Would you still cruise with Regent if you didn't take full advantage of excursions?

[cruiseluv]

In many ports by choice I don’t do any excursions, be with Regent or independent. 

[pappy1022]

For me, the destination is equal to or more important than the on board experience. I travel to see the world and the itinerary is paramount to me. I have a short list of cruise companies that I am willing to sail with and if one itinerary is superior to another itinerary, I will pick the one with the better itinerary. All things being equal, I will go with Regent. I haven’t been on Regent or any other cruise line for a few years now, so my net experience with Regent in September will determine whether i see value in Regent included excursions.

[papaflamingo]

22 hours ago, forgap said:

Wouldn’t it be great if Regent implemented an easy rating system for excursions in each port?   Then, when booking excursions, we could look at the description and the ratings from passengers that have done the excursion, and make an informed decision.
 

This could be a simple star rating in several categories such as quality of the site, quality of the guide, and physical ability as described.  This could also be a way for the excursion desk to jettison the real clunkers as it seems that the menu of excursions for cruises stays the same year after year,  

A couple of comments.  Often Regent only visits a port once or twice a year, so building a steady supply of excursion operators isn't an option, so they end up with limited excursions.  However as to a rating system, most ports they seem to use the same excursion companies as all the cruise lines use in those ports. Likely because they are part of NCL so they seem to book the same companies that NCL uses (makes sense anyway).

I have found that often if you simply put the description or title of the tour in a websearch it will bring you to one of the review sites, or another cruise line site, that will show reviews of the same excursion.  You have to read carefully to make sure it's the same, but it is one way to find reviews on some of the excursions, especially in ports that cruise lines always visit.  

Also if you go to the Ports of Call section here in CC you can often find the same excursion or something close.  You have to weed through a lot of comments unfortunately, but you an often get good info.  

I've found it very helpful in getting reviews.   

Edited February 25, 2023 by papaflamingo

[mj_holiday]

From our first POST COVID cruise experience recently and from discussion on various forums, Regent has not yet come back to their PRE COVID level of excursions or on shore support companies.  I don't think I saw any Regent employee on any of our excursions - PRE COVID it seems that at least half of the excursions we went on also had someone from destination services.

 

I am not sure I would continue to sail with Regent if they dropped the included excursions.  Selecting the excursions is very easy to do.  I am on a non Regent cruise in a month and not enjoying the research etc to select and pay for cruises.

[SWFLAOK]

11 hours ago, mj_holiday said:

From our first POST COVID cruise experience recently and from discussion on various forums, Regent has not yet come back to their PRE COVID level of excursions or on shore support companies.  I don't think I saw any Regent employee on any of our excursions - PRE COVID it seems that at least half of the excursions we went on also had someone from destination services.

 

I am not sure I would continue to sail with Regent if they dropped the included excursions.  Selecting the excursions is very easy to do.  I am on a non Regent cruise in a month and not enjoying the research etc to select and pay for cruises.

We did back to back cruises on Splendor in September, Southampton to Southampton, Southampton to Barcelona, and found that most of the included excursions were very good to excellent. There were some cancellations and places not visited due to the Queen's death, but the excursions we took were well done by the contracted tour operators. Some told us they were required to take Covid tests before picking us up at the ship, which made us feel safer. And a number of them were extremely enjoyable, with excellent guides.

What was not good, were those working in destination services onboard. They were mostly rude, unfriendly and not helpful. They denied information about closed destinations that we pointed them to online. They tried to get everyone off the ship at the same time. They posted themselves along the stairs to the lounge meeting area, and back to the departure area, and yelled at everyone to go one way only. Once off the ship, your bus may or may not be there, and the one person outside couldn't keep up with handling the boarding of the buses. We had no one from the ship on any of our excursions, unless they were just taking the bus for their own day ashore. There seemed to be way more crew exploring the local towns, and taking up a lot of space on the tenders in the few tender ports we stopped at. 

We did complain about the destination services crew on our cruises.  No one replied so I doubt it will change on Splendor. We have a Navigator cruise coming up soon. We'll see how that goes. We had 4 previous Regent cruises prior to Splendor (Alaska, Med, SE Asia, Australia), and very often had a destination services rep on included excursions, and had much better service at the desk.

