My wife and I chose this cruise in particular because it was port intensive with many places we've never been, on a brand new ship with a line about which we had heard great things. It was a full 14 days, and we loved the fact that we would avoid the intense summer heat. Over the weeks leading up to the cruise, we had read a ton of reviews and reactions to the ship, both positive and negative, and frankly we had grown a tad apprehensive. Ultimately, we learned there was absolutely no need to be...the experience as an incredible one, but not without a few hiccups. So here goes!

Pre-Cruise Hotel

A pre-cruise one night stay in Haifa was included with our cabin. It was a horrendously long day of flying, and we didn't get to Tel Aviv (airport for Haifa) until 11:00pm. A driver was waiting for us, and we set out on the approx. hour long drive to our hotel. All of our pre-cruise excitement basically vanished when we checked in. The hotel was a generic but decent enough looking tower, but the room itself was not up to any even mildly acceptable standard. It felt like a 1960s era Soviet block youth hostile. The room was small, old, horribly outdated, not clean, dank and depressing, with two tiny, hard twin beds instead of the king or queen we had expected. One of the windows would not latch properly, and with a strong wind outside, it felt like a jet engine was blasting inside our room. It's no fun having to change rooms at 1:00 AM, but we had to. What was Regent thinking? Did anyone at the home office bother to check this place out? It started our vacation on a nightmarishly sour note. Read more