"... the uproar that clearly has occurred..."

Dear friends, might I gently and modestly (of course, all of you who know me are well aware than neither of the terms "gentleness" or "modesty" frequently finds itself in any reference to me) suggest that we LCT and CC posters are a very small minority of passengers on Regent cruises. Although we hope that some of the agents of RSSC read these boards and take some advice from them (clearly that didn't happen with the dreadful passenger-loyalty programs), we should recognize that we represent only what is likely a single digit percentage of Regent cruisers. Therefore, I would humbly (another term not normally associated with me) ask whether there is, in fact, an "uproar" regarding this change in policy?? And without doing a strict mathematical analysis, it appears from the posts on both LCT and CC that there are more positive than negative reactions to the newly-announced policy.

To offer full disclosure (as they claim to do on network news shows), I admit that I am delighted with the new policy, since it will diminish the likelihood of our entering a cabin which bears the strong redolence of smoke. That has happened only once in our cruises on Regent and was not dreadful - merely annoying.

It appears that Regent may not have handled the communication of this decision well and may have not been entirely consistent with some signals they may have given in discussions on the WC. Irrespective of that, I find the suggestions of some on "that other board" that those of us who are quite libertarian should cancel our current bookings in solidarity with outraged smokers to be about the goofiest (sp???) notion ever.

It is likely that a few years from now, this discussion will be largely moot, unless one wants to cruise on a Russian or Chinese riverboat. From my experience in both of those countries, it will be well past our lifetimes before public accommodation goes non-smoking in either of them.

Cheers, Fred

BTW - Purely in the interest of protecting the reputation of all of us retired sharks - Richard, there is a spell-check icon on the Google toolbar which is quite useful in posting. Without it, I would have earned the dubious honor of having made the most incoherent and misspelled posts in the history of the Internet (or at least in the period since it was invented by Al Gore...).