SWFLAOK

2 hours ago, Mr Rumor said:

Our date with Gaudí was everything that Ginny had hoped for, and more. It was obvious to our wonderful guide, Josep, that he had a Gaudí fanatic on his hands, as he indulged Ginny and me with extra time in Sagrada Família so that she could snap a few dozen extra shots.   Also on the program:  Park Guell, the fiasco of a residential development that was fated to become one of the master architect’s six UNESCO World Heritage sites, and a first visit to Gaudi’s Casa Mila, located around the corner from our hotel (the boutiquey Casa Mimosa).

Was this a private tour that you arranged. If so, I would love to know how to arrange this. We already embarked in Barcelona last July with Regent, and took their paid excursion and it was just a panoramic bus tour. We saw more on our arrival day when we had a bus to drop us off in town, but since we had no tickets to go inside any point of interest, we could only walk around the outside.

I am also a Gaudi fanatic, and would love to take the tour that you just did. We have a Splendor cruise in September 2021 that ends in Barcelona, with an early arrival and a night in port. I want to do that tour while we're there. I suspect Regent will offer the same panoramic bus tour that we took last time, and the post cruise add-ons were not appealing. Thanks in advance.

4 hours ago, BarbarianPaul said:

Ice cubes and cold compress? Is your strategy to somehow fool the cruise line into letting you on board,  just in case you have a fever?  Is that fair to other passengers?

It's not at all fair to other passengers. I completely agree with BarbarianPaul. I thought this suggestion from the OP was not sarcastic at all, and was totally inappropriate.

Mrlevin is suggesting that people who are sick should try to get onboard, even if they know they are ill, by avoiding detection of their illness.

We saw someone do this on a cruise. On the bus from the airport to the ship, a woman was so sick that she needed to ask the bus driver to pull over so she could run off the bus and vomit. On arriving at the port 10 minutes later, she was headed right onboard, having filled out her form and handing it to the nurse saying she had no health problems that day. We were right behind her in line, and "told" on her. Two other couples behind us agreed with what we said. They sent someone to track her down,  but we don't know what happened. Could have been norovirus, or just food poisoning,  but I'm sure there's plenty who will try what Mrlevin suggested to get onboard with corona virus.

A few days ago, I read a suggestion on another website from someone leaving China to a destination that was screening for fever that included Mrlevin's suggestions, as well as taking a large does of fever lowering medication.

We should all be taking this seriously, and jokes or sarcasm are not good responses.

We're booked on the Fiji to Bali cruise in April, on the way to dry dock. We're hoping that all goes well, and the worst is over by then for corona virus. But PG had booked us on Cathy Pacific through Hong Kong on the way back to LAX. We contacted our TA last Sunday, and she found a flight through Sydney to LAX on the way back, and we booked that. She also arranged for a refund from PG, which we haven't seen on our credit card yet.

We stop twice in Papua New Guinea on our cruise, and they've already stopped ships from Asia from stopping in their ports. So those that come back on the PG from the dry dock may not be able to stop there if the epidemic isn't resolved by late May.

We don't stop in Tahiti this time, but if France isn't stopping Chinese tourists coming into Papeete,  they could have cases coming into the Papeete airport, and I'm not sure how well they would handle them.

But, on our 3 PG cruises, we have never seen any Chinese tourists on the Paul Gauguin. We have seen them on Moorea as tourists in  places that we went on PG excursions.

I would be cautious when you land in Papeete about touching anything, more so than from the LAX flight to PPT. I always bring Lysol wipes on planes, and wipe everything that I might touch, since I assume the last person sitting there touched all of them, and nothing was cleaned between flights.

We loved our Silver Suite on Whisper when we cruised from Barbados to Manaus and back to Barbados in November of 2018. My brother was also onboard in a Veranda Suite, and neither of the men wanted to dress up, so the Silver Suite allowed the 3 of us to eat dinner in our suite with the excellent food from The Restaurant being served to us for dinner by our butler.

