I was also one of the posters on the thread, and was on the Mariner at the time the team was onboard in Bermuda. (I am also continuing on to San Francisco)
I watched the Regent/Apollo team doing the inspection of the ship and they seemed to inspect everything.
I first saw them up on the pool deck and they were talking about what they wanted to do during dry dock (scheduled for January). Items included adding a staircase into the pool, like that in private pools. This would allow passengers to enter the pool without having to back down the ladders. They also talked about adding either a mural or other artwork to the area behind the pool bar, and adding some sort of flags/decorations to the lightpoles on the 12th deck to add some color.
It was great to see that they were talking with the crew members who were in charge of their areas, asking for their input.
An example of this was in the computer room. They said they wanted to go back to nicer rolling chairs. Theresa, the computer tech, stated that if they did that, they needed to add carpeting or else the passengers will be getting to know each other very quickly when the ship rocks and everyone rolls to one side. They also talked about adding laptops into the computer room and again Theresa told them that they might consider locking them down to the tables. The team said that the passengers would not steal them. She agreed, but said that the passengers might take them to their cabins for the entire cruise, leaving none for the other passengers.
The team also mentioned adding paneling to the computer room to match that of the coffee area.
In talking with John, the cruise director, he told me that Apollo plans on spending $15 million per ship in improvements.
They were very open to comments that psssengers had. I mentioned to one Regent official that in the "shower only" rooms, there is no hand hold in the section where a person can sit. I told him it was like they did not think of the elderly passenger or even those who may have trouble in rocky seas.
He agreed and put it on his list.
I felt that they were doing all of this with the intention of improving the looks of the ship.
I know that things took a bad turn on the other board when comments like "they need to improve the passenger services" were made.
I don't know how much they looked into that area, just the ones that I personally saw/heard.

Bill