We had been attracted to the itinerary of the West Africa coast as this seemed a good opportunity to see less-visited places.

The missed ports were a disappointment, not least because of the flimsy and conflicting excuses and messages offered by ship management. Arguably, had we managed to dock there, these would have been yet another disappointment because almost all of the ship excursions were at best dreadful.

For Regent Management (including Miami) to claim no responsibility speaks volumes about a cruise line that just did not do any homework on this at all. It is not acceptable to claim that having outsourced excursions to local operators absolves Regent of all or any responsibility for the extremely poor quality of the guest experiences. There was simply insufficient enagagement by Regent with the local operators to ensure that even basic requirements would be met - for example, is it so hard to make sure that on-board coach guides have access to working microphones? Certainly, it is harder if Regent only rarely had any Regent staff accompanying guests on these excursions. Read more