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1 star. My grandmother was refused a wheelchair, told the skip the check-in for some reason, and then at the gangway was told to walk all the way back to check-in. We had to fight to get her a wheelchair when they told us to walk back. Also noticed they served only champagne when we embarked; other cruise lines also offer orange juice.

Really great smoked salmon; Compass Rose served fresh juices for breakfast, which was lovely. Twinings tea on board. The specialty restaurants were a disappointment; more mediocre, if anything, than the normal restaurants. Less variety than on Viking cruises, and the predictability grew exhausting during a 2-week stay. For example, the Mari Sette Italian restaurant serves the exact same appetizers every day. The same ingredients were used again and again, just in slightly different combinations. I often didn't feel like eating anything on the menus by the end of my stay. Biggest issue was a lack of buffet at dinner time; other folks also voiced being exhausted by "eating out" every night for 2 weeks. And finally—tea time was a disorganized mess. They didn't serve tea towers but instead did a confusing mix of self-serve and having a waiter go to each table one by one. The protocol seemed to change every day. And the teapots were so small—only about 1.5 small cups of tea per person at tea time.

About 100 people on the ship were there just to play bridge, and they frequently took up spaces so other passengers couldn't use them (lounges, conference rooms, etc).

The staff was wonderful and kind, but waiters seemed trained to be overbearing and not respond to basic social signals. We stopped eating dinner in the restaurants because so many staff members would interrupt us when we were engaged in conversation (often just to ask us for the umpteenth time if we liked the food) that we couldn't keep a conversation going for more than five minutes. This became exhausting over two weeks, especially as the Mariner doesn't have a more casual dinner buffet option, so you're expected to deal with that every night. Also, they regularly spilled wine on our tablecloth. This isn't the staff's fault but a sign that their training maybe wasn't great.

2 stars. Almost none of the chairs in any of the common areas were comfortable. I was surprised by how much of a difference this made in my trip; there was nowhere for me to just curl up and relax with a good book. They play awful elevator music over the intercoms at all hours in every common area except the library; it drove me crazy. The library was small and windowless with a fairly mediocre selection of books; felt like we weren't expected to use it. Only one coffee cafe, which rarely had tables free during peak times. Only place where you could walk around the ship was the upper jogging deck, and it was so rocky and windy up there that it often didn't feel safe for me to do so. They roped off access to the outside areas of the lower decks constantly, even when the weather was nice, so the result was that I went days without much fresh air. The smoking area is also right next to the jogging deck, so it often reeked of tobacco when I went upstairs. And a small thing, but it made a difference: the poolside lounge chairs were positioned to face inside, looking at the pool (and everyone passing by looking at you). On another ship I was on, they were positioned so that you could look at the ocean, which was a nicer and more private way to pass the time. Regent also constantly kept the curtains closed for all the windows, even the ones in the halls; it felt like they were trying to hide that we were on the ocean, which is the whole point of a transatlantic cruise!

1 star. We first stayed on floor 7 at the end of the hall. The room smelled bad, and I was later told we were right next to the sewage room. They shouldn't even have a cabin next to the sewage, frankly. We received a phone call one night at 10 pm (!) and we're told that graywater was leaking into our closet. They moved us to a middle room in floor 7. My grandmother later told me her asthma had become severely bad at the start of the trip, but when we moved, she could breathe again. The new room's veranda door wasn't installed properly and it whistled loudly and shook constantly. They called the room a "suite," but it is essentially one room and only slightly bigger than the rooms on Viking—the difference being that the rooms on Viking never smelled of sewage and cost much less! We had a bathtub, but the water coming out of the spigot smelled like bilge, so it went unused. Bathroom floor was always freezing cold (Viking had a heated bathroom floor) and there were no dim light options so that you didn't need to wake yourself up when using the bathroom in the middle of the night. No coffeemaker or tea kettle in the room either. No snacks in the fridge except for fresh fruit, which is theory was nice, but it attracted fruit flies.

1 star. We were told there would be a wheelchair for my grandmother, and there wasn't. Staff who saw us out weren't courteous or apologetic—they had a "bug off" attitude, as if our cruise was over and they were no longer bothering pretending to be nice. My grandmother, who is disabled, had to stand for ages as we waited for a wheelchair. No one came to give us an ETA or even a chair during that time. We were supposed to disembark at 9:30, and our flight was at 2 pm, but because of the wheelchair delay, we didn't make it to our airport gate until 1:10. Should have had plenty of time but didn't. Surprised Regent doesn't accommodate disabled passengers better considering their guest demographics.