12 Nights Spotlight with Chef Chris Gross - Amsterdam to Paris Cruise

A magnificent cruise on this wonderful ship

After reading many reviews extolling the virtues of the ship, we were not disappointed. It is simply magnificent, with a friendly professional crew, offering high service levels. Embarkation and disembarkation at Miami can be quite a challenge, as can be accessing the port. For this cruise, Regent were using terminal J, a fairly old building. Check in was a bit chaotic with seemingly no plan for early birds. We sat down, as directed and people re later stood in lines, seemingly knowing more about the boarding process than the rest of us, so we then stood behind them. It was a fairly quick process and we boarded at about 11.30 am. Next, in what has become a boarding tradition for us we went to the pool deck to enjoy a cocktail in the sunshine, then ate lunch before exploring the ship. The rooms were ready by about 2pm, so we unpacked but ignored the welcome bottle of champagne and it stayed in the fridge for several days. Next we completed our admin by amending our shore excursion program, caused by my wife’s recent unexpected eye surgery, which prevented her from snorkelling. As it happened, the ship didn’t make it to our first port of call, Aruba, due to a medical emergency requiring the ship to return nearly to Miami to offload, by helicopter, a seriously ill passenger. This meant we had 3 sea days at the beginning of the cruise, far from ideal, but much better than the poor person who became ill on the first day. Next year, all being well, will return to Seabourn for our Caribbean cruise as they start from Barbados, enabling us to be in the warmer weather straight away. The ship has a very good activity program, including many deck games and organised Bridge. We had booked an F1 guarantee and were allocated Suite which was close to the back, but had a large balcony similar to the nearby concierge suites. It was the best suite we had ever had and a really comfortable bed and large bathroom, including a decent size shower and bath. It also had two sinks, but I’m not sure why people are keen on this. The ship has three speciality restaurants and most guests are allowed to reserve one visit to each restaurant during the cruise, but we managed 10 visits, mainly by daily visits to the restaurant concierge to check if there were any late cancellations. After first night issues with service and making a complaint, we had excellent service and food and drink throughout our cruise. That was quite a good excursion program, although we helped that some of the trips weren’t very well organised and some elements were missing, which we didn’t find out until we started the excursion. I was a little concerned over some safety aspects, including drivers using their mobile phone whilst driving, which is illegal in the UK. I had an accident on the tubing excursion, when my tube overturned and I sustained a painful back injury. I felt that although the guides were keen to help, they won’t necessarily in the right place to offer immediate assistance. The organiser took note of my name and suite number and after waiting for a few hours to be contacted, I contacted reception and I was invited to visit the ships Doctor. This I did and the first thing they did was to explain that if any injuries were felt be not related to the accident, I would be charged. I felt they were trying to make money from an unfortunate accident. They considered that I had a chest Infection and were going to charge me for all the tests related to that, when we felt that these issues could have been caused by the accident. When I received a bill for about $1700, I complained and later that day I was notified that all charges were being dropped and I would be refunded the money, which I was. When I returned home yesterday, I visited my local clinic and had a further chest x-ray and they were not certain that I had been given good advice on the ship, but that is the past. Anyway, I am now home, still in some considerable pain, but very lucky that we travelled yesterday as today Heathrow Airport was closed due to a fire, with all flights diverted, with some diverted to Europe, crossing much inconvenience to many people. We were often too tired to enjoy the after dinner entertainment, often going to bed early, as we prefer to be up early in the morning and often enjoyed our breakfast on the outer decks. I often enjoyed freshly squeezed juices and smoothies by the swimming pool and a few times I had room service breakfast, which was excellent and was ideal before an early morning departure for an excursion. Sadly, the day of departure soon arrived and once again, it was a bit chaotic, with many people ignoring the request not to block the corridors around the gangway. The announcements started later than expected and we left the ship about 30 minutes later than expected. Finding our luggage was easy and we quickly discovered that there was high demand for the Uber services and the quote to the airport was about $70, so we use the standard Service, which was very efficient and cost about $50 including tip

Regent surpassed expectations

This was our first cruise with Regent. We had read some reviews from previous guests and had we thought we had a good idea of what to expect. I (M62) and my wife (F58) wasn’t sure If we would enjoy a cruise with limited on ship activities. We were wrong. We felt welcomed from the moment we boarded in Miami. Our suite (Grand) was available almost as soon a we boarded and we were greeted by our amazing butler Shankar who took care of us during our entire voyage. We spend the first afternoon looking around the ship a tour of the Spa, a very nice facility. We ate dinner the first night in the Compass Rose, with a very nice couple we had met earlier in the day. Our meal was delicious and service was excellent, this set the tone for the remainder of our journey. We enjoyed all the excursions we had booked and had no problems with the disembarking process. We also enjoyed some of the daily games with the activities staff (wonderful group). The evening entertainment was fantastic, dances and singers were very skilled. We also enjoyed the guest comedian who did a great Top 10 list of things you won’t ever hear on a Regent Cruise, like “wish I had more food” Overall our first experience with Regent was wonderful, we were able to book an additional cruise onboard and will be doing a B2B in June on Navigator out of Lisbon

