Wendy The Wanderer

My advice is to bow out of the included Air, take the credit and book your own air. Since your cruise is next year you should have plenty of time for that.

I've seen it confirmed on the "other" site that Starlink is in fact up and running on Mariner. This was confirmed by Mike from Regent (can't remember his last name.) He said that Grandeur would have Starlink running from its first cruise, the rest of the fleet sometime in 2024.

is the tram open? If so you can take it to the Sultanahmet and then just walk around to the sites.

Agreed. I also think that the PG cabins are perfect. Very well planned and laid out.

They've been doing it this way for over 20 years. We have taken their air a few times, not many, but only with a deviation to fly in the day before. For example, if we had been flying from Toronto to Fort Lauderdale (back in the day when Radisson sailed from there), I would look at the cost of flights, then look at the air credit, and factoring in the deviation fee ($75 then), we would decide what to do. Or when we were flying one way home to Florida from Ecuador after debarking in Lima, we found that Regent got us good Biz seats that couldn't be beat privately, so we did that. Have also done a few points flights. That being said, to the OP, live and learn, but how awful for you. In retrospect, you could have just refused their flights and booked your own, and swallowed the air credits they wouldn't give you. Sorry it left a bad taste in your mouth--Regent is wonderful in many ways.

A local dive shop would be best, then you can try on the masks. Years ago I got one that had two different lenses, a plain one and a different one for my single myopic eye--worked out great.

It's been a weird year. Lots of very warm weather, and dry. The wildfire smoke apparently has also affected the trees' cycle.

Us to Richard. Sad, but then not sure we'll cruise again anyway.

The first PG we did was a 7-day, but we did a 4-night pre-cruise to an island. That's a compromise. I do like the 10 and 11-day itineraries, however. Or you could do a b2b with 2 7-day cruises (something that we've done.) The Society Islands as a whole are the most interesting and satisfying, and can be done twice easily (we've done 4 7-nights over the years). The Tuamotus are good for snorkeling and diving. The Marquesas are very remote and are beautiful and mysterious, but hard to get to. Almost all the cabins on the PG are small. Most cabins are the C balconies, just marginally larger than the window or porthole cabins, so we tended to do the window cabin. They are very well laid-out. Bathrooms are small. The A and B penthouses on the same deck as the pool deck (8?) are nice, a wee bit bigger, but otherwise probably not worth the price except for the location and the butler, and the few "named cabins" are bigger but probably underwhelming to anyone used to a named suite on Regent. Frankly, we spent very little time in the cabins on the PG, because there's nice outdoor common areas on the ship.

I think doing FP on Navigator would be pretty nice. I'd miss the Gauguines, of course.

Alas, I followed all the threads of those who were "worked over" by Ponant when the pandemic was declared in 2020. Very shabby business practices, and enough for us to say, reluctantly, "never again". Background: we've been on the PG four times while under Regent, 5 if you count a b2b as separate cruises. Plus we were on her twice under the later ownership (Richard, uh, I forgot his name--owner of the Intercontinental in Papeete.) So this ship had been our absolute favourite since the year 2000, and French Polynesia our top destination. So if you decided to go, do it, it'll be lovely, just make sure you look at the contract closely. It's unlikely we'd make it there again at this point (75 & 80), but if we did, we'd have to choose Regent, since I don't think the Windstar sailing ships have elevators that extend to every deck. We still mourn the Paul Gauguin and cherish our time on her. P.S. we almost always booked our own air. Oh, and their cabins are small. Lovely little cabins, but small. Worth it still.

We either missed the block party on our last Splendor trip, or there wasn't one. I, frankly, have never really enjoyed them much, but try to participate.

Pretty low-keyed, most of the time.

I think you've lucked out with the weather so far, am I right?

Just to be clear on the subject of cocktails, no, there are no specific cocktails that are not included. Only the ultra-premium brands of the spirits that go into them. And the definitions are quite broad--it's not like going into a bar and getting a "well" drink at all, most of the top brands are covered. Funny, my husband prefers Jim Bean bourbon, not a particularly top brand. He asked for it in the room set-up and was told they didn't have any (perhaps temporary supply-chain issue). He was given Bulleit instead, which is quite a nice premium bourbon.

I can't answer since I did Egypt from another direction, but I will say that an ATM might not help much since what you need in Egypt is small currency, as small as you can get. For tipping, which is ubiquitous, and for bathrooms. But getting small bills in Egypt is difficult, and an ATM won't likely help. American dollar bills are overkill for such things, but a good backstop, and much appreciated, so I would take a bunch of those.

I had a decent experience with a couple of massages in January. It was a luxury, I admit, but I used my credits and was quite happy. She did try to upsell me and that is annoying.

Wine, yes. Beer, somewhat. I never asked for NA spirits. The wine brand was "Pierre" I believe, and it wasn't bad. They had red, white and rose. Beer was limited. I asked for some Athletic Brewing company beer for my cabin, but it didn't appear.

Although recovered somewhat from the post-pandemic chaos, I would avoid Pearson Airport in Toronto, YYZ. There are still lots of staffing issues and horror stories. Especially with the U.S. pre-clearance you must do.

Well they won't mind U.S. at all, although it would be nice, especially in small ports, to give them CDN.

Miami disembarkation is often delayed in even starting until 8 or 9.

Good to know. I didn't know there was dedicated parking at the Ft Lauderdale port.

The parking garage is right across from terminal J, literally. Just a note, however. On our return to Miami, we were docked at another terminal (The NCL one, can't remember the letter), so had to take a shuttle bus from that terminal over to the parking garage at J. Other than that glitch, parking was painless.

When we did Alaska we brought two pairs of binoculars so we wouldn't have to share. That's when I bought my lovely newer binoculars, for that trip. My 50+ year-old Bushnells held up, but the new optics were far superior.

I think that's true, Concierge only. But the ones we've had a couple of times were really pitiful, so my advice is to bring your own.