[flossie009]

On 2/24/2023 at 1:07 PM, flossie009 said:

Tomorrow in Laem Chabang we will take a Regent included tour to the floating market in Pattaya

For future reference the tour LCH-GL1 “Pattaya Floating Market” comes under the category “not worth repeating”

It is a crowded, very poor facsimile of the real thing to be found near Bangkok.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 26, 2023 by flossie009

[GeorgiaPeach51]

On 2/23/2023 at 9:34 PM, cuddles115 said:

Most excursions are poor and not worth leaving the ship. You get what you pay for and Regent's free excursions are, for the most part, worthless.

Strongly disagree with this statement.  FWIW. We have enjoyed our excursions and only found one that we felt could be improved.  We have been on only two cruises with R but took full advantage of the excursions.  We have ridden horses on the beach, done an ATV jungle tour, done a mangrove airboat tour, ridden camels…..and none of the tours was a huge bus of people, but small vans.  Great experiences that added greatly to both cruises.  Looking forward to more Regent tours.  

[fudge]

I couldn't agree more. On our last Regent cruise we had some fantastic excursions, one in particular was a White river raft trip, really good, over 3 hours in the river and a lovely lunch straight after. On a different note, I have just tried to book excursions for our next cruise late September, a lot and I mean a lot both pay and free are wait listed, what does that tell you. 

[Kwaj girl]

On 2/25/2023 at 8:42 AM, mj_holiday said:

- PRE COVID it seems that at least half of the excursions we went on also had someone from destination services.

 

Interesting.....I think they only have maybe 3 or 4 Destination Services crew/employees. Can't imagine they could escort that many buses etc. with so few workers. On occasion we may have had one of the Production Cast along for the ride.

[cuddles115]

On 2/24/2023 at 10:01 AM, bitob said:

Two cruises on regent

excursions awful

i don’t care 

I have 6 more Regent cruises booked

paying for private excursions 

 

[cuddles115]

Smart and wise

[Pcardad]

9 hours ago, Kwaj girl said:

 

Interesting.....I think they only have maybe 3 or 4 Destination Services crew/employees. Can't imagine they could escort that many buses etc. with so few workers. On occasion we may have had one of the Production Cast along for the ride.

You are correct. The Crew Fund subsidizes (or used to) tickets on excursions for crew who was allowed the time off. In about 400 excursions, we saw crew on about 15. They are there on their own time, not to work for Destination Services. Unfortunately, Destination Services is not nearly as strong as it was before Covid. Part of the reason is the changing landscape...the other part is that the new people are not as good as who they replaced.

[pappy1022]

Something for Regent to improve upon. The “luxury” experience needs to extend beyond the “most expensive ship” mantra. After all we are paying for all those services on and off the ship. I understand that Regent doesn’t totally control all of the excursion providers but they do have influence on them and they can expect a quality product.

[captn337]

On 2/24/2023 at 7:13 AM, jjs217 said:

Not true.  Some excursions are geared more towards those with mobility issues, so it is a panorama type tour (basically, stay on the bus and drive around.)  Others are for the more active.  It's important to read the description and not rely on the title of the tour. 

A rating system won't work, because what is good for some, might not be good for others.  Again, just read the description.  

I read between the lines on ratings. A consistently poor or great rating needs no reading between the lines. Restaurants, Car washes and even Dentist rating can be a great starting point. I think fellow passenger ratings on excursions would be very helpful.

[mnocket]

On 2/24/2023 at 3:14 PM, daka said:

Good to see all the "opinions" obviously everyone has a different expectation and experience..

We are going to be on our first REGENT cruse in December...having been on 26 crises in the past on Celebrity, MSC, Princess etc...

Only 10 months to go, with a Celebrity sailing in between....😃

We're also doing our first Regent cruise in December (Amazon).  Just booked our excursions a short while ago.  With a POV cabin (Plain Old Veranda) we had last dibs on reserving excursions and there were several we wanted to do that were sold out ☹️, but we were able to get most of what we wanted. So here's hoping that the excursions on this cruise are good, as I'm not keen on booking private excursions in the Amazon.

