Fred and I have been on board since Thursday. This is our first Navigator cruise since dry dock. We are totally impressed. The ship looks marvelous. We've been to P7 twice--great food, perfect service, a major addition to the ship. Service throughout the ship is simply excellent. Smiles everywhere. The crew can't do enough and although they are busy they don't seem rushed or under stress in any way. The menus, which all include interesting and innovative "destination dishes," are fabulous. Our entertainers so far, a singer and a juggler-comedian, are fabulous. The Regent Orchestra is excellent. And we have the best collection of lecturers I have ever encountered on a ship--a fascinating photographer who has been a leading published professional for nearly 40 years, a brilliant retired diplomat, and a retired Colonel who served as a White House social aide for six years among them. And Terry Breen is on board and, as always, excellent too. Life simply couldn't be better. John McNeil is Captain, Paul Reynolds the CD, and Franck Gelsey (sp?) GM--all excellent. Our passenger demographic is aged. Fred says I blend in well. Pat

Great to hear from you Pat and that you are having such a wonderful time. When you both confirm the food is good that is saying something as you two are definitely "foodies".

We will be boarding when you get off for BEAR. I saw this group of officers and was tickled at who is onboard right now. All good and I particularly appreciate Franck Galzy and the F&B Manager Florian, when they are onboard all my plans run smoothly. Tell them hello for me and I will see them SOON!

Good to hear from happy cruisers and two of my favorites ;) Keep the sea mail coming and I'll save the jokes you're missing

Wow Pat, now you really have me excited about our Dingo/dingbat cruise in the fall. The Navigator sounds wonderful can't wait to join her in Sydney. See y'all than.

Cheers

Carolyn

Capt. John, Paul and Terry.... how could things get any better!!!

And Franco!
Day 4 in Cartagena Columbia. Hot and humid. Terry Breen gave her usual excellent coverage for the sail in.

This evening we have a "new" song and dance troupe. PGT is no longer with the Navigator. It has been replaced by the "Jean Ann Ryan" singers and dancers. We have been told they are excellent

So far Trivia is going well- winning 2 out of 3!

Day 5 at sea and then Puerto Limon.

Thanks for posting, Pat and David. This message is making me miss the Nav crew!

Jean Ann Rule Productions were reviewed last fall on the Norwegian CC Board .

According to Terry Breen, Navigator will be entering the Panama Canal at about 05:30 CMT on Thursday, and can be seen on Video cameras at PANCANAL.com.

Yesterday's full day in Cartagena was delightful. We had an excellent five hour tour that hit all the main highlights and ended with a short local dancing demonstration and a second mercifully brief shopping stop. I think there were about five tours available. We've heard only positive comments. We got back to the ship after CR closed so it was a brief rushed lunch in LV which felt like we were eating (not dining)in Grand Central Station since there were a lot of late diners like us and the crew were rushing to end their shift. Recommendation: if there are going to be a lot of late arrivals due to tour scheduling please adjust the dining hours. Oh, the ribs we wolfed down were rib smacking delicious.

Regent has hired a new production company,the Jean Ann Ryan Singers and Dancers. They staged their first show last night, "On Broadway." It was delightful and very well received. The theater was packed. This is the first of four shows they will be doing throughout the entire Alaska run, a debut. We'll see the other three before we arrive in San Francisco. Can't wait.

Today was a sea day en route to Puerto Limon. We enjoyed Terry Breen's lecture on the Panama Canal and a second superb lecture from photographer David Burnett. We also attended a nice reception for Regent regulars at the gold level and higher. There are 80 of us aboard. We've noticed there are an unusually large number of Brits on board. Had a most enjoyable dinner last night in CR with four women, all Brits and all traveling as singles. They each met one another on the plane flying to the ship and have become fast friends. Oh, several of us, most appropriately, enjoyed English roast beef with all the trimmings. It was superb!

