One would fervently hope that Andrew Poulton was indeed misquoted. Since there is no policy of or procedure for informing the ship of one's travel plans, it is absurd for the ship to depart hours prior to a scheduled departure when all booked passengers were not yet on board. "If there is a cautionary tale in this", it is that a skipper who decides to depart early even though booked passengers are not all aboard should be keel-hauled.

And if Poulton was quoted accurately, then he seems sufficiently clueless to have been part of the marketing team that developed the "loyalty program" fiasco. Dag forbid that Regent allow anyone from that goofy marketing group to act as a spokesperson for the line. Lordie, what will he say next? Perhaps something like, "If you think it was exciting to almost go down with the ship on the Sea Diamond, consider how much better it would be to sink on one of our six-star ships. If you're gonna go down, go down in style!! And we'll even include free pressing - glub glub - sinking night only, of course."