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Just booked our first cruise since September 2019 (before Corvid19 (BC)) for July 30, 2022 from Reykjavik to Copenhagen. We normally take a minimum of 2 and sometimes 3 cruises a year but 2020 was a lost year and when you are in your 70's you hate to lose a year. Hopefully with the vaccines 2021 and 2022 will be better years. My wife has already had her 2 shots and I'm scheduled for my second shot March 18. Have a great next cruise.

We will be in Copenhagen after a Regent cruise from Reykjavik in August 2022. We are looking at staying a few days after to see the city and maybe some of the countryside. I will be going back and checking the earlier posts in this threads to see if there is recommendations for hotels, restaurants and tours. But by posting here now I will be able to follow this thread in the future. Have a great next cruise.

We have stayed in a couple of different hotels in Amsterdam but the Hilton Amsterdam was very nice and on Sunday's only have some of the best mussels either of us have ever eaten. It is a little ways from the center of town but not too far out to still see everything further in by foot.

Thanks for the recommendations both the hotel and taking the credit. We will definitely want to stay for a few days both in Reykjavik and in Copenhagen. We always try to do this before or after or both if the ports are interesting places. I had posted on the referral thread and 2 people answered me but I have not replied to them yet so I will probably go ahead and drop you an email. Thanks again and have a great next cruise.

I've started my planning with where we will be staying Reykjavik and Copenhagen. We get one free night before the cruise and have a lot of travel points with a credit card so I was trying to find which hotels Regent uses (not hard) and then match that up with hotels that the credit lets me use the points on. I am hoping that Regent will work with me on this and if they don't I will use the points after the cruise for a stay in Copenhagen. Get vaccinated and have a great next cruise.

Not specifically to Regent but try to get a cabin on a deck with cabins above and below you. We just booked our first Regent cruise on Voyager and picked deck 9 because 10 had the pool deck above it. We have been on Celebrity suite class ships where almost all the suites are on the deck right below the pool deck and had many noise problems. And we also booked concierge and it did include early reservations for both dining rooms and shore excursions.

Hi Deerenan,

Please go out and add your name to the roll call for the cruise. I started one and you would be the second one. Sounds like a great anniversary present.

Thanks for the replies. My wife thinks I'm a little crazy starting to look into things but our last cruise or trip anywhere was a cruise to Hawaii from Vancouver and back in Sept 2019. We normally cruise at least twice a year and it is now over a year of social isolation and I need to have something to look forward to.

Thanks for the replies. I ended up booking and I did get the 7.5% deposit.

HI,

Well we have booked our first Regent cruise on the Voyager 12 days from Reykjavik to Copenhagen. It is a long time away but we are excited and will be asking lots of questions of Regent veterans. I have over 40 cruises on a variety of lines beginning in 1997 and my wife and I have over 20 since we got together in 2012. You can see all the cruise lines in my signature if interested but we have only done one high end cruise line, Seabourn twice. The last few years we have been sailing suite class on Celebrity which has a separate and much better dining room and Michael's club to relax in. But with the Pandemic we made a decision to begin only sailing on smaller ships and since all the main line cruise lines have gotten rid of those type of ships during the shutdown in meant looking into Seabourn, Regent Seven Seas, Azamara, Crystal, Silverseas, or Windstar which all are still sailing ships mainly carrying less than 1000 passengers. I'll throw my first question out to end this post. Does anyone know what hotels that Regent uses in Reykjavik, Iceland for the night before the cruise we are getting? We will probably extend our stay for more than 1 night but I want to start checking into hotels first. We will also be staying over in Copenhagen for a few days after the cruise and if anyone has a recommendation for a good hotel they have stayed in there please let me know about it. Well this is long enough for now. Talk at you all  later and have a great next cruise whenever that is going to be. Get vaccinated when you can,

stay in if you can, wear a mask if you have to go out, stay well and stay safe.

I'm sure it depends on the cost and length of the cruise but can anyone comment on if they were higher or about the same as other cruise lines? Thanks

Thanks for the replies. I think I figured out the air included or not. VTG is advertising prices $3000 less per person but that is without air. Regent site is $3000 higher but includes business class air Until a couple of years ago I always flew regular commercial but then I happened to get a great deal on business class on RCL's cruise air from Venice to St Louis and it spoiled us. Makes the cruises cost a lot more but for long flights it is worth it. We are also looking at the shorter 12 day version of this cruise that leaves from Iceland and ends in Copenhagen, We have been to St Petersburg before for 3 days on the Seabourn Pride where we got to dock on the English embankment instead of out at the cruise ship port which saved 45 minutes to an hour travel time back and forth. I'm not sure how small a ship has to be to dock down there.