Since my last post we've experienced some dining disappointments. On Sunday night in CR Fred and I ordered the Veal Picatta. We both found it astonishingly weak--two room temperature and nearly flavorless slices of veal plunked down on a room temperature flavorless pile of spaghetti. The service that night was excellent and the head waiter noticed I wasn't eating my entree and made a fuss offering to bring be an alternative but that would have delayed the meal for everyone else so I declined. Every other meal in CR has been excellent, fully up to Regent standards. A couple of the British ladies we dined with last night also ordered the veal and were underwhelmed. Also,on two mornings so far, breakfast in CR has been much slower than the leisurely pace we expect. This morning, after waiting 35 minutes for my eggs to arrive I had to rush up to LV to have a hurried bite in order to make it to Terry Breen's lecture in time. I think the problem is not the wait staff but the galley. It is my guess that CR diners are placed in the back of the line behind room service diners by the galley crew. That is just a guess. There is room for improvement here.

Park West has been low key on this cruise until this morning. But we were presented a Park West surprise this morning that was anything but low key. As we exited Terry Breen's lecture through the Stars Lounge we discovered the room was totally packed with PW "art" on easels. We had to actually navigate our way through the maze and into the hallway. I haven't been bothered by PW in the past because I simply ignored them. But today they were more intrusive than they have ever been before. For the first time ever I found myself thinking "I hope Regent gives PW the boot."

I don't expect perfection on any cruise and the glitches I have described above have been few and far between. Both of us are simply delighted with this cruise so far and are looking forward to the days ahead. We have been particularly impressed by the quality of this crew. It doesn't get better than this. More to come. Pat

Hi Pat - as always such a delight to see you post about your trip. Sounds like you and Fred are having a great time, but then you always do.

Was interested in your post about Park West -- I thought some how that RSSC had not only dropped the photgraphers, but also had given up the Art Auctions and PW. Did I misunderstand?

Anyway, always fun to read your posts. Hope to have a chance to cruise with you both again one of these times.

Hugs and love :hug: :hug:

This is what I was told after I asked on my last cruise. The contract could not be broken but it will not be renewed. I do not know when it will run out but I will be glad to see them go.

Yesterday's Panama Canal crossing was most memorable. We were well prepared for it because of Terry Breen's excellent lecture on the topic the previous day. Very well attended. Lots of us are doing the crossing for the first time. This will be Terry's 77th crossing. One of our crew members has done it something like 126 times. I awoke at 4:30 am because the movement of the ship had changed. The pilot boat had just dropped off our pilot. A crowd quickly assembeled on deck 12. We were surrounded by dozens of vessels awaiting entry. Their checks have to clear before that happens. Ours had cleared. It was about 100K. Cruise ships get entry priority so we were on our way into the first of three locks at about 5:30 am. A local narrator, Pete, provided narrative. At 6:27 we were standing on the aft deck of La Veranda as water poured into the second of the locks having taken Terry Breen's advice that an aft view is best once you enter the locks. LV opened for breakfast at that moment and we nabbed table 3, a table for two. So for the remainder of our journey through the first three locks Fred and I feasted on crispy bacon, eggs, corned beef hash, juice and coffee from the best seat in the house. We exited the last lock into the Pacific at about 2:00 pm in a torrential rain storm. The day was an exciting and most memorable experience. I got great video, some of it from my very own breakfast table. Oh, it was HOT. Very HOT. I don't remember ever experiencing heat like that and I grew up on South Florida. That isn't a complaint just a description since he who book cruise near equator in May is a fool to complain of heat. Life doesn't get any better than this. Pat

I forgot to report on our visit to Puerto Limon. Fred booked the eco water cruise tour and I booked a tour that included the eco water cruise, a jugle train ride and a stop at a banana plantation. Fred enjoyed his tour. Mine was fine. Our guide was superior. Our bus was full. I think the days of half full tour busses are a thing of the past. Nuts. And the tour went well in all but two respects. A lot of the animals we were supposed to see in the "jungle," part of which was a strip of vegitation concealing a large oil refinery behind it, and on the water seemed to be on strike so I was a bit bored some of the time. Also, the tour was described as lasting 4.5 hours. It was 5.6 hours and couldn't have been much shorter. So there was the inevitable contigent of complainers who insisted on scrapping the banana plantation to return to the ship for lunch. Thankfully, our guide ignored their moans and groans and took us to the plantation which was for me was the most interesting aspect of the tour. He got a good tip from me to make up for the tips he likely lost from the moan and groan crowd. None of them looked starved to me. Ships tours! Oh, and the ship kept LV open for us. When we got back they had replenished all the dishes and changed the table cloths and the starving hordes were fed. I had planned to grab a burger but since the ship had gone to the trouble to keep LV open for us I dined there instead. I'm sure Destination Services earned their keep during the remainder of the day entertaining complaints. Poor folks! Ships tours! Pat

