Joanandjoe

We haven't used the service, since we embarked from Vancouver after spending a night in the city (and, anyway, Regent isn't a participant). From what we have read on the "critical" board, some cruise lines only particpate for embarking PAX. Others participate, but don't call it by the same name as the Vancouver Port Authority. Coming from the ship, cruise lines in the second category offer transportation directly to the airport, and transportation of baggage directly to the airport. That may give you the U.S. Diorect program, if your transportation is directly to the sealed , US-bound PAX only, section of the airport. You may want to ask X if they have those two services. Usually, the services can only be booked on the ship, not in advance.

I can't tell you about departing from Vancouver, since we sailed from Vancouver and ended up in Seward. I can tell you that you need to go through immigration when you arrive in Vancouver, and it's very much luck of the draw. Some people are lucky enough to get through in 10 minutes or less. (That's what happened to me in Toronto two weeks ago--through immigration in maybe 6 minutes.) Or you could be unlucky, as we were. We arrived at one p.m., which is normally OK; but two huge 747s arrived from Korea and Japan a few minutes before us. It took us an hour to clear immigration. By the time we cleared immigration, our bags were waiting for us, and we quickly found a taxi that took us to our pre-cruise hotel.

I got the article from the Luxury Cruise Talk board. The reaction of posters there was the same as here: "Gee, I wish it had been me."

The camp sounds as if it meets Joan's criteria for going on a camping trip: beds, and room service available. I guess we're not campers. Yes, a once in a lifetime experience; but probably scary while it was happening.

See http://www.cruiserfriendly.com/cruise_blog...ded-on-glacier/ This happened on the Regent Seven Seas Mariner, the ship that we took to Alaska two months ago. What an adventure!

For Joan's sister, who lives in Sarasota, it's worse than that: right up the WEST side of Florida. So far, the sister is very calm about it.

Joey, your pictures bring back terrific memories of our Med. cruise.

On our last three cruises, the sailaway beverage was the water we used to brush our teeth before going to bed. All three sailings (Amsterdam, Barbados, Vancouver) were at 11 p.m. or midnight, after we went to sleep. Not much to see at that hour even if you're still awake; and all three times we wanted to be rested and alert for our arrival at our first port at 8 a.m. or earlier the next morning. When we are awake for a sailaway, we tend to have champagne or a glass of wine.

You must fly low if you can get from PA to Cape Liberty in 45 minutes. We live in North Jersey, and it takes us about that long - and that's when there's no tie-up on the NJ Turnpike.

We try to buy at least one article of jewelry or non-T shirt clothing. Then, whenever we wear it, we think of the trip. Aside from that, we try to buy things unique to the area: lithographs of Bermuda sights, Russian nesting dolls in Alaska, spices and hot sauce in the Caribbean, etc.

The New York docks are about 9 miles from us: 15 minutes on a weekend or midday. Cape Liberty is about 20+miles, 40 minutes from us, Brooklyn about the same.

If I have an onboard credit, I check soon after embarkation, then keep checking until the credit is there. Then I go back to my normal procedure: checking every three days or so.

St. Paul de Vence may be the most beautiful place we've visited on a European cruise. We toured the city on foot, and each of us placed a stone on on Chagall's grave - the traditional Jewish thing to do. It was a bit odd to see a Jewish painter buried in a Catholic cemetary; but Chagall obviously was "blinded by the light", and fell in love with this wonderful medieval city. We understood "port of call" to mean a port where the ship stops, not a place visited on shore excursions. St. Paul doesn't make our list of favorite ports because, of course, it's not a port. It's about an hour inland from Nice and Villefranche. If you include places visited on shore excursions, St. Paul and Avignon would be on our list.