Our New Favorite Cruiseline

This review is a recap about the ship and restaurants taken from the review on my cruise review website. I have not included any of the many photos from the website review, since that format doesn’t work a well on this CC site, but I did want to share our thoughts about this ship here. Summary: We couldn’t have been more impressed with this beautiful, elegant ship. The 55,500-ton ship has a double occupancy capacity of 744 passengers. But even better than the ship itself, the service provided was the best we have experienced. We are normally very pleased with service on cruise ships. The staff on most of the lines we have been on work very hard to make your trip enjoyable by greeting and smiling at you while spoiling you. On Regent, service is at a much higher level with a higher staff to passenger ratio than other lines we have cruised with. I can’t imagine better service, but since this is our first cruise on a true luxury cruise line, we will have to try others find out the best line for us. Right now, Regent is our favorite line. Restaurants: Compass Rose – The main dining room for the ship is located on deck 4 at the back of the ship. We only ate there four of the ten nights, since we went to the specialty restaurants the other nights. The food was very good as was expected. What we really appreciated was an extensive menu of items that were available every day that I have included in the menu section of the review. My only disappointment with the menu was that they didn’t have French onion soup available every day. It is one of my favorites. We never did visit Compass Rose for breakfast, but we will when we are back on the ship next year. Lunch is not served in Compass Rose. Instead, it is served in both Chartreuse and Prime 7 specialty restaurants. It is a truly elegant room. There is a dramatic entrance to the dining room with a metallic waterfall type decoration as you enter. There is also very nice wall decoration and sculpture on the side of the entrance. La Veranda / Seti Mari – This is the buffet at the back of the ship on deck 11. The restaurant is in the shape of a U, with food in the middle and tables on the sides. This was the only restaurant where the tables were too close together. As a result, there wasn’t enough room between chairs when occupied to be able to pass between them to get to your table or back to the buffet. We always did find a way though. In the evening La Veranda turns into the Seti Mari Italian specialty restaurant. Reservations are not required, but if you want to eat early, you need to get in line at least 10-15 before the 6:30 PM opening time. Only one side of the buffet seating area is used in the evening, so seating is limited. The menu changes every two days but does have many of the same items every day. The ones that do change are some of the items that are on the Compass Rose menu for the day. We thoroughly loved Seti Mari and wish we could have eaten there again but we ran out of nights. We did like that there was a nice salad/appetizer area where we could get up and select items rather than ordering from the menu. It is also where desserts were located. Chartreuse – This is the ship’s French restaurant that is located at the back of the ship on the deck 10 port side. The food was good, but it was different from what the descriptions were in some cases. For some reason, the French restaurant didn’t have French onion soup. Heresy! They did have a crispy escargot dish, but it was more like a fritter, not escargot with garlic butter. It was our least favorite dining room on the ship. Talking with others, it was there least favorite also. With Regent, we were able to make one booking for each of the three specialty restaurants in advance of the cruise. I knew that we wanted to make an additional booking at the Asian restaurant, but that needed to be done after boarding. When we boarded, the first thing I did was to go to the restaurant reservation desk. They said that we couldn’t make additional reservations until a couple days into the cruise to allow those who didn’t pre-book to make some reservations. She did say that they had room available that night at Chartreuse if we wanted it, so we took it. Otherwise, I wouldn’t make a second booking. Lunch is served every day in both this restaurant and Prime 7. I believe those menus change daily. They also have some of the items that are served at the La Veranda buffet. Prime 7 – This is the ship’s steak house that is located at the back of the ship on the deck 10 starboard side. The food was very good. I wish we had gotten a second booking there. Surprisingly, the steak house had great onion soup. Pacific Rim - This pan-Asian specialty restaurant is located on deck 5 at the back of the ship on the port side. It is the smallest and most popular of the specialty restaurants. Unlike the other two specialty restaurants that go all the way to the back of the ship, Pacific Rim is limited because the spa, which is on the starboard side of deck 5 and spa deck take up a large area behind the restaurant. We thoroughly enjoyed the nice selection of tasty offerings on the menu. On our first visit we sat with a couple who had eaten there on several cruises and knew that the portion size was very small. This is a good thing, so that you can try several items at each visit. They even ordered two main courses. When my main course of a wonderful miso black cod came out, I also ordered an additional main course. I was so glad we were able to get a second booking at our favorite restaurant on the ship. The Study – This is a dining room located on deck 10 between Chartreuse and Prime 7. It is a dining room most will never see, since it is out of the way, and you must know where it is to find it. It is an exclusive private dining room accessible to a select group of guests. It seats up to twelve guests and must be reserved by your butler. Food can be ordered from either of the two specialty restaurants on either side of it. There is also the below option as shown on the Regent website: For those who prefer to create their own personalized experience, guests of The Study can also request that any off-menu dishes be prepared by the Senior Executive Chef. Savor a regional dish from one of the ports of call visited that day, such as Sicilian squid-ink pasta, or a traditional homecooked-style meal, like slow-roasted lamb with seasonal vegetables. It is a very attractive room that would be great for an intimate dinner for a small group.