Pat--love your posts--glad you're having a great time. The Panama Canal cruise is one of our very favorites. Your comments about the ship's tours are priceless. That was one complaint we had about the ship's tours on the South America cruise--they'd say the tour was four hours and it would end up being five and a half. Makes me really concerned about the ten and eleven hour tours we selected in Israel on TUT--hopefully they wont' end up being all nighters. :eek:

What a wonderful way to experience the PC transit, Pat! Just another thing on my bucket list, for sure. WELL worth waking up so early for...but I would most definitely have to set an alarm rather than feel the direction of the ship changing!

Pat, thanks. Enjoying reading this as it's a place I haven't been and you're reports are making me want to go.

Love your reports Pat, glad you enjoyed the transit of the Canal it is really a special event. After my first trip I watched lots of documentaries on the building of the canal, an amazing feat of engineering. I can just picture the two of you on the aft deck enjoying breakfast and you jumping up to take videos at the exciting parts. Ken and I are looking forward to joining the Navigator and seeing the dry dock changes that you described so well.

Loving your seamail...keep it coming and keep enjoying your trip!

Well, friends, while Pat is off watching the afternoon lecture by a kind old British gent who has a remarkable inability to focus upon the actual subject of his “lecture du jour” (e.g. a couple of days ago, he was booked to explain the defense of the Panama Canal during WWII and managed to give us far more info regarding the defense of Bermuda and Newfoundland than of the Canal – we still have no idea whether any battleships were ever stationed off either end of the canal, although we heard lots of stories about ships based in Newfoundland), I will dive into the discussion of this wonderful cruise with a few observations, most of which will likely be about as useful as those of the afore-mentioned British gent.

If anyone has a low tolerance for stream-of-consciousness blithering, it might be best to move on and find some rational post to read.

First, to remove any doubts about my general attitude towards this cruise so far (despite any comments I might make later), this has been and appears completely likely to remain an excellent cruise. As Pat & others have noted, the ship looks lovely. The soft goods replacements are good, with the exception of those ridiculous chairs in Compass Rose, which are still too large and heavy for the space, but are, thankfully, not as intrusive as the new chairs in CR on Voyager. The wait staff uniformly hates those chairs, as did the staff on Voyager. It is clear that the designer of the Compass Rose makeovers has never had to carry a tray amongst the chairs in a real dining room.

With the exception of La Veranda, the restaurant staff does not seem as stressed or overburdened as we have seen on our last three or four Regent cruises. In fact, the Compass Rose and Prime7 staff have been delightful. The service is the best we’ve experienced in several years, offered with smiles and an obvious pleasure. (Okay, Okay – both of those may be faked; but I don’t care. It’s a hell of a lot better than it has been a few times in the past.) La Veranda is a different matter entirely. (To make full disclosure here, as they say on the cable news shows, neither of us has ever liked LV and consider it a venue of last resort for any meal.) Due to the cafeteria nature of LV, the place is hectic; and the staff has a hard time keeping up with simple passenger requirements such as beverage service. Further, the boss man of LV seems to create an atmosphere of tension and mad rushing about. All in all, we avoid the place to the greatest degree we can.

With the low bandwidth on the ship’s satellite signal, I will post this segment of my blithering dithering and post some reflections on the ship’s tours and entertainment shortly.

Having a marvelous time, I leave you for now - Cheers, Fred

:hello1: Dither and blither on,stuck at home with boring book your PC posts welcome :D

Ah, just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water, another snarky post from Fred. (Please tell me that someone got that pathetic reference to a famous movie and the rhyme of “snarky” to a key character in that film. If not, all of this Macallan Single Malt that I’ve been consuming will have been for naught, alas!!)

