect them to give us multiple options for providing feedback. The fact that they don.t, says it all.

13 hours ago, sofa.king said:

We've sailed all the mainstream lines like NCL, Royal, Carnival, Princess, Holland.  Two adults and two kids 11 and 13.

We're not into dressing up and the kids are decently well behaved.  How much more upscale is Oceania, Regent, Azamara, Seabourn and the other luxury lines.  Would we be eye-sores as passengers?  Should we even care about what other think?  We prefer a more laid back vacation, but some of the itineraries on these luxury lines are very enticing, especially for my teen.

I wouldn’t give a flip what others think as long as your kids are well behaved. You will get some folks that look at you sideways because they think Regent is reserved for adults only, but it isn’t. Fortunately, those are the minority and probably the same folks who reserve pool lounges at 5 AM and don’t show up for hours. Not sure what your itinerary is but I would consider private tours for the family to get the most out of your time on shore. Some of the Regent tours are very good but others spend a lot of time sitting on a bus looking out the window. Read the tour descriptions carefully. Regent doesn’t require ties and jackets just something like Khakis and a collared shirt so It isn’t formal. 

16 hours ago, edgee said:

Unfortunately my transatlantic TA itinerary has been modified substituting Nassau instead of Bermuda. That lessens my daily enjoyment by a little bit, but still looking forward to our cruise! Thanks for kind words!

Again, why the anger and angst?

On 3/30/2024 at 8:53 PM, edgee said:

Wow, must really be awful if you would base your decision to cruise or not based on whether they will still be on the ship! We embark tomorrow on the Splendor TA. Will ask them and get back to you. (should we stop at CVS and get some ear plugs on our way to the ship?) 😁

Why? 

I booked my June 2025 PG cruise in October 2023 and I haven’t seen a better price for that cruise and I look occasionally. So I would agree, the earlier the better.

Yes

I tried email them with no reply from them

I’ve been reading mixed information on this topic and looking for an answer from those who have been on a cruise to FP recently.

Regent’s reputation is on the line every time they sail on every ship. So the comments weren’t directed at Explorer but at Regent. I would have been livid if I was on that specific cruise because that would have been a once in a lifetime cruise given the distance and the cost. 

CruisetheC’s, that is exactly the answer. Give people a choice. The more feedback, the better, if you really are serious about it. I’ve been around surveys where it’s just a gesture with the hopes of giving the illusion that they care. Other times, the surveys are taken serious and actions are taken and those actions are communicated to the customers or employees. There is nothing worse than pretending you care when you don’t. 

What’s the phone number? I don’t want to talk to someone in sales or customer service. We need someone who can make a difference and hopefully someone who cares.

On 3/22/2024 at 3:01 PM, RELS said:

 

It's even worse than you think. There is no email link to the survey. You have to go to a specific website to fill out the survey. You need your seven seas society number to create an account. Then you log in and do the survey on that website. That website is only accessible on board.

 

The URL for the special website is listed in the Passages newsletter starting maybe three days before the end of the cruise. It's in one of the picture "ads" in Passages. You have to type it in by hand.

 

Regent would be hard-pressed to make it any more difficult to do the end-of-cruise survey.

 

(I still haven't figured out if my SSS-associated survey account sticks around once I created it, or if I have to create a new account for every cruise.)

I don’t understand why any business who really cares about customer feedback and continuous improvement wouldn’t want to make it easy and convenient to provide honest feedback  It would be a very easy process change to allow feedback once you are off the ship and have a chance to reflect.