On our recent Asia trip we found the excursions just as good as the ones we usually paid for on Regent. We always do a mixture of private tours, small group tours (like Pat described), and Regent tours.

As some posters mentioned, we are not in love with large bus tours. We took them during our cruise to keep down costs and to have a good social time with more than a small group. It is also our way of meeting folks who aren't LCTers. We have found Regent tours in general uniformly good, with some misses here and there. We have seen no degradation since their all inclusive offerings. Even when they had many multiple buses going on one tour, we were staggered and did not run into others. The tours were not overcrowded. We had an issue with rigid schedules, required stops and having to deal with other passengers whose interests may not be the same as ours.

Regent offered some very nice smaller tours that were an extra fee. These were cheaper than in the past and were absolutely wonderful. It seems to be a good way to accommodate those of us who want a bit more of a personal experience. One we can recommend in Viet Nam is the Mekong Delta in Depth. Regent also did a wonderful job in arranging a private guide for us in Ho Chi Min city. He was amongst the best we have ever had.

We have found the tour desk operations not consistently excellent from ship to ship. However, we have nothing to say but good things about the Regent-run Asia tours on the Mariner, group, extra fee or private. We had one lousy tour guide in Hanoi, but this was aberrant because the rest of the groups were happy with their guides.

I think the program just may need some tweaking.