Joanandjoe

This thread certainly heightens our anticipation of the food in Amsterdam when we're there from 11 to 14, August.  We love Indonesian food, and probably had it 5 times on our 3 previous trips to Amsterdam.  Now all we need to decide is which of our two booked hotels to choose:  Banks Mansion or Hotel JL # 76.  Both sound great, and both are near the museums and near one of the top Indonesian restaurants.

To clarify what a small group excursion is:

Many excursions are offered as normal size groups (mostly free) and small groups (with an additional charge).  Thus, small group tours are generally the same as included tours, but with fewer people.  

We have chosen several small group tours for our 8/14 Amsterdam to NYC cruise on the Navigator.  The ones for which we've chosen to pay extra are either walking tours with visits to "locals", our tours in which we have a very high interest, and want to be able to ask questions (archaeology in Kirkwall, Orkney, Scotland).

On 6/10/2019 at 3:17 PM, UUNetBill said:

Maybe for Navigator they'll bring back Signatures - voilà!

It's nice to dream about a different specialty restaurant than Prime 7: but why, then, did Regent take reservations for Prime 7 for our Amsterdam to NYC leg beginning 8/14?  In any event, by this time next week we'll be able to ask questions of the people boarding the ship in London.

April 16, 2020.   I got fooled by Sharon's 2019 date.

Excursions for 4/16/19 on the Splendor, NYC to Barcelona, are now listed on the web site and available as a PDF.

Thank you, Ine and Elf.

Elf, was your trip with Keytours simply tickets to the attractions or an acrual tour?  If it was a tour, did you have time on your own in the museums.  I would guess that Joan and I will spend a minimum of 3 hours each in Rijksmuseum and Van Gogh.  We are looking forward to seeing the Petronella Oortman doll house in the Rijksmuseum, and that might not even be on a guided tour.

Ine, we're not going to Anne Frank house anyway:  our two visits to date are sufficient.  Joan can walk up and down stairs slowly, and can walk 1 or 2 km.  I can walk about 10 km - in fact, I did so earlier today - but standing in lines for more than 10 minutes is painful due to a ligament problem.  That's why "skip the line" is more important to me than saving money.  

Thanks, Ine.  I knew about reservations needed for Anne Frank & Van Gogh, but didn't know they were necessary for the Rijksmuseum. Apparently, the cards are as confusing as they seemed when I researched them yesterday - that's why I decided to do a CC post.

I guess we still have more than 2 months to decide which card, if any, to choose.

Am I correct that few, if any, nuseums give discounts for seniors?  We are 74 and 72 years old.

We'll be in Amsterdam from 11 to 14 August, before we board our cruise on the 14th.  Usually, we buy some type of discount pass, and the choice is often easy.  For example, in both Stockholm and Copenhagen last year, we bought passes (Stockholm Card, Copenhagen card) that included 3 day attraction passes and public transit passes.  In Amsterdam, choices are much harder.  There are many passes, and none of them seems to include both transit and all of the attractions we want to see. We figure that, on a given day, our maximum sightseeing amounts are two museums and either a park or a tour (which, in Amsterdam, probably means  a walking or canal tour).  In effect, we have only two full days, since we'll be jet lagged on the 11th and will board our cruise on the 14th.

Skipping long lines is vital to us, since we both have some mobility impairments.  A pass that lets us skip the lines might be worth buying even if it costs more than the cost of individual attractions.

We've pretty much exhausted most of the attractions near the train station and Dam Square on our three previous trips to Amsterdam; but have barely touched Museumplein.  (Rijksmuseum was fully open only during our first trip in 1971.) Therefore, our "must dos" include a canal tour, Vondelpark, some concerts at the Grachten Festival, and the following museums (although we probably won't get to all of them):  Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh, Stedelijk, Jewish Quarter and (maybe) Hermitage.  We'll be staying near Museumplein; so a transit pass would be nice, but not essential.

Any suggestions?

On 5/30/2019 at 4:42 PM, JMARINER said:

Save your money.

 

You can go to this side for free. https://www.oceanweather.com/data/

 

Not only can you get mid ocean weather,  but also wave heights and wind speeds.

 

Jeff

Thank you for an additional web resource.  As for "save your money", I doubt that $4 or $5 is much of a price deterrent for people cruising on Regent.  Yes, a combination of your web site and the free portion of Cruise Outlook well give you a lot of information; but I can't see how the ocean weather web site will give me a prediction of the air temperature at the place where my cruise ship will be.  I sea surface temperature but not air temperature.

(Disclaimer:  I am a long time (2002) Cruise Critic member with over 2,000 posts.  I have no financial interest in Cruise Outlook:  I’m just someone who has found this to be a useful web site.)

