The service is always great on Regent cruises but this particular cruise was the WORST that I have ever been on. It started with the interaction between Regent and the travel agency ( Vacations to-go) that we booked the cruise through. They never seemed to be on the same page and struggled to communicate effectively with one another and then with us; each company blaming the other for the series of errors that we were exposed to such as booking our flights to and from the wrong citiesand getting assigned a room designed for disabled passengers.

The excursions they offered were generally unprofessional and contained very little entertainment value for the amount of time you were on them. For whatever reason ( perhaps 'kickbacks' from the stores?), Regent continues to 'force' its guests to participate in visiting gift shops/ shopping 'experiences' on nearly all shore excursions. They need to design excursions that don't involve shopping "opportunities" if iheir guests prefer not to waste time shopping.

The new Explorer is 'pretty' but has several flaws. The restaurants offer a variety of menus but the quality of the food is not 4 Star. The Pacific Rim and French restaurants are new additions but are not very appealing. On a couple of floors, the space between the elevators and the staircases is so narrow that passengers are forced to navigate through a congested area. This created a safety hazard and is certainly a faulty design that needs to be addressed. Door handles in the common pathways were coming loose on some doors and were misiing on a couple of others. Some of us got stuck in an elevator for 30 minutes when it broke down and one hallway had to be closed due to a malfunctioning overhead sprinkler system. Read more