Shy and Retiring

Thanks for the tips. We have learned some of that traveling Oceania, which has a guarantee. The only problem is when. 9:00;is probably going to piss off the good humor man. On the other hand, doing without specialty dining is no the end of the world. We, too, love Jacques, and usually manage to worm our way in at least four times on any of their cruises more than 14 days with a little flexibility. We also love Seaborne 24/7 caviar. There must be people who eat more than we do, but not sure how.

Really looking forward to meeting you at the meet and mingle.

Saildude: not looking for reasons to be unhappy. Quite the opposite. But seems I’m not the only one a little unhappy with this particular problem. Admittedly this is our first time on regent, but we’ve done a lot of cruising on small ships. Regent was supposed to be the op of the line, but it isn’t if you’re treated like a second class citizen. And it sounds like the competition is building even amongst those of silver, titanium, or whatever.

Travel at 2: I’m surprised you mention having similar difficulties on Oceania. We’ve done multiple trips on them, and, with exception of top class suites have booked whole range of cabins. Irrespective of cabin class, never experienced problems.

As to this, we eventually worked out our shore excursions, some on our own. It was just a shock to find everything gone.

Ps: I am going to be real unhappy if I find all dining reservations are pre-booked.

I appreciate what you are telling me, but it would have been nice to have this discrimination, for I can think of it as nothing less, beforehand. We might have chosen to either upgrade our suite, or go with either Seaborne or Oceania.

Thanks. We did get online the instant we could. Unfortunately, we forgot east coast/west coast time differential. But even still my husband was online first thing in the morning. And we were told the problem was not that we hadn’t gotten up early enough but that they were long gone to the higher category suites. Not exactly what I wanted to hear. But everyone seems so reassuring.

I’m thinking we’ve got everything covered at this point, but still distracted by fire damage and insurance problems, coupled with organizing hospital release (been here three weeks now) with aftercare.

Will check things out later this weeks. But I really appreciate the info from you more experienced regent passengers. We tend to sail Oceania and Seaborne.

Think we pretty much have our shore excursions worked out. Finally. But this is the first time we’ve sailed with Regent, and it was the angst of the whole thing. We spent an entire weekend trying to book our own excursions. No one told us they would probably open up more. And why do it that way! It made us feel like steerage, and at these prices I don’t think we should. We nearly cancelled the whole thing, and probably would have except for the ancillary stuff we’d already booked.

Being booked for the cruise with Explorer from LA to Miami (Panama Canal) on March 9/2019, we started booking the included excursions on August 2 and were confronted with the fact that several were already sold out - 7 full months in advance. Of course this is very disappointing and we wonder whether this is always like this with these so-called included excursions? Did anyone else experience the same? Could it be that big TAs get assigned large contingencies in advance, thus leaving the smaller TAs behind?

Maybe, you know more about it...

Similar problem on our cruise scheduled in Africa in December. My husband was up at 6:00 am, time their shore excursions opened for our cabin category opened. About 1/2 hour later he came back to tell me that ALL our selections, for most of which there was an additional charge anyway*, Er sold out. When I caked to complain, they said well, the higher priced cabins had had access to these bookings for 60 days, and what did I expect. At these prices, there’s nothing like being treated like steerage. So we spent an entire weekend try g to book tours ourselves. now eventually they did open up some other tours, and we were able to fill in. Interestingly this as not really advertised and I discovered it by fluke.. But had we not had other reservations (eg ROVOS RAIL to Victoria Falls) and court calendars cleared we would have cancelled the whole thing. I’m still concerned about whether we’re going to be treated like second class citizens once on board