Our first objective was to sail on the newest of the Regent Seven Seas fleet, SS Splendor.
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| SS Splendor |
There is nothing like the Regent experience of a smaller ship, superb service and quality and the benefit of letting someone else make the arrangements.
We initially booked the trip directly with Regent. I stumbled onto a very good YouTube tour of the ship by Mike Lukins, owner of Affluent Journeys which gave us a very detailed preview of this spectacular ship. Mike did a great job of giving a concise but detailed look at every facet of the Splendor. The video concluded with an invitation to bring our booking to his agency for some additional perks. I took the bait and we wound up with $400 in shipboard credits.
A few weeks ago we were notified of our air and pre-sailing accomodations in London. Our Regent deal gave us a 2 cabin upgrade which included an extra night on the front end of the trip at the Intercontinental in London. This gives us a nice cushion in the event of unforseen travel glitches. We have been to London so I am not booking any special tours or events. We will be grateful to get there, as scheduled, and do some off the beaten path activities as we adapt to the 5 hour time difference.
I paid a little more attention to the flight itinerary last week which revealed a less than stellar routing for our return to Naples from Stockholm. When I picked apart the return trip I discovered we would be spending 35 hours getting home including a 17 hour layover in Toronto. Canada is also considering return to COVID restrictions and that is a dealbreaker for us. I contacted Regent travel and the agent looked at our air routing and I heard a distinct "ugh". He gave the boilerplate advice that rebooking may cost us some money but a glimmer of hope that the air department probably let automation create this return routing without human review. So much for AI! I checked the Regent website a few hours later and was pleased to see that there were updated postings for a new return trip, via Amsterdam and Atlanta with a total of only 7 hours of layovers in Amsterdam and Atlanta. Regent also includes business class for any international trips so we get to spend our layovers in the premium lounges.
Update: May 23
As promised, an email in my inbox indicated we could complete the final check-in process for our cruise. We also received a final summary of the trip and everything is in order. Now we can focus on packing.
