Another Regent Shore Excursion Question

[Gray Lady]

1 hour ago, Parapara said:

We are sailing in June for the first time on Regent. We booked an ordinary cabin and so couldn’t book excursions early. We were able to book most of the excursions we wanted straight away. Some we waitlisted and booked others. Except for two still waitlisted the others have all cleared. We have excursions we are happy with in both those ports if they don’t clear our first choices. Hope this is helpful.

Yes, this is quite helpful. They haven’t posted the excursions yet for our cruise next April. There are quite a few shown from previous itineraries, and if those are all offered next year it will hard to narrow down the ones we want. Also, I presume having long excursions every day can be quite exhausting. We have 10 ports in 10 days. You can’t see everything in one day anyway. We view this as a “sampler cruise” of those ports. There are two ports where I really want to see something specific. If we can’t get the excursions we want, then I will look into other tour vendors. We also want to add on post-cruise when it is offered, so that incurs another expense. This makes me feel better!

[DaveFr]

Gray Lady, don’t worry about excursions. I looked at your cruise and, as of today, there were 203 suites available to book. So fewer than half the maximum number of passengers will be booking excursions at the 365 day mark. You should be fine when you book excursions at 300 days.

 

Dave

[Gray Lady]

25 minutes ago, DaveFr said:

Gray Lady, don’t worry about excursions. I looked at your cruise and, as of today, there were 203 suites available to book. So fewer than half the maximum number of passengers will be booking excursions at the 365 day mark. You should be fine when you book excursions at 300 days.

 

Dave

Dave, thank you so much! I was hoping that a lot of the potential cruisers would opt for going on the new Grandeur and skip this voyage. It is also early in the season and others may want warmer weather. That is a HUGE weight off of my shoulders!

[pappy1022]

13 hours ago, DaveFr said:

Gray Lady, don’t worry about excursions. I looked at your cruise and, as of today, there were 203 suites available to book. So fewer than half the maximum number of passengers will be booking excursions at the 365 day mark. You should be fine when you book excursions at 300 days.

 

Dave

Dave, how do you find out how many open cabins are available on a specific cruise?

[papaflamingo]

17 hours ago, Gray Lady said:

Red1head, I appreciate the input. We have already booked the pre-cruise tour, so the extra night doesn’t matter to us. We do plan to deviate our flights, as that appears to be a big plus. It would cost us a minimum of an additional $3000 to book concierge, and we definitely do not want to have to be in a forward cabin. The dinner reservations are not a priority nor is a butler. Hubby says we should be able to find an excursion in most ports. Now I will think long and hard about this, as the 365 day limit starts in 2 more days. I am really torn……

Just to add... .you sound like you have a great plan.  Regent tours are good and sometimes really good.  But you can always do better in a 3rd party tour.  Like you, we like the included tours to see places and have been happy with most.  Also, we booked a late cruise and only one of our requested tours was waitlisted.  We got notification yesterday that we cleared the waitlist.  So if you need to waitlist there's always a chance.  But your attitude of using the saved $3000 to book tours is GREAT!  That's what I would do too.  

As for specialty dining it's very likely you'll get something pre cruise, but generally you can get a table when on the cruise.  Just ask at the restaurant you want and see what's available for the cruise. 

[Gray Lady]

I have an update on shore excursions. I had called my TA two days ago after reading some of the posts that panicked me about shore excursions. He called back today and was able to upgrade us 3 cabin categories to concierge for $1900 total. We decided to go ahead and do it, since this is a once in a lifetime cruise, and the price was way less than we had anticipated. There seems to be some good upsides for this. Now I just need to spend the next few days getting my excursion ducks in a row so we can book. I will let you know how it all goes. I am guessing that the tab for excursions will show up in our account at the appointed hour. Fingers crossed as this is all new to me!

[DaveFr]

18 hours ago, pappy1022 said:

Dave, how do you find out how many open cabins are available on a specific cruise?

pappy1022, I use a TA website. So, unfortunately, Cruise Critic rules prevent me from answering your question online. Sorry.

 

Dave

[papaflamingo]

23 hours ago, pappy1022 said:

Dave, how do you find out how many open cabins are available on a specific cruise?

You can go on any number of internet TA websites and see cabin availability.  But also you can do a mock booking on Regent's website.  If you follow it through you can see what categories have availability.  Simply select the category or categories you want to see and it'll bring up the available cabins.  Then simply hit "back" (I think) and select another category, etc.

