CCWineLover

Great, Janet! We are in London and will move to Greenwich this Thursday, getting there early. How did you get there? The River Cruises? Did you take the DLR from Cutty Sark to Doubletree? How did you get to the ship from the hotel? Uber? Taxi? DLR ? What time did you try to board? We hope to visit Cutty Sark, the Observatory, and the Museum on Thursday afternoon. Did you find a fun place to have dinner in Greenwich?

Thank you! will let everyone know, as we board this Friday morning the 15th. Are staying at Greenwich Doubletree. We’ve been in London since Saturday and it’s 90 degrees hot!

Best of luck, Ella! We leave Friday for LHR and arrive Saturday. Greenwich on the 15th. We're going to pack light. Safe travels.

Thanks, Jim, Andy, and others for the great suggestions and pictures! This gives us a really good idea of where the ship will be. We board on July 15 in Greenwich (Midnight Sun Cruise). Plan to "straddle" the Meridian like Andy's picture! Staying in London first for several days and then staying the night before at the Greenwich Doubletree. Shouldn't be too hard to find the Cutty Sark! I will also try to take some pics of the location.

Thank you all for your wonderful suggestions. We will be arriving in Heathrow this Saturday the 9th and will have a Plan A, B, and C at ready - to get to our Hotel in Kensington. We make our way to Greenwich later for the Midnight Sun sailing on the 15th. Will let you all know. Last word is tube strikes on Thursday and Saturday nights, but it is fluid. Heard the Heathrow express to Paddington isn't affected by tube strikes, so that might be Plan A.

This is what is known as a mistake on my part! I never noticed that I had simply skipped 4055 in keying the room numbers. Thank you for catching my error! Obviously 4055 is in there between 4057 and 4053. So sorry! This was actually the Viking Sky, and taken in port in Stockholm (where one could stand on the "cliff" opposite the ship and get a great view looking north).

I took a picture of the starboard side on a past Viking Cruise and edited in the room numbers - mostly so I had an idea of what rooms to book in the future. Hope this helps. We have chosen to stay mostly on the 5th floor.

And Jim - didn't one time you have an issue on Deck 4 with lifeboat "banging" ? I recall some others on different itineraries mentioning that, although I think when brought to attention the crew fixed those issues.

So sorry to hear you are both positive and not feeling well. What a disappointment. Please stay safe and healthy. It sounds like there may be others onboard as well in the same predicament. We are boarding the Venus July 15 in Greenwich - so crossing our fingers. Let us all know how things go. 🙂

It must vary from cruise to cruise. I've had a thermometer in the Star Theatre the last couple times and it was 67 and 68 degrees! Too cold for us. As I had stated earlier - some run cold and some run hot. Thankfully for you, it's easier for us cold ones to add clothes than for you hot ones to take things off 🙂 🙂

Absolutely Linda! Having lived in Seattle so many years, we got used to spectacularly fantastic Dungeness crab! I could almost live on that. Along with Salmon. Was just back in Seattle to see friends (it was cold and drizzly!) and had a lot of salmon and crab. Yum. Yum! It must be nearing dinner time 🙂

Ella - I’ve not done it but remember peopl discussing it. perhaps do a forum search on Viking forums and see. That research approach has worked for me in the past to answer a variety of questions.

May I say, this is such a welcome discussion and exchange of information - just like the old pre-Covid days! So wonderful not to have those depressing threads on Covid testing, quarantining etc! thanks again Clay! Food is always one of our favorite things on Viking!!

Hi Poulsbo! We were just in Seattle! we did included in Porto and you are Not obligated to go home with the rest. You can stay in town and come back on your own. Many ports Viking has shuttles also for the independent walkers to get a ride back. Check with the ship!

Hi - I get cold easily as well. yes it can get cold in various places on the Viking ocean ships - to me. We always bring a sweater to: Star Theatre (always way over ac), explorers lounge (they keep it cold on 7th floor but 8 is warmer), and the specialty restaurants. World cafe has been good temp for us. I know a lot of people onboard run hot, and with all the eating and drinking, it not a surprise. They will chime in and say Tempe was just fine or even too hot, but don’t listen. Just bring your sweaters or car jackets or whatever and you’ll be fine. Oh - Star theatre so cold Viking even has blankets for people!!! Enjoy your cruise!

Thank you! This is an amazing compilation. Will be pasting and saving it.

3 days and you’re already complaining. My experience is on a 2 week cruise it has been halfway or more. If you reach day 13, I’d worry. here’s an idea, why not ask the Viking restaurant staff when it might be coming? They would likely know more than us cruise critics! enjoy your wonderful cruise!

Real? Not a typo? Wow. Oh - I just looked it up. It is $25 deposit, but cruise is still $7K + for a Veranda pp and $1399 air.

Peregrina - you are so right! COVID must have given me a brain fade - I had forgotten about that since it has been well over 2 years ago! 🙂. I do remember all the invitations going out. So, maybe there would be a way to have people "reconfirm" their planned attendance, perhaps by dropping something back off at Guest Services. I imagine lots of the no shows come from 1) people who forget what day it is or 2) they find something better to do and figure no big deal. Both of which are not good. I guess we've been lucky on our cruises that we've had some good people who are prompt and conscientious and who considered attending this private party an honor and a privilege.

Clay - on each one of our four pre-COVID ocean cruises on Viking, we had the same experience - very well attended! We had them all in the Winter Garden as well and it was overflowing! And the drinks and appetizers were flowing as well. All of them were great parties, ranging from perhaps 40 to 90 people. However, I have heard of reports on other cruises where very few show up and it was embarasing for those who did, as Viking had all this food and drinks and hardly anyone there. My guess is they won't be back until at least 2023 - and perhaps they could set it up so people could sign up for them ahead of time. Even with no-shows, that would at least give them an idea of how many people might attend, and solve any attendance issues.

This thread has way too much life - way more than it deserves. Let's all move on.

We are looking at this for 2024. To us the question is would we rather finish in Istanbul or the disaster that has become Venice? Learning towards finishing in Venice. At least jet lag will be gone.

This is great everyone! We should with everyone s experience be able to come up with a complete historical list! Would be great to hear from the early worl cruisers and also that very first ocean year of 2015 with the Star, if people saved any menus!!

So sorry to hear. Viking would likely cancel only if they couldn’t find tour operators. We’ve had excursions cancelled and then try to find our own but there aren’t any. Wishing you luck! viking seems to be very bad at notifications of financial transactions. Last few cruises I noticed some unusual credits. No notification. Turns out Viking is now “refunding” money by auto applying a travel agents OBC to paid for excursions. Bizarre. They claim their system now does that.

This is certainly not always the case. Sometimes you can't see the menus until you get onboard the first day. If you know someone of the same ship on the exact prior itinerary, you can ask them what their menus were. That will give you a rough idea of what you will see, but not totally. About all you will know is you won't start with the menu they finished with. I spoke with them on our Nov/Dec cruise and they told us they draft a rough menu schedule each calendar month, but it can and does change. For example, for our cruise coming up July 15, we never saw any menus, and even after we booked, they just keep saying sample menus coming soon. That is why it probably is pointless to plan out which menu is on which day. Just get it set up on the app on day 1.