Joanandjoe

How was the cruise? Was it impacted by the low water levels of the river, or was it OK for the northern part where you sailed? How did you get between St. Louis and Alton, and between Red Wing and either the airport or one of the Twin Cities? Yes, we're aware that the cruise is actually Red Wing to St. Paul. We'll be staying at the ACL Hotel, the Hotel St. Paul, and ACL is supposed to get us to the ship. At the St. Louis end, our friend will pick us up in Alton. I'm hoping that ACL will alter its normal departure times so that we can see fireworks. We are, as you stated, going downstream.

We are looking forward to our 4th ACL cruise on the American Symphony, 6/20/23 to 7/7/23, from St, Paul to Sr. Louis. We've booked our flights and hotels (including the "free" night pre-cruise in St. Paul before the cruise and 3 nights in St. Louis, where a good friend lives, after the cruise). We've even renewed our Global Entry cars, which include TSA pre-check, for what will be our first flights anywhere since August, 2019. All of our vacations since 8/19, including an ACL Chesapeake Bay cruise, have involved driving rather than flying. We suspect that Davenport, Iowa may be the highlight of the trip, since we hope to see the Field of Dreams during the day and a July 4th celebration sometime while we're in port. (This year, though, the fireworks and air show were on July 3rd, not the 4th.) Will anyone be sailing with us?

Interesting. Regent used to use wireless headsets, which worked well on Regent and on my two recent trips with Road Scholar. "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Don't they know that many seniors, including the two of us, are not enamored of app-based technology? Regent cruisers include a lot of seniors.

We're puzzled. We both have old LG (which doesn't make smartphones anymore) Android smart phones, which we only bought after our flip phones were no longer supported. We've never even tried to use headphones with them. We will soon replace the phones with 5G phones. Is Regent telling us that we need to buy headphones or wireless equivalents as well, even though we have absolutely no use for headphones under normal circumstances? No, we're not luddites; but we only buy technology that we need. If we're walking or driving, we don't want to have headphones to distract us. J & J

Did you post your review on the SS board? Of so, I wouldn't be surprised to find people attacking ("flaming") you for your unfavorable review.

Silversea has many itineraries that are more interesting than Regent itineraries, so we hoped to add Silversea to our favorites.. Therefore, in 2018 we took a Scandinavia cruise on the Silver Spirit that had one of the best itineraries we've ever sailed, to places on both the Swedish and Finnish sides of the seldom-visited Gulf of Bothnia, As shown in the attached review (the CC link had expired, so this is a Word Document), the ports were great, but Silversea was a huge disappointment. For cruises not wholly within the US (American Queen and American Cruise lines, with Viking an added starter), we'll stick to Regent. Silver Spirit Review July 2018.doc

I'm glad you asked, and got the positive answer you wanted. As Joan likes to say: "not asking is an automatic no." Joe

They might or might not be helpful; but it never hurts to call the ACL office. If they can't get you your excursions, maybe they can put you on a waitlist. Joe