La Dame definitely does require an advance reservation, and it also costs 60 dollars per person. We booked one reservation in advance of the cruise for the 3 of us. My brother thought he would not like it, but at the end of our first dinner at La Dame, he wanted more, and we booked a second dinner for the 3 of us, again at 60 dollars each. I don't think the Italian restaurant required reservations before boarding, and there was no additional cost, but we preferred The Restaurant. The hot rocks grill didn't appeal to us at all. We had made a second reservation before we ate there the first time, and we cancelled it the day after we ate there. Cooking our own food at the table, with the resulting smoke and heat wasn't for us.

We're booked for Fort Lauderdale to Auckland in January 2021. My brother isn't joining us for this cruise, we're in a Veranda Suite since it's enough room for the 2 of us. We have the clothes to dress for dinner in The Restaurant, so we'll be eating there most of the time. We'll be paying for a reservation at La Dame since we love French cuisine, and hoping we can get an additional reservation. While we're not in a Silver Suite, we're on back-to-back cruises, and should be able to get a reservation on each leg.

We did a Sea Dream cruise to the Caribbean, and enjoyed it. It's much more of a small boat experience than Silver Whisper. We've done 3 Paul Gauguin cruises (now owned by Ponant), and it's closer to the size of Silver Whisper, but it's still much more casual, with suites being modest in size. 

We found the service to be exceptional on Silver Whisper, as we found it on Sea Dream and Paul Gauguin. We also cruise on Regent, and while still enjoyable, is definitely a bigger boat experience. We would never consider a ship with more than 1000 passengers.

And that 55% mortality rate for those over 60 could be a deal breaker for us, cruising to Bali, and flying back through Sydney if they haven't completely closed down their China flights by then. If the Chinese are still boarding in China and fleeing to other countries where they can board US bound flights with us, then it's not safe to go. I'll be checking to see if the 2.2% goes up, and if it gets broken down by age before April.

12 minutes ago, 1985rz1 said:

 

 

The CDC estimates that, there have been 8,200 deaths in 15,000,000 cases of flu in the US so far in the 2019 -2020 season.  That's a mortality rate of about 0.055% 

 

As of today (January 30, 2020, 11 am EST) there have been 171 deaths in 8236 confirmed cases of Coronavirus 2019-nCoV worldwide.  That's a mortality rate of about 2.1%.

 

WHO estimated the mortality rate for SARS was between 14 and 15%.

 

 

The mortality rate that I saw for SARS was 9.5 percent, which is still a scary percentage. The 2.1 to 2.2 percent mortality rate seems to be holding steady for a number of days now.  But the number of infected this time is already more than SARS, and it seems to be escalating. An expert from the SARS epidemic in China said that he expects the peak to be 7 to 10 days from now, which I assume is based on the Wuhan quarantine having started a week ago.

I hope that the WHO declaration shuts down flights to the rest of the world from the affected areas. If China keeps sending flights to other countries, it's going to continue to spread.

The husband of the Chicago woman in the US now tests positive as well. They're saying that he contracted if from her, so I assume that means that he did not accompany here to Wuhan, and stayed in close contact with her even though she was sick on arrival and diagnosed quickly. That doesn't give me a good feeling about how it will go in the US as more cases arrive.

As for us,  our TA spoke to PG and worked some of her magic, and we ended up with a flight on Qantas through Sydney to LAX, which leaves later from Bali, but takes less time, and lines up well with our JetBlue flight from LAX to FLL.  It was slightly cheaper, and PG will be refunding our return flight expense, but we are now on our own for that return flight. I'm hoping that this is all over by April.

26 minutes ago, geegeecruiser said:

Thanks for your information.  We also are supposed to be leaving for a March 1 cruise on The Voyager.  Starts in Hong Kong ends in Bangkok 28 days later.  Needless to say that along with the riots in HK as well as the virus, we are questioning this trip ( we are seasoned travelers but have never been faced with quite this much doubt). Unless Regent takes some serious steps, the travel insurance  that we purchased won’t allow us to cancel.