First, as to the subject of the quite justifiably beloved Terry Breen, we don’t really know what her schedule is for the near future, other than that she is leaving the ship when we arrive in San Francisco on May 26. It is all associated with the imminent publication of her new book, which I think is the 3rd Edition of “The Cruiser Friendly Onboard Guide to Alaska’s Inside Passage”. If I can manage to track her down (and approach her before she sees me and dashes in the other direction), I will ask her whether she will be returning to the Navigator any time this summer. She is a very good storyteller (as she calls herself), although the section of her talk this morning regarding the Mayan culture became a bit esoteric when she entered the realm of the Mayan numbering system, which is a base-20 system, rather than the base-10 system we commonly use. While she explained the system, I looked around and noted more than a small number of the passengers (a generally highly-educated group on Regent) developing a serious case of “glazed-over eye” and finger-and-toe counting. My personal conclusion was that the Mayans practiced human sacrifice primarily to get rid of their mathematicians. In any event, be it based on 10’s, 20’s, or gazillions, we’ll post anything we learn about Terry’s plans for returning to a Regent ship soon.

Another subject that has been noted on previous posts is the replacement of the Peter Grey Terhune (or something like that) performance troupe with a new group from the Jean Ann Ryan Singers & Dancers. Whilst I, like many passengers, had certainly become a bit weary of the PGT productions, the jury is still emphatically out (way, way, way out) on the JAR effort. So far, it is certainly jarring.

There is no doubt that this is a clear departure from the PGT approach of having a rather standard group of singers & dancers, most of whom are skilled at both singing and dancing. Rather, of the ten members of the happy JAR team, only two are described in their bios as “vocalists”, while six are described as “Dancer/Aerialist”. The final two are a husband/wife team which performs “specialty acts” (don’t worry – their stuff is all more or less PG as “specialty acts” go – so far, not a riding crop in sight…). The h/w team are wonderful gymnasts/aerialists, in the mode of “Cirque du Soleil”. The only problem so far is that their routines are astoundingly out of place in the productions. Two nights ago the JAR production was a Latin music medley, which was fairly routine, other than the unfortunate fact that two of the dancers/aerialists can’t lip sync at all. Suddenly, the stage was filled with fog out of which emerged a shirtless guy and his gorgeous wife doing an elaborate strength and aerial routine which had nothing remotely to do with the rest of the show. Maybe the Latin connection was supposed to be that some escapees from the cold Canadian north where Cirque du Soleil was born were trying to live “La Vida Loca” (with all due apologies to Ricky M.)??? In any case, it was all a bit peculiar.

Please understand, gentle readers, that I am not in the slightest sense offended by the appearance of a muscular shirtless guy and his magnificent wife on stage – quite the contrary – but it might be handy if the shtick had at least a tangential connection to the whole production. It is likely that the JAR mess will make a lot more sense when they perform their fourth production in a few days, which is being advertised as a “Cirque” experience. As for their third production, a tribute to big band music, it will be great fun to see how shirtless-guy handles Glenn Miller.

One other interesting routine in the Latin medley was a dance number featuring the four female dancer/aerialists. It was done with straight-back wooden chairs and turned out to be a sort of bizarre tribute (or rip off??) to Bob Fosse. Our reaction was, “Yikes, this is “Cabaret” meets “Basic Instinct”!! It was not a dance routine to which one would take one’s sweet old auntie, unless said auntie was Auntie Mame.

These JAR productions are brand new and are being performed for the first time on this cruise. Therefore, they are bound to get better (and, one assumes, they will figure out how to make better use of the shirtless-guy, while still keeping him primarily shirtless). This change from PGT to JAR is a bold move by Regent. We genuinely hope that it works out well.

On a more positive note, Navigator has a terrific new entertainer in Star’s Lounge, a pianist named Constantine Dragulyov. He will have his own feature show tomorrow night in the main theatre.

Enough (and well more than enough, no??) for now.

Cheers, Fred

Ah Fred, your posts always make me laugh. I think a Cirque experience will be a refreshing change from the Peter Trehune Singers and Dancers. I have not been to a show for years but will check these "JAR" performers out based on your comments. I do love acroabtic entertainers so these will be interesting.

Keep it coming I love reading reports from both of you.

My personal conclusion was that the Mayans practiced human sacrifice primarily to get rid of their mathematicians.

Love it! Have been missing your commentary - continue to have a great time!