On our Windstar cruise last December, the ship lost our luggage in Barbados, but I found it. We were sailing on the Wind Surf a day after another Windstar ship was supposed to sail. Due to storms, the other ship was a day late, and many of its embarking PAX were put up in the same hotel as us. Both ships would end up sailing on the same day, and going to the same port the next day. We loaded our luggage onto the truck when we were told to do so, then boarded the ship several hours later. No luggage. While Joan took a nap, I went for a walk on the pier. As I passed a shed, I looked inside and saw our luggage. I asked when it would be loaded onto the Wind Surf. "Oh, no, sir, this luggage is for the Wind Star!" It was about to be loaded onto the other ship! Fortunately, I was able to persuade the man in the shed to pull out the luggage, which had tags matching my passport. They pulled the luggage out of the shed, wheeled it to the Wind Surf, and loaded it onto the ship. Had I not gone for a walk, our luggage would have been lost. Maybe I would have gotten it the next day, maybe not.

On selected sailings only, and then for one child only with two paying PAX. (Few, if any rooms below penthouse can hold four people.) If you and David adopt a child, he/she may be young enough to crimp your cruising style for awhile. No, Joey, you can't qualify for a child's fare. Young at heart is not young in age.

Nice ship, wrong board. Crystal definitely isn't HAL.

Yes you do; but probably not this ship. First of all, it won't launch for another four years, and you shouldn't wait that long. Second, the rooms will be so large that they're bound to be very, very expensive. Regent is a bit of a stretch for us, and we suspect that the new ship will be too pricey.

I'm not sure why Joey dragged up this very old thread, but for what it's worth .... I agree with the poster who say that early is generally too early, and late too late. For 6 of our 12 cruises, that wasn't a problem: five of them were on samll ships with open seating (Windstar 3, Radisson/Regent 2), and one (Avalon Poetry) was on a river cruiser with fixed seatingat 7 or 7:30. For the other six cruises, we had to choose a seating. On our first cruise, we chose early seating but were assigned late. It nearly ruined our cruise. We are extreme early birds, and ended up needing to eat snacks in the bar or from room service just to hold us until dinner. When we finished dinner, we were too tired to go to the shows, and too bloated to get to sleep. We felt out of sorts the entire trip. At this point, meal setting is a deal breaker. We'll always choose early, and will try to cancel a cruise if we're assigned to late seating.

If Regent went out of business, we'd probably try another luxury line such as Seabourn or Silversea (or, despite the relatively large 900 PAX size, Crystal). Alternatively, we'd try another suite on HAL. Maybe we'd give Celebrity a third chance despite one so-so cruise and one lousy one.

On our B2B 4 years ago, almost all of the ports were wonderful. How does one choose among such goodies as Nice, Balcelona, Palma, Marseille (yes, Marseille), Malaga, and such small but nice places as Sete, Ibiza, Villefranche, and Portimao? They were all favorites, and we had wonderful experiences in all of them.

Today, August 8, or Sunday, August 10?

Joey, whoever wrote that decription of "the beginnings of Celebrity Cruise" (presumably a Royal Caribbean publicist) should hang his or her head in shame. The writer ignores the noble history of the Chandris family and Chandris cruise line. Celebrity didn't spring up out of thin air: it was a venture by Chandris into cruising. With the original Greek officers gone from the line, all that's left of Chandris is the letter X (Chi in Greek), which is the first Greek letter in the name Chandris. (Chi alpha nu delta rho iota sigma). Royal Caribbean seems determined to erase Chandris from the history of the line. What's the next step--eliminating the X from the funnels?

On our one night cruise to Grand Bahama in 1971, our taxis got into an accident, and Joan hurt her leg (luckilu a sprain, not a break). Both the Bahamas hospital and the ship charged us, but she received no real care: nothing at all at the hospital, painkillers at the ship. The experience had a lot to do with our never again going to the Bahamas, and not trying a real cruise for 27 years, until 1998. Since we've started cruising in 1998, we've occasioimally had to go the the infimary for headache or sea sickness remedies, but not for anything serious. No charge for seasick pills.

If you count a B2B as one cruise, our longest is 14 days; otherwise, our longest is 11. Our shortest, not counting a one night Bahamas cruise 37 years ago, was seven days.

Our answer, which is not one of the choices, is "none booked". We're back to the situation we had last year, when we had two vacations that were taken within three weeks of when I was granted the time off. I wanted to go on vacation this year in late September, but I'll be lucky if I get any vacation time (other than long weekends) at all for the rest of the year. As for 2009, for now: "FUGGEDABOUDIT!".