For the past several years I have used a web site called CruiseOutlook.com for cruise weather forecasts.  For cruises on Oceania and Silversea, this was easy:  I simply clicked on the cruise line, then on my sailing, and there was a port by port forecast for the next week, excluding sea days.  For an extra $5 for four months, I was able to get 14-day forecast, including sea days.  For Regent, which was not covered by the web site, things were more complicated.  I had to create an itinerary port-by-port.

Good news!  I have corresponded with Cruise Outlook, and they have agreed to add Regent to their web site.  As of now, the site includes Regent cruises through July 3, with more to be added soon.  For example, the current May 26 Alaska cruise has forecasts through the June 5 end of the cruise, while the June 1 Explorer cruise around the British Isles has forecasts through June 6.  In both cases, the web site also shows other ships in port.  When I logged in with my premium membership, I was able to get a forecast through the end of the trip, including sea days.

In order to gauge interest in having Regent on the web site, Cruise Outlook is offering $1 off the normal $5 membership.  If you are interested, please use the coupon code REGENT2019.  The code expires on August 31, which effectively means that (if you time your membership correctly), your membership can go to the end of the year, and can cover multiple cruises on multiple cruise lines.

Thank you, Ine.  The web sites you gave us are what we were able to find before I posted my question.  The main concert is the night before we arrive, and only one concert is listed per night on the first web site,  The second web site has links that should open to show what concerts there are each day; but I can't open the links.  Is the Dutch language web site any better?  I'm trying to find "what's on" for 11, 12, 13 and (morning only) 14 August.

We will be in Amsterdam from 11 to 14 August, during the Grachten music festival.  The location of the events will be a factor in our choice of hotels (Hilton, Banks Mansion, or Hotel JL No. 76).  Sadly, the English language version of the festival web site is very user unfriendly, and we can't figure out when and where the concerts will take place.  Is the Dutch language web site helpful?  If not, is it simply too early to have a concert schedule for this August event?  Dank je.

MAVIP and Ine, we were planning on staying at Banks Mansion (and still have a reservation there); but we were able to reserve rooms at the Hilton for our 3 night stay for Hilton points plus a small amount of cash.  Based on the answers to dpw about how difficult transportation is from the Hilton, would you suggest saving the Hilton points for another trip, and using our reservations at Banks Mansion?  Thanks.

I will start a different post about the Grachten Festival, which will take place while we're in Amsterdam.

16 hours ago, JMARINER said:

I saw this done once on the Mariner. Was at least 15 years ago. The guy did it at an evening pool deck party. He set it up with the Cruise director in advance. They let him come up with the  band and make the "proposal" during the party. You could get real creative depending on the itinerary.

J

If I had done something like that with Joan when I proposed to her 52 years ago, she would have said NO, and that would have been the end of our relationship.  She would have been embarrassed, rather than thrilled, at a public proposal. Fortunately, I proposed to her in private, and she said yes.  We celebrated our 50th anniversary last year.  Still going strong, and our next Regent cruise will be in August.

Regent offers lots of romantic settings.  Choose to make your proposal in a place where your intended would be comfortable, such as a table for two in a specialty restaurant, or a place on land.  On one of my Regent cruises, someone on my roll call was going to propose on a Greek Island - possibly Santorini.  Fortunately or unfortunately, she looked at the roll call; so they ended up getting engaged before the trip and married on the Greek Island.  Think about it.

I agree with the comments above.  We've "done" Alaska pretty well on our HAL cruise and on our Regent cruise and (independent) cruise tour; but we haven't been to Glacier Bay.  If Regent goes there, it might cause us to book another Regent cruise to Alaska, assuming there is a forward open deck.

Before the site "improvements", it was easy to set the number of posts on display on each forum page.  We always chose 40 posts. since that was the maximum number allowed.  Now there seem to be 25 posts per page, which makes it harder to view long threads or see the most recent posts on our favorite forums.  Is there any way to change the display?

Fortunately, our time zone settings appear to be correct (US Eastern time zone), since we don't see how to change that either.  

Thanks

Thanks for the link, Flossie.  If it's for the main terminal, then the 8/14 Navigator cruise that we will be on with mj_holiday sails from that terminal. The listing is for 13/8, overnight and turnaround.  Joe

On 1/8/2019 at 9:01 AM, mj_holiday said:

We are getting on a Regent cruise in Amsterdam and looking at hotels etc.  Could someone tell me where the port is for the ocean ships??  Is it near the port for river boats?

We're on the same Amsterdam to NYC cruise as you, and would also like to know the answer, even though we won't be staying near the port.  (We want to be near the museums.)  Why not try asking this question on our roll call and on the British Isles / Western Europe Ports of Call board.

