Renaissance Cruises - the past and the future

R EIGHT now Adonia (the only of the 8 I haven't taken any pic or vid)

Have you ever travelled with them either as R ships or later?

I haven't travelled with any of them, but I did see R Four when she was the Tahitian Princess back in 2009.

We have sailed on Regatta & Insignia (now Columbus 2) several times ...love the R-ships

We have sailed on R1-4 and on the Royal princess--don't know what number she was. Pat

We've sailed on Regatta and Journey and are booked on Quest in the Spring. We certainly like the concept of a small, well run ship. What we like less is that first Oceania, and now Azamara, have boosted their prices into the Luxury range, without quite coming up with a Luxury product. For that kind of money, there are many more choices to pick from. That being said, our feeling was that Azamara has come up with the more successful model for the R ships: concentrating on committed service, as good as they can make it, rather than on food ( Oceania makes the claim of " The Best Food Afloat". Actually this is nonsense, in fact Azamara's food, certainly in the specialty restaurants, is better.) Moreover, as we tend to go for Transatlantics exclusively, the recent innovation that Azamara has introduced of tacking on extra days both at the beginning and at the end of a crossing seems counter productive to us: we have two things in mind, crossing the Atlantic in some degree of style and comfort and spending some time in Europe. We don't need or want a floating hotel once we're there, we can certainly find one we like on our own. In December we sail on a T/A on Crystal, at a price comparable to what Oceania and Azamara charge. I'm most curious to see if it turns out that we'll have found our new home at Sea. To be sure, Crystal Sereniity is medium sized rather than boutique sized, to borrow the industry's vocabulary, but then, while we did like Sea Dream quite a lot, it turned out to be a tad confining and a little too cozy over the span of two weeks. And, certainly the passenger to space ratio ( 1,100/ 60,00 tons vs. 750/ 30,000 tons on the R ships) favors Crystal. It remains to be seen if, the 1,000 passenger ceiling having been surpassed, all vestiges of small ship intimacy have gone out the porthole.

When Renaissance was around, we sailed on the R-1, R-2, R-4, R-5, and R-6.

We were just getting our feet wet in the cruising world, and found those ships to be our favorite.

I would like to say the same thing for the founder, Frank Del Rio, but after stranding all passengers that were aboard in some unknown port, to fend for themselves on the day of bankruptcy, I have stayed at a distance, to see how he is running his new venture......Oceania.

He seems to be doing a better job, as he has another cruise line, combined, and is introducing new designs, and new ports.

I may be tempted to try his line again...........as all that I hear about Oceania are great things.

Rick

I would like to say the same thing for the founder, Frank Del Rio, but after stranding all passengers that were aboard in some unknown port, to fend for themselves on the day of bankruptcy, I have stayed at a distance, to see how he is running his new venture......Oceania.

 

Rick

You may want to do a little research before you blame Mr Del Rio for stranding you as he did not work for REN at the time of it's demise

We traveled on one of the original Ren boats: RIII. These carried no more than about 120 passengers. Loved it! If I recall, the original boats had roman numerals, while the newer, larger ones had regular numbers. I've never been on one of those, because I prefer 125 or fewer. I think some of the roman numeral Ren ships are still around, I just don't know where. Altho I once heard that one of them was in the Bahamas as a day tripper. These days and recent years, we've been doing sailing ship cruising and love it best.