labonnevie

For our April Explorer cruise around Japan, we cleared the waitlist in August and found for many ports all tours were waitlisted or not even available for waitlist. Over time, five ports had waitlists open up and we were able to get tours we were happy with, even if not our first choice. There was one small port that had no tours ever become available, wasn’t a bad miss for us. In Okinawa, if you can get into the Bingata Experience tour, we thought it was fun. YMMV

You make good points. My reference point is Seabourn, a year ago. They did try to replace paper with the app. It was not working well.

If I recall correctly, and that is always subject to question, the Seabourn app did not work off the ship.

As the old adage goes, you never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

Please no! Not now, not ever! I am not technology adverse at all, but everyone walking around the ship looking at their phones would really take away from the friendly, “I’m having a great time”, atmosphere on board. I detest the Seabourn app…the answer to everything is “it’s on the app”. I don’t want to be spending fifteen minutes finding something on the app, which I can barely read on my iPhone, when I could find it on Passages in one.

We can get outstanding Asian food everywhere in Southern California. We can get outstanding Italian food many places in Southern California. We can not get even poor French food in Southern California. We love being able to do things on vacation that we can’t do at home. The Chartreuse restaurant on some Regent ships is outstanding.

Actually, I would take not getting a tote bag as a major positive! We must have over twenty stuffed in the closet. The best one, which we take everywhere, is from AMA river cruises.

We do the laundry slightly differently. We leave our bag when we go to dinner. It is returned when we come back from breakfast.

Agree, we had a rainy day in the Faroes, but still enjoyed it. My favorite picture was this man cutting his grass...

I wore country club casual, not formal optional. 🙂

Agree, we enjoyed the Bingata experience this past April.

Flossie, thanks for all your posts. Any comments on the ship’s condition, carpets, upholstery, wood, etc.? Thanks again.

The included wines are a separate list from the “pay for “ list. Each night there is a featured white and a featured red from the included list. Getting the list of all the included wines early in the cruise means you don’t need to wait several nights to find your favorite wines from the featured wines.

Our most recent land tour, precruise in Tokyo, was 13 buses worth, well over 300 people. Generally it was handled well, but going from the meeting room to the buses was pretty much a cattle herd. Your itinerary looks quite packed, our land tours have had substantial “on your own” time, so much so that we have supplemented them with blocks of time with private guides.

This is a significant improvement, thanks Mike!

Any puffins? My favorite birds, only ever saw them on that island.

I don’t want to say that we never try the featured wines of the day, we often do. However, we also often decide they are not to our liking or will not pair as well with our meals as other wines on the included list. And sometimes we discover something new that we do like!

When we have lunch after boarding, usually on the veranda, I ask a wine server to send the sommelier over. There always seems to be one available.

We always get the sommelier to send a list of the included wines to our cabin on day one. Then we know which wines we would like with our appetizer and mains when we go to dinner each night. We politely decline the featured wines and ask for what we want. Works well at all dining venues. Enjoy your cruise.

Ditto

Flossie, Enjoying your reports. Any chance you could find out if Ray Solaire will be back on the Navigator for the November Istanbul to Dubai cruise? Thank you and enjoy your cruise.

This is not always true. For our April Explorer cruise in Japan, a number of tours were not only fully booked, there was no waitlist available, even calling Regent. This may have been because of Japan just reopening in the fall, but it was the case, and to my memory, none of these tours opened up. YMMV

Mike, given this information, could you please review the suggestions made on this thread? Thank you

We have also found that the tour descriptions on board sometimes indicate a different level of strenuous activity than the descriptions you received before the cruise. It is worth reading the descriptions found in your cabin carefully. They are more accurate and up to date.

6 pm ET would still be vastly better than 7 am. 11 pm in UK would be easier on those guests than 4 am for western time zone guests.