CruiserFromMaine

Sadly for us, but great for him, Gino has retired from cruise work and taken a new land-based job. He’s missed!

Yes. We’re 0 for 2 on getting there. Third time’s a charm? That sounds like a wonderful turn of events!

Great show on the Grandeur last night—Ignite the Night. There have been some grumbling about the production shows featuring too much Broadway or 1940-1960s music. This one was much more contemporary with great dancing and music from Styx and Bon Jovi to Bruno Mars and Walk the Moon and also featuring the incredible Regent Orchestra. Really well done!

We had a great lunch in Prime 7 today. I had the shrimp and grits, the fried chicken, and the lemon meringue dessert. It was delicious and paired with a nice rosé we didn’t know about but heard another couple order next to us. No photos, I’m afraid. Nice breakfast in CR today too. We went to the interdenominational church service yesterday afternoon for Easter, in the theater. Photo below. That was a nice touch added by Regent. Enjoying life on Regent!

Well, we missed the CC gathering yesterday—there another one April 4, I believe. We’re having a wonderful time as well. Treating Aruba and Bonaire as in-port sea days. Up early and hang out on the pool deck. We had dinner in La Veranda last night and thought it was very good. So far, we’ve dined in Pacific Rim, Compass Rose, Prime 7 and La Veranda. All have been excellent, although service was a little slow in Prime 7 (>2 hours). We met a wonderful couple, Ed and Judy, and had dinner with them twice already. I had a very good pre-dinner cocktail in the Observation Lounge yesterday—the Not Old Fashioned. Delicious! 🥃 Sorry, no food porn…but here is drink porn with the Not Old Fashioned.

Yes, he’s back on.

MarineTraffic. It works best when ships are close to shore but it’s good for what it does.

The Grandeur is at Terminal J this morning, just like our boarding pass says. Five other big ships in port too!

We’re in Fort Lauderdale now. We arrived yesterday and just dodged a storm back home with 5-6” of snow but worse was freezing rain and ice combined with winds that knocked down tees and took our power lines. Power was off for 12 hours but back on now. We’re looking forward to this cruise. Our first Regent cruise was about a year ago on the Splendor and we loved it! I’m calling this our “Crockett and Tubbs” cruise from the two Miami Vice detectives; Crockett from Miami and Tubbs from New York. @Zqueeze1, I’ll chime in too once in awhile if you don’t mind!

Best wishes to you!

We were in 9019 and had some “sound leakage” from our neighbors, and they weren’t yelling either. For us, it wasn’t much. But I also wonder what our neighbors hear from us, our TV, etc. We also had issues with the lack of air conditioning cooling in our room, despite having it worked on twice.

We’re on deck 5 on the Dawn in June in Norway. Good to hear it’s a winner in your book!

We never sailed on the American Queen but we were on the Countess twice. It is quite pretty ship and new, even if the “bones” of it are not. Our middle of the road cabin was large, especially for a river boat and there was plenty of space in the public areas; the bar got a little crowded before dinner, but I’ve seen worse on ocean cruising ships.

There was a CVS within a few minutes’ walk.

Yes, an extensive one. Location was good, and it has to be better if they’ve finished the work.

We stayed at the AKA Brickell in Jan 2023, and they were still working on it. It was kind of a mess. Also the transport to the ship was disorganized and late. We’ve sworn off Regent hotels and transport for now. We’ll take any credit and book our own, or book a lower category. We did the latter on our next two cruises.

After 7.1K posts here you should know that threads wander. We even see posts complaining about other posts sometimes.

As far as I can tell, Crystal hasn’t even ordered any new ships yet. And getting financing for new ships will be difficult if the current ships aren’t full. I suspect new ships are at least four years away for Crystal.

There are still two of their ships tied up in Portland, Maine. The Ocean Voyager and Ocean Navigator. Too bad to hear of their downward spiral and now demise. We had two nice cruises on them.

Actually, one nice blazer will suffice. Nobody will notice if it’s the same one, other than the two of you. We can’t really compare the two since our cruise on SB was seven years ago. We do like SS, though, and Regent.

Interesting as that is often the approach (to have the gala on shore) but the Regent WC gala was on the ship with the same menu in all restaurants. I think I’d prefer on shore, since I’d be seeing enough of the ship coming up but maybe it makes for an easier experience for the pax to just get on board and stay on. I’m looking forward to hearing all about it!

That makes way more sense than how Crystal handled it. I hope you enjoy it all!

Are you technically on the world cruise now, but the pre-cruise gala is in LA? We were on the first segment of a world cruise on Crystal from Miami to LA and that’s how they did it so I’m curious. Thanks!

I’d love to follow along! Are you blogging here or elsewhere?

Thanks, now I know.