Sunflower & The Scientist

Thanks

Was the Gnocchi like typical Gnocchi or one flat glob in the bottom of the bowl? I love Gnocchi, but the last time I had it there was just one big blob. I avoided it on our last cruise so I don't know if it was still that way.

Thanks....this is good to hear. When we flew last July we connected to a flight to Thunder Bay, and they made us go through customs, it seemed odd. Wonder if it was just what was going on then

We are flying from the US to Toronto and then to Frankfurt for our BIE cruise. My concern is that we only have two hours to go through customs to board our flight to Frankfurt. We had to go through customs last summer in Toronto and it was a nightmare...a total nightmare. It was during the height of flight issues and at that time Toronto was the airport having the worst issues, so I am sure it will be better at this point, but I am still concerned. TSA there was horrible and pulled a large percentage of bags going through and went through every item in your bag piece by piece. When they touched my toothbrush I was about ready to lose it. They stuffed everything back in my bag and broke the zipper. Somehow I'm hoping we can avoid having to go through TSA again there but I have concerns that getting to our second flight may take us out of security. Has anyone gone through there recently and is two hours enough time?

We haven't gotten those since COVID either.

Rudi-cruiser brings up a good point regarding the lack of relief areas in airports. At times we have had no availability to any form of a relief area in airports. I've nearly missed flights attempting to leave security areas to go outside and search for dirt or grass, to no avail. Also the concerns over uncontrolled dogs being a danger to our dogs, is a real issue. As a sidenote, I just got off a flight hours ago and while waiting to change flights in Seattle, we heard one mad cat yowling loudly at a gate. I don't know that I have ever heard such a loud cat. I was wondering if that continued during their flight.

The detergent is automatically delivered to the washer....however, you must push the button which is not on the washing machine. A newbie mistake is thinking that detergent is added without having to do something....I may know that from doing my first load of laundry😆.

I don't know about others, but we have never had an issue with them arriving back late. We've had some pretty close together and have basically gotten back from one and walked to the waiting area of the other one.

We too have just changed the dates, as long as you make the change within a certain time frame.

The Tasman got me, and I typically do not have significant issues. We were Auckland to Sydney, so it wasn't long until we were on our flight home. I was surprised when I became airsick, but the flight attendants told me it is very common after crossing the Tasman for people to have motion sickness for a while.

That is what I was thinking....we always get trip insurance, so is there any benefit to using a CC.

We had a lot of changes with excursions when we boarded Octantis. The frustrating thing was when my husband went to the desk to discuss the changes (he was totally taken off of something he wanted badly, and others were changed so we could not do other things we wanted) they denied anything had changed. They should have turned their screen so he could not see it because he saw all his original excursions and times on their screen, and then the changes. It was very frustrating.....but of course did not ruin our cruise! Just started things off a bit rough.

This is why I am on CC! Thanks to all of you posting about excursions, first hand information is what we need. Dublin is one of those ports we didn't feel like anything really sounded good to us, so we are on for the included and then were going to roam around the city on our own. It sounds like maybe we should just start off roaming on our own using the Hop On/Hop Off. So does the shuttle drop us off near the Hop On and can we just sit on it and do a full loop around and end up where we started? Any idea how long that would take without getting off so we can judge before hand how long we can stay at a location?

Yes, have found sweet and low equivalent. No stevia though.

Squackman is correct....I did a poor job of phrasing that. We have done it both ways, actually in the same booking, and they discount if you do not use a CC. I was just trying to give a heads up that using a CC will cost you a little more. We calculate how much we make off using our CC for all payments to Viking, then compare it with the savings we would make if we do not use it, and act accordingly.

We are boarding Venus on the 8th, we have the Oslo Pre, and we are signed up for the Taste of Farm Life. I'm really looking forward to that, thanks to those who are giving us reviews on it. AddieZaddie, is this the cruise you are on?

Thanks for all the info! Am passing the information on to those meeting us.

Does anyone have specific information on where to meet up with someone when we get off the ship in Liverpool? We will be meeting up with relatives who live a couple hours out of Liverpool and they are wondering where to meet us. Is it best at the port, and is there public parking there? Would there be a better location nearby?

Also, they charge for using a credit card.

We were able to get in to book excursions and it went smoothly. Three of them did not show up on our calendar, but we called and they came up. As soon as we were done and we went over to just look at dinning as we can reserve those in a week. We were immediately locked out but finally were able to get back in on the account we had not used. Go figure. We're just happy we got everything we wanted.

WOW....thanks for the heads up. We book tomorrow and we are going to be ready to call them if we end up having problems. I'm not feeling very hopeful about this!

We are aware of that....as others do, we use the accounts at different times.

Helpful comments.... I hope y'all going in May will give us full reports when you get back.

We have two different log in accounts as well. We've had both of them go down at times, but sometimes one of them will work better than the other. GO figure. It's just been the last week that things have gone nuts and we've had to call them and do chats nearly every time we get on. It seems like the more we've used it this week, the worse it's gotten. Such a classy cruise line, but technology is obviously not their high point!

We will be booking excursions on Saturday and are getting a little concerned. We've been looking at what we want to book and for the past two days we keep getting locked out. Today I was on the site looking at the excursions and I suddenly was locked out and the three cruises we have booked were gone. One of them finally came back but the other two never did. We called Viking yesterday twice and we kind of got it resolved, but today I've used the chat and they told me I had to reenter my booking numbers. I finally got back in but it was a long time before it even let me reenter my booking numbers.I am very concerned that I will get locked out while I'm trying to book excursions. Has anyone had that happen?