We have a Paul Gauguin cruise that ends in Bali near the end of April. Our flight, provided by PG cruises (now Ponant), is through Hong Kong on the way home. Our TA, who we also use for Regent, assured us that the cruise line will take serious steps to avoid problems with in Hong Kong. We might not go were we expected to go, but we won't be put in danger. I'm hoping for the best.

There's still plenty of time until March. Our last Voyager trip at the beginning of December, the ship came through the Middle East before arriving in Singapore where we embarked. With the problems in Iran, we worried about the passing through the area, but we didn't worry that our trip would be cancelled without compensation.

Well, that arrival of a planeload of Chinese at Vancouver airport at the same time as your arrival doesn't sound good. I hope you tried to notice if anyone was coughing, and held your breath while you passed them in the immigration lines. That's what I tried to do when we arrived in Vancouver for our Alaska cruise back in 2018. And there were many Chinese tourists arriving at the same time that were coughing and made no attempt to cover their mouths.

We recently came through Dubai from FLL to Singapore on our Voyager cruise from Singapore to Singapore, and then on from Singapore to Syndney.

When we arrived in Singapore from Dubai, we were all shot with IR thermometers as we left our flight. We were not warned ahead of time, and there were many thermometers involved. Once at our hotel, we were told that we were screened for MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome), since we had flown through Dubai. At one of our ports, we were also screened without notice, using IR thermometers as we left the ship for the day. We were happy to see these screenings since we had many people onboard who were obviously sick, and some told us that they or their spouse had pneumonia. That didn't keep them from eating in the restaurants, but hopefully they didn't get off the ship and spread it elsewhere.

I always bring Lysol wipes when I travel. I wipe down everything that I , or my husband might touch on the plane. I wipe down everything that I will touch in our cabin. My problem onboard the ship is that I don't always see the table cloth changed between guests, and despite my complaints, the tables at the Coffee Connection are not wiped between guests. I bring my Lysol wipes and made a point of showing them that I'm wiping the table, but after 36 nights onboard, it was still up to me to clean the table at the Coffee Connection.

Those masks are not necessarily effective. If you have a cough, it will go around the mask. We saw people cough into their masks, take them off,  and lay them on the table in restaurants (not on the ship). After eating, they left them on the table, along with their plates. And the table wasn't cleaned at all.

It's more about not touching your face without sanitizing your hands. We didn't get sick on our last cruise, but my husband caught a cold within 4 days of arriving back home in SW Florida with all of our snowbird condo residents who brought new viruses to us from the North. We both had flu shots, and I didn't catch the cold from him (with separate hand towels and separate tooth paste, and plenty of Lysol wipes on any surface that he might touch).

At this point, I'm not thinking that then new Corona virus isn't any worse than the flu, but without a vaccine, that could still be bad.

There won't be any dental care on your cruise ship. That's not something that they do. Whether there's a dentist available in any of your ports depends on where you're going, and how busy the dentists are in that port.

Based on our experience, the doctor onboard won't even have any pain meds other than Advil and Tylenol. And depending on where you're going, you may not be able to bring any strong pain meds on board. If you bring them with you they  may be considered illegal drugs in the countries that you enter. You could be convicted of a serious drug crime for bringing a pain medication with codeine into other countries.

If I were planning to take a very long cruise, I would have a troublesome tooth removed well before I went. Especially a wisdom tooth that should have been removed long ago if the dentist mentioned it. I would also make sure that any implant had sufficient time to settle in without a problem, based on several friends that ran into problems with having implants looked at by dentists not familiar with them.

We always take a filled prescription of an antibiotic from our dentist in case one of our old teeth decides to abcess. That can easily ruin many days of a cruise. We used to cruise on our own boat in the US and the Bahamas, and finding a dentist in an emergency was never easy.

And we also bring all of the dental repair kits that are available in our local drug store so we have the ability to reglue a crown, or fill in a lost filling while on a cruise.

15 minutes ago, westmount said:

Let's move onto something more important, like why Regent ran out of bananas halfway through the cruise while travelling through Guatemala , Honduras and Costa rica, go figure? 