[jeb_bud]

5 hours ago, papaflamingo said:

You can go on any number of internet TA websites and see cabin availability.  But also you can do a mock booking on Regent's website.  If you follow it through you can see what categories have availability.  Simply select the category or categories you want to see and it'll bring up the available cabins.  Then simply hit "back" (I think) and select another category, etc.

The Regent website doesn’t show all available cabins unless the ship is nearly full. They show six or seven cabins for each search. You can get more data by selecting decks and port/starboard but if there are more than six rooms available in any category you won’t get a full count. 

[papaflamingo]

4 hours ago, jeb_bud said:

The Regent website doesn’t show all available cabins unless the ship is nearly full. They show six or seven cabins for each search. You can get more data by selecting decks and port/starboard but if there are more than six rooms available in any category you won’t get a full count. 

Ah...didn't know that.  Thanks.

[Bellaggio Cruisers]

Try cruise dot com. That will show all available suites on any ship. 
 

[SWFLAOK]

On 4/10/2023 at 8:17 AM, papaflamingo said:

There are no limits on excursions by Regent.  You can book as many as you want with no limitations other than a turnaround time.  You can't book 2 excursions that both leave at 9 am for example.  But you can book any number that you can make.  We have booked 3 in one port a few times, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening.  No limits.  At least one of the other cruise lines that includes shore excursions has a LIMIT of ONE per port. Regent has NO limits per port. 

 

On 4/10/2023 at 8:17 AM, papaflamingo said:

There are no limits on excursions by Regent.  You can book as many as you want with no limitations other than a turnaround time.  You can't book 2 excursions that both leave at 9 am for example.  But you can book any number that you can make.  We have booked 3 in one port a few times, one in the morning, one in the afternoon and one in the evening.  No limits.  At least one of the other cruise lines that includes shore excursions has a LIMIT of ONE per port. Regent has NO limits per port. 

Silversea allows one included excursion in each port. The second one isn't free, and is chosen from the same list, making some seem very overpriced. There are also excursions that always cost extra, so choosing between an overpriced second excursion in a port, and one that always is extra makes it more complicated to choose excursions.

On our 6 Regent cruises, the excursions on our 4 pre Covid cruises were very reliable with the bookings being available. The 2 post Covid were not reliable for our first cruise due to the Queen's funeral, and high seas around the UK in September. We're off for a 2 week Regent cruise of the Caribbean next week, and I just booked our excursions for Bangkok to Abu Dhabi next April, both on Navigator. I'm still a Regent fan.

But we're booked on Silver Dawn for the 2025 World Cruise which is a lifetime dream for us, so I'm willing to spend time looking for the excursions that we really want to do. We enjoyed our 1 previous cruise on Silversea, and didn't do another because Business class airfare isn't normally included, But we chose their World Cruise based on the itinerary which included many ports we have not visited before, even in areas that we have already cruised through (or will next year). And Business class airfare is included for those taking the full World Cruise. And at the end of the cruise, flying back to Florida from NYC is easy.

[Gray Lady]

I have a quick question. When choosing shore excursions, is it best to pick them in order of the ports or to pick your priority excursions first? Thank you for helping this first-timer.

[rallydave]

4 minutes ago, Gray Lady said:

I have a quick question. When choosing shore excursions, is it best to pick them in order of the ports or to pick your priority excursions first? Thank you for helping this first-timer.

Always better to pick in order of priority and remember until you checkout your choices are not saved. So because of website issues best to checkout multiple times so that you don’t lose all your choices and start over possibly being locked out of your priority choices. 

[Gray Lady]

3 minutes ago, rallydave said:

Always better to pick in order of priority and remember until you checkout your choices are not saved. So because of website issues best to checkout multiple times so that you don’t lose all your choices and start over possibly being locked out of your priority choices. 

Thank you! That is something I did not know. Does it take longer to process excursions you are paying for with on-board credit or credit cards?

[jeb_bud]

Paying with OBC is automatic. If you select a Regent Choice excursion and you have enough OBC to pay for it Regent just does it. As I recall you need to enter your CC information to pay by card, although my memory is a little vague on that point. 
 

As rallydave said it’s best to check out every so often while selecting excursions. I do it every few free excursions and after every paid excursion. 

[makai 7]

Once you book your excursions, you may want to check them every few weeks to see if they are still shown on your reservation.

