Sunflower & The Scientist

Service dogs and “emotional support” dogs are radically different. We had a service dog for our daughter who was a quad on a ventilator. The dog was highly trained, tested and retested, and we had to agree to strict guidelines in order to receive the dog. Legally the dog had to provide three services to be a service dog. She was a working dog, she did not socialize with other people, and we had to constantly remind people that she was not a pet and to not disturb her from doing her job. (No worries, she got plenty of love and cuddles from us when she was off duty.) Our dog had a lot of air miles on her, and never once did we receive anything but compliments on how amazing she was. She was bathed and groomed and kept very clean, but she was a dog, she shed. I would never have taken her on a cruise. It in my opinion as a service dog owner,it is a totally inappropriate place for a service dog…with the exception of a person who relies on their service dog for safety reasons such as someone who is visually impaired.

It is totally unacceptable for dogs to be sitting on furniture, being fed from the table, or held in a lap (unless it is doing a task…but that would be a pretty unheard of task). 

The concept of emotional support dogs has been very disturbing to us as we had to put up with them barking at our dog as she worked. We encountered people who told us they were going to buy a vest off amazon and start saying their dog was a service dog. We are very disturbed as we have seen the explosion of “emotional support” animals. They give true service dogs a bad reputation…don’t even get me started.

My husband is currently on a chat with Viking regarding this. If anyone has any ideas of what else we can do, or who to contact, what to say….whatever, please post it here. We all need to become involved in getting this stopped because I believe there will be more and more people seeing this and then doing it.

Thanks so much Heidi13!  That is very helpful and we can have a better idea of what we can do. 

We are getting ready to book excursions soon and are wondering which ports are ones we can just walk off in an interesting area to walk around. We enjoy taking an excursion but also walking off the ship and exploring on our own. I've heard Liverpool is a good port for that. 

22 minutes ago, dd57 said:

 There wasn't a window by every seat.   

There isn't??? We are leaning forward to look through our neighbor's window? Seems like if everyone pays the same amount (through Viking) everyone should get the same quality view. 

Thanks so much for your helpful information. How about some tips for the cruise?

Thank you fruitmachine! I hoped that would be the case. We cannot wait to enjoy your beautiful Scotland.

We are on BIE for July and are wondering if anyone knows (can those of you in the UK help us out with this) when the Stone of Destiny will be returned to Edinburgh Castle after the coronation? We would hate to miss seeing it. 

On 3/9/2023 at 12:15 PM, OnTheJourney said:

There was a different pianist who did songs from musicals. Loudly, badly, played off tempo and flat.

I understand the playing off tempo thing, but how does one play the piano 
"flat"? I've heard my share of singers who are flat and that's awful, but unless the piano is not tuned correctly, it's beyond me as a piano teacher how a person can play a piano flat. 

On 3/11/2023 at 12:26 PM, amtatom said:

 

 

Of note, I notice HAL now has a “package” that offers many of the Viking perks: gratuity, free room service, free Wi-Fi, upgraded beverages, etc. So we'll have to consider that, too.

We've cruised HAL as well.  If you don't mind casinos, and children, HAL may be where you are happiest.  Personally we found HAL to be older more outdated ships (just our opinion, no flames please) We did not care for the staterooms. We will pay more for the newer, fresh super clean appearance of Viking, and we won't sale again with casinos and children unless we have to. (We like children, just not in the room next to ours, or running back and forth down the hall.) 

On 3/7/2023 at 12:00 PM, Jim Avery said:

Same here Andy.  As to the few who might need to keep heads covered, seems a more appropriate medical head covering than a ball cap would suffice.  My English mother imparted the same rules as yours..  But then so did my teachers.  I bet just about everyone wearing ball caps in restaurants had mothers that at one time told them to take their hat off at the table....🍹

Please don't get me wrong, I am not in any way promoting men wearing baseball caps in restaurants...I was responding to the person who said that there were men who needed to wear them due to medical needs. As a woman who needs to wear a hat or wig due to cancer, I am sensitive to men who also find themselves in this position. Not all cancer patients wear hats due to chemo, (male or female should not be criticized for wearing hats for chemo either)  some like myself, must wear them because of the cancer itself. On our last cruise I met a male cancer patient in that situation, so I know that occasionally (not to be mistaken with the norm) there are individuals on Viking who are in that category. In my over two years as a face and skull cancer patient, I have never seen or heard of a medical head covering. If there is such a thing, I would want to spare the individual the embarrassment of wearing a medical device on their head in a restaurant. It's embarrassing enough just having to wear a hat or a wig all the time. 

My point is....this is NOT the norm, but we need to give grace where grace is deserved. For the rest of the people who weren't raised with good manners, I do not have any sympathy, take your hat off and keep your bathrobe in your stateroom where it belongs. 

On 3/7/2023 at 7:13 PM, LindaS272 said:

Do we know that Viking uses shelf stable milk? I always use cream in my coffee and regularly have cappuccinos on the ship and have not noticed any weird taste problems from milk or cream.