We're not from Canada, so I don't know if you have bananas there year round, but in Florida, and the rest of US, we do. So, why that's a big problem on a cruise, I cannot imagine.

On our recent Singapore to Sydney cruise, large bananas were in short supply, and those onboard were not very good quality. The small bananas were fine, but they were small, and a number of cruisers found them to be unacceptable, and refused to eat them. I don't know why.

But adults who don't keep their kids under control on a 25K cruise, is in no way comparable to adults who don't keep control of their kids at an $80 dollar meal, and is definitely in no way comparable to not having good bananas in the size you prefer.

On 1/19/2020 at 1:09 PM, drib said:

I'm going to make a couple of new points, and then I'm out of here like a big dog.

 

1. The fourth page, and beyond, of any thread is stupid.

 

2. If dungaree blue jeans are not allowed in the dining rooms, then I don't see how the Von Trapp kids are going to get away with wearing drapery.

Sorry drib, but your comment is more like a foo foo dog that a big dog. Many threads go on past the 3rd page and still have useful information. And we see jeans in the dining room without being thrown out, so the Von Trapp kids will be allowed to stay no matter what they're wearing, even if they don't sing for us in the Constellation Theater on the final night.

But shorts are not allowed to be worn by any adult on the last night of the cruise, even though it's always casual night, allowing us to pack all of our upscale clothes,  and put our suitcases outside of our cabins before we go to dinner. Jeans, however, are allowed in the dining rooms on the last night of the cruise.

And your points are?

On 1/19/2020 at 12:55 PM, 1982CruzStart said:

Fortunately our experiences with kids onboard have been positive and very few and far between. We don't have kids and try avoid times of the year when kids will be travelling.

On our second Regent cruise we had a cabin beside a family with 2 small children. Everytime we saw the mother she hoped her children were not disturbing us. We assured her everytime that we never heard a thing and that when we saw them they were well behaved.  The only noise we heard from their cabin was when the grandfather was what seemed to be coughing up a lung. Didn't last long and no big deal for us. 

One cruise we wanted to do was only offered in the summer and had a kids sail free promotion so we chose something else.  Not wanting to spend thousands of $ to be annoyed by potentially bored kids. I feel sorry for the kids, being in a place that offers little for them to do and relatively confined spaces.  When i see a kid acting out, i rarely blame the kid but look to the parents to manage their kids. 

Our second Regent cruise was scheduled for our Anniversary at the beginning of June. Unfortunately, the entire itinerary was changed from the Mediterranean (Barcelona to Venice, and I had never been to Europe before), to Greece and Turkey (which I had no interest in). We really wanted to do Barcelona to Venice, and didn't want to lose money by cancelling, so we had no other choice than to reschedule to  a cruise in July, with many kids, mostly as part of large family groups. It was not pleasant.

Our Singapore to Singapore cruise in early December had no kids onboard that stood out. On our Singapore to Sydney, there were very few kids, but 2 young girls that were part of a family group were always noisy. Toward the end of the cruise, a few screaming infants made their appearance in Compass Rose at dinner. If they were in Prime 7 or Chartreuse, I would have asked that they be removed, or we would have left.

We're looking at Viking Ocean cruises in the future since they only allow 18 and older.

On 1/13/2020 at 11:59 PM, rcandkc said:

I don’t agree..I don’t use AirPods and don’t want to.  Parents using them and not understanding the chaos being created is a problem. 

I agree with you totally rcandkc.

9 hours ago, Memlin said:

So, no one in all of Europe eats escargot anymore?  It’s “old hat.” My husband and I enjoy it very much. We are always pleased to see it on the menu. I have to admit the preparation is not always our favorite. However, I have a feeling that we are too easy to please. 

I love escargot, and agree with you that I'm always happy to see them on the menu. We have a great restaurant locally in Fort Myers that has a delicious version of escargot in puff pastry. I think I need to go there again soon.

So the specialty restaurants are open for lunch on Explorer? This is definitely different than Voyager or Mariner. Will Splendor be the same as Explorer?