I believe there are two cruise ports:  one close to Centraal Station, one far away.  Maybe someone on the other two boards mentioned above knows the answer.

I think I know how restaurant reservations on the other ships work:  one reservation per segment (regardless of whether it's 7 or 20 days) per segment.  Each of the other ships has at least 2 specialty restuarents, and some have four.  The Navigator has only Prime 7.  Do we get more reservations because our August 14 Navigator cruise is a long trip (20 days) with only one specialty restaurant?

I must confess that I'm puzzled that the one specialty restaurant on the Navigator is Prime 7.  That made sense when Compass Rose had its old menu.  Now that you can get virtually all Prime 7 items at Compass Rose, with a choice of sauces and sides, what purpose does Prime 7 serve?    Any of the other specialty restaurants would seem to make more sense as the sole Navigator specialty restaurant, since you can get steak at Compass Rose any time you want it.  Joe

1 hour ago, Eager2Travel said:

We had a different experience last night.  When we went to our booking when excursions opened last night we were immediately able to see the excursions and book them.  None showed as full or waitlisted.  It all worked well for us at 9 pm PST.

Lucky you! That hasn't been our experience at Regent or its sister line, Oceania.  At 12:08, I was still getting every excursion as full.  Only at about 12:10 did the excursions show availability. As you'll see, someone on our roll call (also from CA) gave up at 9 pm Pacific time and booked early this morning. For someone who ordinarily goes to bed well before 11, the extra 10 minutes was a real hardship.  Joe

Excursions for my cruise next August opened at midnight this morning; and, as usual, it took a few minutes for the excursions to become available.  For those of you who are new to Regent, bear the following advice, taken from my roll call post this morning, in mind; and don't get frustrated if the process takes a while to begin:

"I should have warned everyone that the Regent site does odd things when excursions and dining become open.  At the stroke of midnight (9 pm the previous night Pacific time), you can click on the reserve excursions (or dining) link; but every excursion is shown as being full.  About 10 minutes later, at around 12:10 am, the excursions actually become available.  I simply kept hitting refresh until excursion availability magically appeared."    Joe 

Thank you, Ine.

14 hours ago, Ine said:

May I give a 3rd option, also check the Bank Mansion Hotel.

We've narrowed our choices for next August to Banks Mansion, Hotel JL No. 76, and (because of points) the Hilton and Marriott.  On this, our 4th trip to Amsterdam, our focus during our 2 or 3 days will probably be the 3 museums on the Museum Plain, the Jewish (4 synagogues) museum, and a canal boat trip, since we've done Dam Square and the Anne Frank House pretty thoroughly and don't want to go near the red light district .  We've basically eliminated the Hilton because it seems too inconvenient for what we want to do.  Do you have thoughts on the locations of the other 3 hotels?  Thanks.  Joe

We're excited to be in the process of booking a NYC to Barcelona cruise (4/16/20) on the Splendor. Anything that starts or ends at the New York docks, less than 10 miles from our house, is a big plus; and a new ship is an even bigger plus. We love Transatlantics!

We've been on Navigator, Voyager, and Mariner multiple times, and have a 20 day cruise on Navigator next August. We haven't yet booked Explorer. Somehow, we haven't yet found the right combination of itinerary, dates, and prices for Explorer. Maybe in 2021.

We were on the same cruise as Flydc and Sequay, although we never met them. We've written a lengthy review of the cruise, which we rated as three stars; but it hasn't yet been posted by CC. Maybe in the next day or two.

We are quite surprised by their comments on several of the restaurants. If there were pool deck buffets, we might have enjoyed them - but communication was so poor that we never heard about them. As for the pizza restaurant, Scaccanapoli, I guess the other two were lucky, while we were unlucky. We came into the restaurant a bit after 3:30 (so the grill was closed), and said "we're very hungry: how long will it take?" They said 10 minutes, and didn't mention that they had ice cream. (We found that out on the next to last day of the cruise, when Joan ordered ice cream at the grill and they went up to Spaccanapoli to get it.) After 20 minutes, we asked "where's the pizza", and were told that a large group had ordered just before us. We looked around a pillar, and saw a group of 11 people eating pizza. Why didn't they tell us either about the group or about the ice cream? We finally got the order after 35 minutes, and it was incorrect. The pizza margarita was burned, and they brought a ham pizza when we had ordered mushroom. Inedible for us! In short, other than food allergy foul-ups (which we also had on this cruise), Spaccanapoli was quite possibly the worst food experience, both in service and food, we've ever had on a cruise ship. We did not try it a second time.

While I'm happy that other people had good experiences at Spaccanapoli, our awful experience shouldn't have happened on a luxury cruise ship.