[Kwaj girl]

9 minutes ago, mnocket said:

We're also doing our first Regent cruise in December (Amazon).  Just booked our excursions a short while ago.  With a POV cabin (Plain Old Veranda) we had last dibs on reserving excursions and there were several we wanted to do that were sold out ☹️, but we were able to get most of what we wanted. So here's hoping that the excursions on this cruise are good, as I'm not keen on booking private excursions in the Amazon.

 

You might be able to "waitlist" them.

[mnocket]

5 minutes ago, Kwaj girl said:

 

You might be able to "waitlist" them.

Waitlist was shown as an option for a few, but most just said Sold Out. Not a biggie. I got the Amazon excursions I wanted, the problem was only with several snorkeling excursions while in the Caribbean. 

[Pcardad]

24 minutes ago, mnocket said:

Waitlist was shown as an option for a few, but most just said Sold Out. Not a biggie. I got the Amazon excursions I wanted, the problem was only with several snorkeling excursions while in the Caribbean. 

Don't waste your time going to the "authentic" Amazon village - it is fake.

 

[SWFLAOK]

I was just doing some browsing today and looked a Azamara cruises. I was actually looking for a river cruise, but only found their ocean cruises. While their cruise prices were much less than Regent, the cost of the excursions were extremely high, with most being 200 dollars or more per person.

While the ship experience is important to us, the itinerary is more important, and we want to get off the ship at every port of call. We would much rather have included excursions, that we have found to be worthwhile most of the time, than have to pay more for the excursions than the cruise itself. And I'm sure that many of those high priced excursions on Azamara aren't considered worth the price.

[claranda]

We’re on a New York to Montreal cruise with Regent in September and chose Regent a) because we had to, having pulled out of another Regent cruise to Oz because we couldn’t get the reward flights we wanted, and b) because we’ve never been up the east Atlantic coast and thought having the included excursions might be handy.

 

We’ve got the excursions we wanted and are hoping there aren’t too many duds among them, especially as they are mostly several hours long! So, considering that just about every cruise line does this route, we definitely opted for Regent because of the convenience of included excursions. However, we are well used to making our own touring arrangements and Regent is not our usual first choice.

[PaulMCO]

19 hours ago, mnocket said:

We're also doing our first Regent cruise in December (Amazon).  Just booked our excursions a short while ago.  With a POV cabin (Plain Old Veranda) we had last dibs on reserving excursions and there were several we wanted to do that were sold out ☹️, but we were able to get most of what we wanted. So here's hoping that the excursions on this cruise are good, as I'm not keen on booking private excursions in the Amazon.

Why not. 

 

I can tell you for a fact that Regent uses the same companies that Oceania uses.  We did both private and cruise line tours in Dec/Jan 23.  The cruise lines were very crowded.  In some cases some of the promised venues were closed and the cruise line (Oceania) had not updated the descriptions on the web site.  We did a few excursions with do brazil right tours which were fantastic.  Some cases group of 12 to16 and other a completely private tour. 

 

The private tour was the best we did -- in Rio. No waiting in line. Using VIP entrances for Christ Statue and Sugar loaf, being able to say lets leave early or can we go to a flea market, or skip Copacabana ..  More flexibility...

[2012_Alaska_bound]

Anyone interested in starting an excursion review thread?

Location of excursion

Name of excursion

Date taken

Impressions 

 

Others who have taken the same excursion could reply to the post with their input. Then thread would be searchable by location.

 

I know I value the opinions of my fellow passengers, and keep notes for future cruises that I have booked, sometimes 2 years in advance!

[mnocket]

5 hours ago, PaulMCO said:

Why not. 

I guess I'm a bit gun shy about taking a private tour while cruising the Amazon river.  Some safety concerns, but mostly not somewhere I'd want to miss the boat and be stuck in.

[Techno123]

We are doing a Norwegian Fjord cruise in the summer with a cruise line beginning with S and ending in N 😁. The excursions are very expensive in comparison to what can be booked locally.

 

I do wish cruise lines had bikes onboard that can be borrowed like some of the river cruise companies do - you can see so much more of the local area than you can on foot.

[HotRoot]

Seadream used to have bikes.  Don't know if they still do.