21 hours ago, FlyerTalker said:

As for the "cost less"....I would wager that NCL pays far more than Regent for their docking privileges.  It's not about the cost to the passenger - except when you want to think that way.

Since I'm the passenger, that's the only way I'm thinking about it. Is the cost of the cruise worth it to the passengers is what the cruise line determines. And based on my Regent cruise experience, I'm thinking we pay too much for what we get. Maybe you've already figured that out FlyerTalker, and we're making the right decision to look for a cruise elsewhere. It definitely won't be on any ships bigger than Regent's ships, so NCL is definitely not a possibility.

9 hours ago, Mahogany said:

Really, SWFLAOK, you would forego another Regent cruise because you don't like waiting in the Constellation Theatre? A bit harsh, dontyathink?

I was on the cruise/disembark with Westmount having breakfast in Compass Rose at 8:15 when CD Lorraine came on the PA system to announce the luggage union delay because of offloading luggage, so there was notification. And the two (only) immigration agents could have been because of other ships disembarking. I was held up in October in Miami because of a big Norwegian ship disembarking the same time as my Regent Mariner. Soo, when you're in Miami's huge cruise port, delays are inevitable and expected, though not desirable.

As for Regent excursions, I AGAIN expressed on the survey my dissatisfaction with "Included" tours. Reduce my cruise fare and let me choose and pay for the ones  I want!

When we paid 60K for a back to back cruise in a Penthouse Suite, it's not harsh at all to consider foregoing another Regent cruise because we have to wait an excessive amount of time in the Constellation Theater at every port.

In Sydney, no shipwide PA announcements were allowed, according to our CD Margaret, so they were only broadcast in the Constellation Theater. There was no where else that they were broadcast so your choice was to ignore your instructions from Regent, or sit in the Theater until the announcement was made.

We already had another Regent cruise booked in 2021 before we took this cruise. If we decide not to cancel it, we won't be waiting for any announcements from destination services in the CT. We'll turn in our tickets for a bus number and be on our way. Or maybe we'll just head to the bus area with our tickets, and pick a bus that matches where we're going as we saw numerous others do on our recent cruise.

And why is it acceptable that a large Norwegian Cruise ship should be an excuse for your Regent Cruise ship to be delayed. Who paid more, and why did they disembark at the same time, or prior to you?  Big ships that cost less seem to get the best spots to dock and have preference for embarking and disembarking.This was definitely the case in Sydney where all of the big ships, mostly on 3 day cruises, docked at The Rocks, while we disembarked 40 minutes out of town in a cargo port. Maybe we should be on those cheap cruises if we really feel the need to cruise, or we should stop cruising and go back to traveling on our own. We're definitely leaning toward the latter.

We experienced new wait staff on our Singapore to Singapore, and again continuing on from Singapore to Sydney.  New staff came on board in Singapore both times. The new waitstaff seemed to be trained in the mornings at breakfast, and again for lunch service. Each cruise had a day at sea on the first day. If it takes extra time to train new staff, that's the time to do it. We have no place that we need to be at breakfast or lunch.

Did it take over an hour to have breakfast in Compass Rose on each of these days? Yes, it did. Did we give feedback to the experienced waitstaff on the new people? Yes, we did. By the end of each segment, were most of the new staff doing very well? Yes, they were.

We have a bigger problem with the inexperienced staff in the kitchen. We had a kitchen tour where we saw

staff who took more than 5 minutes to slice an avocado and put it on a plate, and that was a week into our first cruise. I wish I had said something to the executive chef who gave us the tour.

The new ships are taking the most experienced people from Voyager, and there are only a few experienced people from other cruise lines coming in to replace them. That means that inexperienced crew will replace the most experienced on Voyager, and you will be part of their training. We did our best to courteously give them feedback while they gained experience, and hope others will do the same.