We have had several incidents where the excursions were canceled by Regent, and we were never notified.  If I had not checked, we would not have had any excursions in those ports and chances are high that nothing would have been available once we were on the ship.

This happened most recently for the port of Jeju on the Explorer cruise that ended on April 11.

[Gray Lady]

22 minutes ago, makai 7 said:

Once you book your excursions, you may want to check them every few weeks to see if they are still shown on your reservation.

We have had several incidents where the excursions were canceled by Regent, and we were never notified.  If I had not checked, we would not have had any excursions in those ports and chances are high that nothing would have been available once we were on the ship.

This happened most recently for the port of Jeju on the Explorer cruise that ended on April 11.

Thank you for this helpful hint. Being a year out, there may be cancellations as it gets closer. I will watch and check.

[Gray Lady]

Has anyone experienced an issue with reserving excursions where your account is there, but your cruise has disappeared and you can’t get it to appear, even when putting in your booking number? How am I supposed to book my excursions?? Everything was there earlier today, but it is now gone! And of course, Regent is closed. Is everyone else booking their excursions but our account crashed?? How frustrating when we upgraded just so we could book today!! Augh!!

[Gray Lady]

Has anyone experienced an issue with reserving excursions where your account is there, but your cruise has disappeared and you can’t get it to appear, even when putting in your booking number? How am I supposed to book my excursions?? Everything was there earlier today, but it is now gone! And of course, Regent is closed. Is everyone else booking their excursions but our account crashed?? How frustrating when we upgraded just so we could book today!! Augh!!

Finally had a blurb on the website saying they were doing maintenance and reservations may not work. Really? During the time when reservations for excursions open? Right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing. So frustrating!

[GOARMY]

Gray Lady:  

 

Hang in there. I experienced the same frustration earlier today when attempting to log-in. This was to confirm a change in the Tokyo hotel we will be at while doing a 3-day post-cruise stay this October after debarking Explorer. 

 

Finally--about a half-hour ago, got the prompt as to "maintenance" as to reason for not being able to connect.  Will check-back in Sunday afternoon.

 

Would have appreciated receiving this heads-up about five hours ago.  Left hand; right hand.  Common sense.  

 

GOARMY!

 

 

  

Edited April 16, 2023 by GOARMY
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[Gray Lady]

I set an alarm and was up at 2:30 AM to get our shore excursions after the maintenance in the reservation system was done. Everything came back, and I was able to see the shore excursions. One HUGE problem. It shows that every excursion in every port is sold out and you can add nothing to your cart. Really!!?? Now the big question is when will they fix this and how will I know to go into our account and select our excursions? Will I miss out on selections we want because I don’t know when they will go live? Will it be Monday? How many hours do I spend looking and waiting? I am beginning to think this cruise is cursed!

[rallydave]

Unfortunately you won’t know and will meet to keep trying until your excursions are able to book.  Highly unlikely ALL excursions are booked

 

Likely just another website glitch and hopefully fixed soon. 

[flossie009]

2 hours ago, Gray Lady said:

I set an alarm and was up at 2:30 AM to get our shore excursions after the maintenance in the reservation system was done. Everything came back, and I was able to see the shore excursions. One HUGE problem. It shows that every excursion in every port is sold out and you can add nothing to your cart. Really!!?? Now the big question is when will they fix this and how will I know to go into our account and select our excursions? Will I miss out on selections we want because I don’t know when they will go live? Will it be Monday? How many hours do I spend looking and waiting? I am beginning to think this cruise is cursed!

I am sure @Mike Mooreshould be able to assist you

 

[Mike Moore]

3 hours ago, Gray Lady said:

I set an alarm and was up at 2:30 AM to get our shore excursions after the maintenance in the reservation system was done. Everything came back, and I was able to see the shore excursions. One HUGE problem. It shows that every excursion in every port is sold out and you can add nothing to your cart. Really!!?? Now the big question is when will they fix this and how will I know to go into our account and select our excursions? Will I miss out on selections we want because I don’t know when they will go live? Will it be Monday? How many hours do I spend looking and waiting? I am beginning to think this cruise is cursed!

Apologies if it was posted earlier in this thread - which cruise are you sailing on Gray Lady? I'll check with the team that manages the inventory for our shore excursions, as this isn't a website glitch so much that it appears the inventory isn't set in our reservations system yet.