I just did a small price check. Grand Prix and Orca did not increase in price. Taj Mahal increased $350 for Cat H (and I assume that or more for all other categories). I wonder how many cruises overall did hae price increases; is Regent finally pricing themselves too high?

With the single supplement I'd have to pay now, they have completely priced themselves out of the market for me. I'm sad.

Marc,

Mariner in Oct. 2013 did not increase in price. I think the reason Taj Mahal increased in price is because the cruise is almost sold out. I took a quick look at the cruise and only 11 suites are available for non-guarantee booking (i.e., only about 4%). Most of the available suites are the most expensive suites. This is similar to CANADA last year which had huge price increases because the cruise was virtually sold out.

As to whether Regent is pricing themselves too high, IMHO everyone has to answer that question for himself or herself.

I thought Gran Prix was booked solid and then you go on the site and see almost all categories showing GTD OR AVL, We are sad that we had to cancel Gran Prix, we felt it truly was a great deal and with a bunch of great people... Some of these sailings I cannot justify anymore due to our less than stellar six star service and the price.. Our past two cruises left a bad taste in my mouth with the service at dinner, we overlook a lot of that due to the fact we are cruising with so many friends.. Hopefully another good deal comes along again soon..

FV

I guess it's not as simple as saying Regent has priced themselves too high. They made a decision to go "Super All Inclusive" which is very appealing to many. When they first went to Super All Inclusive the prices did not reflect this benefit, so we were able to book some cruises at pre "super" prices. Now that itineraries fully reflect the Super All Inclusive, they are just too pricey for us to justify.
We prefer to do independent or self guided tours in most stops. We will also choose ship sponsored excursions when the port makes it difficult to do independent tours. Since nothing is "free", Regent has priced in these included excursions in every port, so the per diems have risen quite dramatically. Obviously, this is working for Regent and works for many cruisers. It just doesn't make sense for us. For example we just returned from a 12 day Baltic cruise on Silversea. Our per diem was $500pp. Plus we had a $1500 SBC. We booked a combination of ship's excursion and independent excursions. We barely used up our ship board credit on the ship's excursions and some premium wine (our final bill after excursions, spa treatments and wine ended up being $300). Our independent tours came out to be around $1400 total or $55 per person per day. The same cruise on Regent would be roughly $750 per person per day. Our total came out to be around $555 per person per day. So in the end, Regent would be around $18,000 for two people Super All Inclusive. Our Silversea cruise came out to around $14,000 including our independent tours.

I'm not bashing Regent. I would love to do another Regent cruise if I could make it work. We love the casual dress code and the size of the ships; and of course we miss cruising with many of our LCT friends. It's just the prices don't work for us right now.

We have really enjoyed our Regent cruises; however, for us, Regent has not been the "be all to end all" in recent years. So many choices and options out there to pick and choose. In doing the math, we, personally, have seen that our travel dollars go farther when making other choices. We're all fortunate that we can take those trips that suit each and every one of us, regardless of land or sea, and travel provider, be it Regent, Oceania, Seabourn, Silversea, Tauck, etc .

It really is an eye-opener when you figure out per diems.

We, too, loved our Regent cruises (for the most part), but we just can't justify the cost of a Regent Cruise any longer. I rarely drink alcohol, we don't do excursions in every port (we like to stroll around on our own), plus the last cruise we took on Regent left a very sour taste in our mouths...waiting for water and other drinks after asking for it more than once (and we were very patient), watching a Head Waiter literally chew out a server in front of us (this was totally awkward for us and for the poor employee). I noticed many times it appeared if you weren't "someone" your service was not as good as those who were well known to the staff. This should not be!

We choose to sail on many different lines and we have found our experience is just as good or even better. Now we are not bashing Regent; if prices would drop (should they go back to the old all inclusive ways) we would certainly give it another try. We miss not seeing our friends that we became close to on Regent, but we still keep in touch in other ways.

I still look at the website, but the prices are just too high for us retired folks that love to travel more than once a year.

Frank - didn't know you had cancelled Gran Prix and sorry to hear that, was looking forward to seeing you and Carla. But, hopefully in Oct we will see you in Dallas.

We love Regent and to be honest we just haven't experienced any of the type disappointments mentioned above and of course we love sailing with BK groups. But I do worry that it is becoming more difficult financially to justify the ever higher pricing and we too may have to start thinking about some other opitons such as SilverSea, Oceania, Seabourn, etc and we have always loved Princess, although more people, larger ships, etc, we always manage to enjoy it and have a fun time, so we often look at their itineraries and just came back in April from a two week round trip LA to Hawaii and had a great time once we adjusted to the larger number of passengers, the larger ship and such. We did find our favorite bar and bartenders, waiters, alternative restaurant and staff and got to know our room steward quite well and felt for the money we got a very good value.

Thanks JoAnn. Its just too long for us to be away right now, we were looking forward to it and it is a deal.. We will see you soon.. We all have to remember that this forum is LCT and B & K books other cruise lines so if Regent is NOT working for some then at least we have options to look at... The service issues we have experienced is when the ship is sailing full, and dinner is a BIG sticking point for me.. Value these days is very important to us, sailings like Gran Prix make sense, so hopefully more to come..

Maybe these are things that should be brought up to Mark Conroy
at HEE Haw??