If you're arriving early in the morning on your pre-stay, and have access to your hotel room when you arrive, that is a be a big plus. We like to be able to relax on arrival, and not have to sit around the  hotel until normal check-in time at 3 PM.  We paid 800 each for an upgrade to premium economy from LAX to PPT last September on Air Tahiti Nui, and had early access to our room at the IC. We found it to be well worth it since we had plenty of leg room, and 2 seats together without a third person next to us, which is something we really dislike on a long flight.

That was one way since we were coming back to LAX from Fiji, where the plane was still 2 seats next to the window in economy on Air Fiji, which was comfortable for us.

15 minutes ago, ronrick1943 said:

Which is why we never fly out until afternoon at any port.

This is the correct answer.

There always seems to be a reason that having been told what time we need to vacate our cabin, and exactly when we will disembark, we need to sit in the Constellation Theater for an excessive amount of time, being exposed for one last time to those who can't control their coughing, before we leave for our long trip home.

Even when we had a 3 night post cruise excursion, and could see our bus outside before our disembarkation time, we still needed to sit in the Constellation Theater for an extended period of time. When they finally called our number, we found that many, many others were already in line at the gangway, and that the disabled were told to go ahead so they can take their time getting to the buses, blocking everyone else. 

We are questioning whether we want to take another Regent Cruise because of the whole Constellation Theater experience. We never leave for an excursion on time, and it's normally at least 45 minutes or more between the time we're told to be there, and the time our number is called. Then we have to compete for seats in a bus with limited leg room, and we can't sit near the front because it's all reserved for limited mobility who will take forever to get off the bus at each stop. And the excursions always ended later than listed, most often causing everyone to miss lunch onboard, and often causing people to miss other scheduled events. The tour guides were reluctant to get us back on schedule, since we hadn't been allowed to board the bus ontime. A few tour guides asked if we wanted to cut short "free time" for shopping and dining, and the answer was always "yes".

The excursions on Regent are definitely not a luxury experience, and it's been no different for us on paid excursions than on included excursions. The only excursion we really enjoyed on our last cruise was a a Regent overnight excursion. We were told that our "One Night in Bangkok" was cancelled because no one else signed up for it, and if we still wanted to do it, we would need to pay much more. When we checked into the hotel, we met 2 other couples who were told the same thing. For this private excursion, we were told to go to the Constellation Theater, but we just disembarked, and found our driver and tour guide waiting for us with a sign with our name on it. That was a luxury experience, but with the cost of a Regent Cruise, we should not have to pay 1500 dollars extra for it.

Some crew members from Voyager were leaving the ship in Sydney on Jan 7th,  joining Splendor to make sure it's ready for it's inaugural cruise on Feb 6. Bon Voyage to those on board. We have to wait until 2021.

And to give a little more information, we just spent 32 nights on Voyager. We always bring the battery powered tea lights, but we had the wide version of a penthouse suite, and didn't need to use them. If we left both the window curtains and the sliding door curtains open when we went to bed, there was enough light from the outside of the ship to find the bathroom door, and the bathroom switch was lighted to turn it on. Rooms will be different on different ships, so we always bring the lights just in case.

It's "battery powered tea lights". Search for that and you will find them. They're flat and have a fake flame. They're a substitute for a votive candle if you're familiar with those.

Yes to 1 and 3, never used 4.

Our penthouse suite frig was filled with an ice bucket and vero bottles. I don't think we could have fit a plate, but maybe a small bowl . The top shelf of our frig was just tall and wide enough for cans in a single line. The bottom part was wide enough for the ice bucket (the kind with cubes for drinks, not a champagne bucket), or the width of 2 vero bottles, and a little taller than the vero bottle. 

We were able to find food in a public venue from 6:30AM until dinner, and we always had plenty of fresh fruit available in our cabin. Room service is available as well.

We just disembarked Voyager after 32 nights. At best, the internet was slow. Much of the time it was intolerably slow, and sometimes it was not responsive at all. When docked in large cities, we paid 10 dollars to access the internet through our Verizon plan. We did not make it through the online survey at the end of either of our cruise segments due to the poor internet access, and I don't want to pay 10 dollars for my own plan, or waste an extended period of time trying to complete an online survey when there are better things to do onboard.