Fred....I live for your posts when you are on board....or for that matter even when you aren't! Like Ngaire, they always put a smile on my face.
Dare I ask for more?

After a wonderful dinner with superb service in CR last night we went to Christian's show. It was wonderful. This guy is a real asset to Regent. At cocktails he offers an unusual blend of typical cocktail music and some more serious stuff which sets him apart from ordinary lounge lizards. And he's a fine solo performer with a most pleasing personality. All of the entertainment was been very good indeed. The only weaker performer so far IMO has been the our second singer who has now done two shows. I couldn't connect with her first performance. Her second performance was "An Evening With Barbara." She has the Streisand speech pattern down pat and is quite funny. But one has to be very brave singing Streisand to people who have been listening to Streisand for more than two decades. Her vocals sounded like something you'd expect to see on the first couple of American Idol shows of the season. I sort of felt sorry for her. Oh, and twice she referred to the new and superb Regent Orchestra as Russian. They are Ukrainian. Ouch!

Several folks have asked me to say more about the ship. Yes, the vibration at the rear is still there but I think milder than it was before dry dock. It doesn't bother me at all but I would still think twice about booking an aft cabin. All of the upgrades on the pool deck and in the restaurants are wonderful improvements except the beautiful but cumbersome chairs in the restaurants that are hell for the crew to maneuver around. The air conditioning has been significantly improved. We couldn't be cruising in hotter weather and the air conditioning his keeping us very very comfortable. That wasn't always true before dry dock. But I guess brown water will always be with us occasionally. We experienced it on Voyager when the ship had only been in service for six months. And just this morning Fred was running hot water into a wash cloth to soak his temporarily ailing left eyelid and the was cloth turned brown. All in all this ship is simply marvelous, a treat to experience.

Yesterday's tour of Puerto Chiapas was excellent. Comfortable bus with only 30 of 50 seats occupied, a great guide, a good group of people, and a very interesting Tapachula city tour and visit to a local archaeological site. Unfortunately, the heat got the best of one of us. The lady was walking along just fine one minute and the next minute passed out cold landing with a loud thump. Fortunately, she wasn't hurt in the fall and she was recovered and back on the bus in about 15 minutes. Puerto Chiapas has a beautiful new port and visitors center, quite stunning indeed. We were greeted with live music and dancers on both arrival and departure. Unfortunately, life aboard Navigator took a brief nose dive when we returned to the ship after our tour. We got back at 1:30 pm, the latter part of the lunch hour. A lot of the tours also arrived late in the lunch hour. CR was closed so we went up to LV. The pool deck wasn't an option for most of us because the temperature and humidity up there were well into the nineties. LV was simply impossible--all the tables occupied, a line stretching out to the elevators, and a wonderful crew simply frantic trying to accommodate everyone. To add insult to injury, several large tables were occupied by visiting local officials who were lingering over the free food and booze they were enjoying and in no hurry to leave whatsoever. And a very large and comfortable and empty dining room remained closed five floors below. We were really distressed seeing the fine crew of LV working under such impossible circumstances, circumstances that could have been partly avoided had management kept CR open and wined and dined the lingering Mexicans there. Management knew the tours were scheduled to arrive late and they knew it was hotter than hell outside rendering the pool deck functionally off limits for most and they knew the Mexicans tended to linger. So we shared our distress with management. (I know it may surprise you, but we tend not to be lingering wall flowers when confronting circumstances like these!) My guess is we were not alone in complaining. And the response we received was what you would expect from leaders of the highest quality: this was our mistake, it won't happen again, and we intend to assemble the LV crew to personally apologize to them for putting them in such impossible circumstances. End of story.

A couple of quick comments. While I agree that the A/C has improved a bit, I am in slight disagreement with Pat regarding it's keeping us "quite, quite comfortable". (But we have the same disagreement about setting the A/C at home!!)

