EnjoyingLife2014

Thanks everyone for all this information. We did our first Viking trip in February 2020 to Egypt and Jordan. An amazing trip! And we were so impressed with Viking that we just booked a Viking Ocean cruise, hopefully post COVID, for December 2022. Having only done cruising with Princess and also the Celebrity Xpedition ( to the Galapagos) I was looking for the type of information you all shared here. We are excited! The 2 years 1 month will fly by. It sure did for Egypt!

Interesting. We booked a back to back for March 2021 from Melbourne. We got the 3 day sale with free gratuities, OBC, and drink package ( Canadian promotions I think come at different times than US.) and we were only able to get it for the 7 day cruise, not the 5 day cruise.

Is the sanctuary worth it? We will be on the Saphire on a b2b cruise in Australia in February.

We did the Feb 12th 2019 Majestic from Sydney to Auckland. We got the alcoholic package in a freebie promotion and got our bottled water covered that way. In a forum last year someone said that the ship water is salinated and that some guests had swollen feet because of it. We just liked to have the bottled water to take on excursions. Very handy. We found that our excursions appeared 9 months before our cruise. They had sent an email informing us that they were available.

We bought our Opal cards at the airport. Once you have the card you can easily put money through the electronic booths that are found in many places such as Circular Quay. We found it very east to travel with the Opal card. The Sydney transportation system is excellent!