Yes, everything I have seen is shelf stable. We always ask for skim milk with meals, and it's shelf stable as well. I don't think fresh milk is practical for them to use. Also on Orion in the Living Room where we always got our coffee, when you asked for a vanilla latte they used milk and straight vanilla, not vanilla syrup. It was not that way on Octantis.

47 minutes ago, Jim Avery said:

Like what? Just curious.

Squawkman is correct....cancer, and not just due to hair loss. 

27 minutes ago, OneSixtyToOne said:

If you actually dock in Greenwich, it is serviced by the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) which easily connects with the underground. However, the most enjoyable way to get to London is to take the Thames River cruise. It a marvelous cruise up the river passing many famous landmarks and will leave you in Westminster right at Parliament.

Thanks for this information....excellent idea. 

17 hours ago, longterm said:

We're doing that same cruise summer of 2024; I wish it was this year!

 

Most European restaurants these days don't disappear into the back of the restaurant with your card, like US restaurants often do; they have handheld card processors, and run your card in front of you--and these days most of the handhelds also allow you to run your card without even inserting it into the machine. 

 

However, I still prefer using local currency, so when we get to Italy in May, I'll find a local bank, use their ATM to get some euros and only use my card when absolutely necessary. Plus, it's been documented that people generally manage money better when it's currency rather than a credit or debit card. When the wallet starts to get thin, it's time to stop buying...

 

We typically are at the end of our cruise with local currency and trying to spend it quickly because we don't want to go home and exchange it. We aren't really shoppers abroad except if we are looking for something specifically. We don't eat in restaurants very often, but we always do local coffee. However, in the UK we are likely to want to try some local food. We've got a cruise down the Rhine in 2024 and Italy in 2025, and we will be trying more local foods on those cruises. 

On 2/27/2023 at 10:30 AM, longterm said:

True; we've been to 2 concerts in Dallas lately, and at both venues they were card only in the entire facility. Generally, I only use cash overseas when I'm in a small shop or buying from a vendor on the street.

We are on British Isle Explorer this summer and haven't traveled outside of the US and Canada since COVID...so I am thinking through what we need use cash for and what we need to use a card for. I see what you are saying about small shops and vendors. Anyone have advice on which is going to be better for restaurants? 

12 hours ago, cruz_happy said:

Since we are talking breakfast and since I am new to Viking, does anyone know if they serve grits anywhere on the ships?  (I’m from South USA.).  TYIA 

Fellow grits lover, but I have not seen them on Viking. I have seen them on other cruise lines. Sometimes I have seen polenta.  I ordered it at Manfredi's once, but it wasn't typical polenta and in something like a cube shape and didn't taste like polenta at all. 

Wow...thanks for the info on sub-lingual Benadryl. We cannot get that in the US. Have you had any issues getting it back into the US? 

4 hours ago, Hobson1754 said:

Here it is - obviously needs to be adjusted (unless you want to make 150)😂

THANKS!!!! I appreciate that. 

17 hours ago, Hobson1754 said:

I never saw anyone turned away & even if Winter Garden was full I’m sure you could get Afternoon Tea to take outside at poolside/poolside bar.  We once went in just to get some scones to take back to our cabin - scones are scrumptious. One of the waiters got me a printed recipe off the chef - another example of Vikings great customer service👍

Care to share that recipe with the rest of us....I'd love to make them! 

I would work through Viking rather than contacting the embassy. Viking is familiar with what to do and unless they tell you to contact the embassy, you are much safer working through Viking. 

31 minutes ago, rmalbers said:

The drying closet in my cabin on my Great Lakes cruise could not be turned on and used for 'drying'.  I think they might only fire those up when needed in the 'far south'.  

We found the same thing.....

11 hours ago, SantaFe1 said:

And what do you do with clothes that get washed, but not dried which are basically all of mine?  Can you take them out in between?  I never thought I’d be asking this kind of minutia on Viking, but alas.  Are they doing this maybe to get everyone to pay to have it done, and  do away with free laundry.  I certainly won’t be using this.

I wondered this same thing....what about things that are wash and hang dry. Can you take them out in-between?

I can't even imagine trying to dry jeans in one of those. Perhaps they will start including clothes drying racks we can set up in our stateroom to dry our laundry🤣....this is modern technology at it's best.

I too hope they do not make drinks directly into passengers cups, I'm surprised to hear they ever did that as that would be a health concern. We always pour the paper cups into our insulated containers. If we are using the machine sometimes it takes a few cups to fill our containers. This is commonly done and we saw the same people doing this every morning. As someone said, if you do not want to use paper products, you can have it made in a "real" cup and transfer it into your container. At times we have experienced a shortage of the paper cups and had to go looking for them.  

22 hours ago, Iloveketo said:

I’m sorry, but since the different machines on the Viking Star significantly affected my last cruise, I wanted advice on how they worked. I will be back on the Star in September and may need to use them. I was also curious if other Viking ship have them. I don’t care about people’s opinions on them. I just wanted to know how to use them, if I end up needing them. So, this question definitely has to do with cruising on Viking. 

In my opinion, no worries about bringing this topic up!  I do a lot of laundry on board and really would have been caught off guard if I found the combo units. So thanks for bringing this to our attention! 

We used them on Octantis, they are just like the laundry on oceans.