golfgirls

We were on the Explorer on back to backs from December 18th to January 13th. I guess we had been lulled into a sense of expectation having been on the Mariner last Holiday with all of 3 children. This year was much different on the Explorer. Many more children and many of those with parents more childish than their children. It made enough of an impact that we cancelled the holiday cruise on the Explorer next year and booked something a bit later. I am sure the families on the Explorer had a great time, it just was not what we expected nor wanted.

I am all for adults only cruises, in fact, that is what I expect from Regent. And no flame throwing please!!!!

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We have booked the Capetown to Capetown December 2018 as well. Our favourite vacation ever was a golf/wine/safari trip to South Africa. Such a stunningly beautiful country and the sweetest people everywhere we went. We were not sure we would ever go back but when I saw this post, I just knew we had to go! Now we will get the beautiful country, sweet people and out of this world Explorer experience all in one package! Sounds almost too good to be true.

I do concur about the pre and post trips and the very misleading info - read cost - associated with them. We are doing a post cruise and are booked in a premium safari but really, really hoping our TA can get us into a promo safari.

Hope some of our Mixed Nuts pals will consider joining us on this one....

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Well we have not had quite the success rate of the Mixed Nuts but did win Name that Tune one night and eek out the odd third place at trivia....

We are sailing into Cabo San Lucas right now and it is a beautiful sight. Sitting on our balcony hoping to see some sea life at play.

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And now for the ship itself...

In a nutshell, it is beautiful. We find the decor to be quite lovely, interesting and definitely not dark! I understand that decor is a matter of taste so no flame throwing please if you disagree!

We are in a concierge level suite and love the layout. I call it the better B and B - being the bathroom and the balcony! Much improved on the Explorer vs the other ships and we really don' t need anything larger than this level of room. And we do not miss having a butler at all as we are well taken care of by our stewardesses.

One of our favourite 'new' things is having either Prime 7 and/or Chartreuse open for lunch. The menus have been great and the service has been super. We are also big fans of the new Compass Rose menu as well and could happily eat there every night, though we always enjoy Setti Mari as well. My only question mark is Pacific Rim, though we did enjoy it a bit better second time around.

Well that's it for now, I have to figure out what we are doing in Los Cabos tomorrow as I messed up on our excursion booking.

Cheers!

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Yes we had a great day in Acapulco as well and have posted our experience on that thread.

I thought I would post some of our thoughts on the Explorer as we are now 20 days into that experience and already feeling sad about leaving on Friday....

First of all, I will start with the service experience. We have had fabulous service everywhere onboard. If there were issues with staff training, I think they have long been worked through. Even though we have a number of the crew finishing up their respective contracts this week, they are upbeat, accommodating and fun. I can only surmise that Regent treats their staff well so they in turn treat us so very well.

This is the first cruise that we have been on with John Barron as CD and I have to say that he is just outstanding. He sets the tone for everyone truly enjoying their vacation and has made the holiday events really special. He clearly has a great rapport with all levels of staff onboard and I love his sense of humour. I am a bit sad though that John won't be our CD on the next three cruises as we will be on the Mariner and Navigator.

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We had an absolutely terrific day in Acapulco as well. We took the tour that started with the cliff divers, went to the historic Los Flomigos(sp?) hotel, on to the peace chapel, a silver shop, a quick stop at the fort and then back to the ship. Our tour guide Alijandro was informative and fun and very accommodating. We were a group of 10 and everyone thoroughly enjoyed the first three stops. None of us were really interested in the shopping so we left early, skipped the fort and were all happy to get back to the ship for lunch.

Acapulco really is a beautiful spot and we felt very safe and well taken care of. I have always wanted to see the cliff divers so that was a great highlight.

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We will be joining you tomorrow. We are anxiously awaiting both our Explorer and our holiday experience. We were on the Mariner last Christmas and enjoyed it so much, decided to do it again. Looking forward to meeting you and also to share our impressions here as well. Cheers!

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