Hi, we are looking at booking a Regent cruise in summer, 2022. We have been sailing on Celebrity in their suites but have also sailed on Seabourn a couple of times. I've been on over 40 cruises and my wife and I have done 21 cruises since 2011. We are looking at a cruise on the Voyager leaving from Iceland and ending up in either Copenhagen or in London. Regent says on their web site they include business class flights for suites. Is this all of them or only the more expensive ones? Will they allow you to fly in early to spend some time in our case in Iceland before boarding the cruise or do you have to fly the day you will board the cruise? While I am not an alcoholic, I do enjoy a glass of wine or a cocktail. From what I can tell  Regent includes those in their fares. Do they also include bottled water? My wife drinks a lot of water for her health and we have begun buying beverage packages on Celebrity but only if they include unlimited bottled water. One of the things we really liked about our 2 Seabourn cruises was how good their housekeeping and dining room staff were. How does Regent's compare for those of you who have done both?

I know this is a lot of questions but this will probably be only the first of many if we decide to book.

Have a great next cruise.

Anyone else considering only sailing on smaller cruise ships when we can finally cruise again? My wife and I love to cruise (see my signature for proof) but will not be cruising again until Corvid19 Pandemic has been gotten under control with both a real vaccine and treatments that work. But in at least planning for possible future cruises we have decided we would feel safer on smaller ships like Seabourn. We have done 2 of them and loved both of them. But we have recently switched to doing Celebrity suite class doing 6 of them because they offered locations we wanted to visit. In many ways with the separate suite dining room and  Michael's Club for free drinks and because Celebrity has made sure the waiters and suite attendants in suites are better trained we found it similar. But it still would mean sailing on ships with 3000 other people. Anyway I'm just interested if anyone else out here is thinking about mainly sailing on the smaller more elite cruise ships like Seabourn and giving up the bigger cruise ship lines for the immediate future. Thanks

Anyone else considering only sailing on smaller cruise ships when we can finally cruise again? My wife and I love to cruise (see my signature for proof) but will not be cruising again until Corvid19 Pandemic has been gotten under control with both a real vaccine and treatments that work. But in at least planning for possible future cruises we have decided we would feel safer on smaller ships like Seabourn. We have done 2 of them and loved both of them. But we have recently switched to doing Celebrity suite class because they offered locations we wanted to visit. In many ways with the separate suite dining room and  Michael's Club for free drinks and because Celebrity has made sure the waiters and suite attendants in suites are better trained we found it similar. But it still would mean sailing on ships with 3000 other people. Anyway I'm just interested if anyone else out here is thinking about mainly sailing on the smaller more elite cruise ships like Seabourn and giving up the bigger cruise ship lines for the immediate future. Thanks

This was the last YC cabin available and it is at the end of YC area and I think backs up to a rest room for the solarium. I wouldn't think that would get used much at night and as long as there isn't any smells or leaks from it I wouldn't think it would bother us. I'm not sure if there is a card entry system by the elevators or not but since there is also a stairway there probably not. So I guess we could get people wandering up the hallway from the solarium?  Anyway interested if anyone has ever been in this cabin.

Thanks

Thanks for all your answers. Our cruise evidently has 3 possible boarding ports, Kiel, Copenhagen and Southampton, which I'm sure confuses the issue. Also because many of the passengers on MSC are from Europe or at least not from the USA, I'm sure that also reduces the number who sign up even if they find Cruise Critic. We have been sailing on Celebrity recently and our roll calls have been running in the hundreds of people (over 200 cabins represented on our last cruise) and the small size of the roll call for this cruise when evidently it is close to filling up with 5500 people just surprised me.

Hi,

My wife and I are on MSC Meraviglia's trans Atlantic cruise leaving from Kiel on Sept 5 and I joined the roll call for that cruise. From both VTG and MSC web sites the ship is evidently filling up quickly (all the Yacht Class cabins are taken) and the ship holds over over 5500, but our roll call so far only has 28 cabins are represented. My question is from othe more experiecned MSC cruisers (this will be our first on MSC but my 46 cruise) are MSC roll calls just not very active. We were on a Celebrity cruise last fall that had over 200 on the roll call. Anyway hoping we will enjoy Yacht club as much as we have suite class on Celebrity.