The lunchtime events yesterday certainly demonstrated a lack of planning and coordination amongst the various elements of food services and destination services. Clearly, Compass Rose should have been kept open longer; and someone should have been aware of the total inadequacy of LV to handle the number of passengers wanting to have a bit of lunch. However, the response to our complaint was genuinelly heartening. There was no finger-pointing or avoidance of responsibility, while there was a firm commitment by two very senior members of the ship's staff to see that such a situation will not occur again. Finally, although the apologies the two officers made to Pat & me were appreciated, the promise they made to apologize to those fine and gentle members of the LV staff who had to suffer through a dreadful luncheon service experience meant the most to us by a huge measure and demonstrated the sort of true leadership we have come to expect from Regent.

Topic switch: Although you will indeed by "Breenless on BEAR", Terry plans to return to Navigator at the end of June and stay on for the rest of the Alaska season and into some part of Asia. Hmm, can we dare hope that she will joining us Dingbats in November??

Didn't we see a Barbra Streisand songstress on CAMEL?

-------------

Eugene

Oooh, I hope we DINGBATS get the pleasure of a cruise with Terry Breen!!

Is there a coffee corner on Navigator? I know there isn't a large (fantastic) area like on Mariner but I love to be able to get an espresso whenever I want one.

Lauri, The Navigator has two locations for coffee: the Navigator Lounge on Deck 6 has a machine behind the bar and Galileo's on Deck 11 has one behind the bar and a self-serve for passengers to use.

Thanks Beth!

Navigator now has a self-serve coffee machine on pool deck(10) open 24 hours. It was added in dry dock and is positioned aft by pool grill betweren doors leading to LV
I have a hard time entering Prime 7 knowing it was once toilets!

Freddie, you sound like a fellow "a/c is our friend" person. Do you have the ac turned all the way down in your room and are you not cool enough?

David, great news on the self serve coffee machine, I love the coffee in those units!

Karen, when you read Fred on the subject of air conditioning keep in mind that any temperature above 67 is "hot" to him. We wage battles of the thermostat at home!

We vowed not to complain of heat when we booked this cruise and I think we've done a pretty good job describing the heat rather than complaining about it. We are the last cruise ship of the season in all the ports we have visited and I think it may have something to do with heat. I hate heat too, just define it a bit differently than Fred. And this ship has held up to the heat really well.

We are in Acopulco today and they are planning a lavish party on the pool deck before we depart at 11:00 pm. You should see the pool deck. Marvelous! They bring on local dancers for a show at 9:00. It all should be really grand if it cools down a bit. I was out when we sailed into port this morning and it was quite comfortable so I have high hopes for later tonight.

Yes, Eugene, I think the Barbara performer was on Camel. Hadn't realized it until you mentioned it.

Pat

67 is my ideal temperature as well and anything over 72 is too warm to me. Do you know the temp in your cabin?

Gosh Karen and Fred... you two must have been Eskimos in a previous life!!

Ah,Karen - At last, someone who understands what proper temperatures are for comfortable living. Human beings were not created to live above 70F, right??!!

We have managed (with my forbidding Pat to even come within a foot of the A/C control) to keep our cabin at about 72-74F, which is sweltering for me but quite tolerable for him. Thank God that in a couple of days we'll be in San Diego, forecast to be at 68 or 69F - ah, heaven??

Funny episode today at lunch:

As usual, we enjoyed a leisurely lunch in Compass Rose. We were seated at the table nearest to the Maitre D's podium, with its very tempting computer. At one point of the lunch, Christian (the Maitre D' of Prime 7 and one of the several at CR at lunch) stopped to ask how everything was going. I quipped that, since the computer was so close to us, I was thinking of randomly scrambling all of the Prime 7 reservations. Christian gave a nervous chuckle, stated that they had strong password controls to prevent any such thing, and then immediately logged on to the system to be sure that I hadn't done such a dastardly deed!! I was not quite sure that the look he gave me as he walked away was one of humorous affection or pure venom (those two looks can be remarkably similar - think of "Fatal Attraction" or "Dumbo").

In any event, we've not yet been cast out of any restaurant on the ship, despite our apparent disregard of certain rules of humorlessness.

The cruise remains marvelous, Cheers, Fred

Fred, Your posts always manage to cheer up my day. You have a terrific sense of mischief and humor.

Fred, how funny you are! We've been thinking about you two!

Fred and Pat,

Leonard and I are really enjoying your posts and now have a desire to try a similar itinerary. We're thrilled that you're having a fabulous time!

Andrea