Have a great next cruise.

Looking for people who are booked on this cruise. It starts in Kiel and then is picking up a bunch of passengers in Copenhagen on Sept 4, 2020. We have a roll call started at this link and are looking for others who are booked. The ship is almost totally booked and we only have about 28 cabins represented on the current roll call. We looking for more people so we can set up events like a slot pull, a sail away get together and maybe a gift exchange. Here is a link to the roll call.

https://www.cruisecritic.com/rollcalls/msc-meraviglia-september-5-2020/

Come and join us and have a great next cruise.

I'm having the same problem. It seems to be tied to their SQL data base server. It may be the indexes will need to be rebuild. The last time they did this they lost a lot of posts. Keep your fingers crossed.

HI,

We are booked in a Sky Suite for a 14 day cruise in March 2019 on the Eclipse. I got an email this morning from my travel agent that I could make a bid to upgrade to a Royal (only 1 available) or a Celebrity Suite (at least 4 are open). Two questions:

Is a Celebrity Suite really that much better than a Sky Suite. I understand they are slightly bigger and evidently have a walk in closet but with the Sky Suite we get suite dining (one of the main reasons we book them) and Michael's club.

Secondly how much of bid might win an upgrade the amounts evidently on the Celebity Suite go from 0 to $2000.

Has anyone ever gotten one of these offers and if so did you bid and if so how much?

Thanks

Long review of our tour with Fer Tours

We arranged for 2 days of tours with Fer 2 Havana tours originally and then had to alter our arrangements because Azamara changed their schedule and Fernando was very good at changing our 2 days to 3 days at the same price. We did an evening when the ship arrived and met our guide, Javier (Pepe), met us in the square directly across from the ship at 7 PM. He then changed plans as we had already eaten on the ship and we went to the Hotel National for a drink which has been in Havana forever and has been where all the famous and infamous people stayed. We had very good rum drinks there and enjoyed the ambiance before going on the cannon firing at the fort in a vintage 53 Pontiac hardtop with A/C and then to the Buena Vista Social Club.where we stayed for drinks and listening to the Cuban music. For the cover charge which I think was 30 CUC each we got 3 drinks each. I got Cuba Libre and Darlene had a beer and 2 bottled waters. The music was loud and we left after about an hour and 45 minutes. Our driver had waited for us and drove us back to the ship.
The next morning at 10 AM we met Javier again in the square and we did a walking tour of the four main squares of old Havana for about 2 1/2 hours, Then we had lunch at a really private restaurant that was a little expensive 80 CUC for the 2 of us with one glass of wine each. We both got a seafood dish with lobster, shrimp, fish and rice and veggies. We also each got a desert. The restaurant was totally full but many of the people there were from either other Fer Tours or other guides. Javier then met us outside and we walked to where we met our driver for the rest of the day in his 1956 red Chevy convertible. The car wasn't his but the owner had gotten too old to drive so he hired him to take care of the car and drive it. We had the car for 3 hours and saw a lot of Havana with an informative driver. He left us off at the ship at 4:30. Finally the next morning, our ship was in Havana for 3 days, Javier again met us in the square at 9 AM and we got in another old Chevy hardtop with A/C and went to Hemmingway's house, followed by a visit to the town where he kept the Pilar and his favorite bar there. Then we came back to Havana and went to Fusterland. This is an area of Havana an artist began decorating with mosaics and painting and included a visit to his house. If you have been to Barcelona and see Guidi's village there this is similar but maybe more colorful and tropical. Our ship was sailing at 3 PM so Javier and the driver dropped us off at 2 PM by the ship. These were great tours with a great guide, Javier, who is a psychologist in real life. The cost for the 3 days was $480 US which was a fraction of what similar tours thru the ship would have cost. If you are going to Havana give Fer Tours a chance to give you a great time in Havana.

Yes. We did all the booking thru email. Fernando responded as soon as he could given the way the Internet is in Cuba. He didn't require any deposits and you pay at the end of your tour.

I just posted a much longer review of the cruise under the Azamara Journey reviews if you want to know more.

Have a great next cruise.

On 11/18/2018 at 6:39 PM, hmcdowell31 said:

 

We used Fer Tours for 3 days and they did a great job.