Captain Hornblower

Good idea to think about your own excursions. Be aware that the Viking/cruise ship "Russian Visa" only allows shore access with Viking, if doing separate excursions you will need to get a sponsored visa. Plus be aware that have I just experienced Viking making serious changes to my booked and confirmed excursions, without any advice. You may get more reliably NOT doing Viking excursions. I think Viking are struggling to make the transition from river cruise operator to ship operator, plus their My Viking Journey website is only really in Beta version as far as I can see given my experience with its it accuracy and reliability

KyOh--great question. I have wondered the same thing as we are two couples in search of making the most of this expensive cruise. I have only been able to pick up bits and pieces of prior reviews of the Viking tours (free and optional$$) for this itinerary. We are on the ship just prior to you and disembark in Bergen on July 24. Tended to discount the earlier reviews a bit as the ship and this itinerary were still in "shake down" mode getting all the kinks ironed out.

 

So far we have booked the following for our main ports of interest, and have been able to join with one or two other couples or have them join us. Rest of ports have pretty good reviews of the ease of getting around and the local "HOHO" systems--also plan to avail ourselves of the various Viking freebies and/or make a reservation on one or two of their paid tours. All the tour companies we selected had lots of great reviews on both CruiseCritic and their sister website TripAdvisor.

 

Alla/ St. Petersburg

Tallinn/ Tallinn Traveller Tours

Warnemunde/ Friends of Dave Tours

Copenhagen/ Hamlet Tours

Flam/VisitFlam

be aware Viking are randomly changing booked excursions without telling passengers

Dear lovetohike,

 

While, as NavyVeteran has observed, our Baltic Jewels & the Midnight Sun cruise is comprised of two separate itineraries, we do intend to allow shore excursions for both legs to be booked once shore excursion reservations are permitted.

 

Unfortunately, it appears we have encountered trouble loading the shore excursions to My Viking Journey for this particular itinerary. Our web team is aware and currently working to correct the problem. We anticipate a repair to be implemented by the end of next week.

 

If you prefer to contact us with your booking information so we can troubleshoot your individual account, we would be happy to hear from you at TellUs@vikingcruises.com.

 

Thank you for allowing us an opportunity to respond, lovetohike. We look forward to welcoming you aboard!

 

Kind regards,

Viking Cruises

I think the My Viking Journey website is awash with errors Pugwash, don't trust it, go direct to Viking and demand a fix.

I checked on the website and my cruise has disappeared from the My Viking Journey pages. I've already got an alternative lined up so just waiting to find out if we need to cancel with Viking as I'm not prepared to accept a lower grade cabin on a different Viking cruise.

I agree with other comments about taking your own responsibility about transfers, but I can also state that as another long time Viking river cruiser, my experience of the Viking customer service has gone down hill. The My Viking Journey website has the same quality as the Costa Concordia, it is on the rocks much of the time

This note are our comments about the Viking Cruise Line Customer Service - and the appalling lack of it.

 

We have been loyal Viking cruisers for many years. In fact, we’re about to embark on one of their new ocean-going trips. But in total we’ve been on about 6 River cruises - have only used Viking - and have recommended the line to anyone who asks.

 

But we won’t do again - and this will be our last Viking Cruise Line itinerary.

 

The issue has to do with their lack of concern or interest in assisting us get from London to Harwich Cruise terminal. While we booked all of trip with Vkiking including the air and paying extra for a deviation so we could arrive early in London- and paid in full well in advance as is their requirement - the many folks I spoke with as I went “up the line” gave me the same party line - no one indicating any need or interest to help solve our issue. They do offer transfers for approx $50 per but only in a narrow circumstance. Private transfer from London will cost us in excess of $200 and it really is the only reasonable option open to us.

 

We’ve always been troubled by Viking requirement that a passenger pay in full well in advance of what any other line requires - they’re using our $$ - but we’ve tolerated that requirement. We’ve also been disappointed that they do minimally for their loyalty customers, such as ourselves - allowing a $250 credit no matter how many cruises with them - but we’ve accepted that also .

 

But this cavalier, almost unkind conversations with no help in problem solving is it for us. We will be looking for another River cruise line with which to attach our loyalty. I’m sure there are many.

Viking has hundreds of passengers keen to know if their latest/new ship will be available, yet has done nothing to tell them, passengers have to find out for themselves by going to websites like this or to the Viking website and doing a search. Viking has my email address, why not send me a note of excitement - your ship has launched, and yes you long awaited cruise is on time etc, even if we have stuffed up your shore excursions, and maybe the ship will say afloat long enough for you to join us!

Dear cmaasfamily,

 

Thank you for your inquiry. We are excited to share that Viking Sea is on schedule for her maiden voyage! A video of the float out ceremony is available to view on our website here:

 

http://www.vikingcruises.com/oceans/video/ships/index.html#video/viking-sea-float-out

 

We encourage you to visit our site to learn more about Viking Sea and to stay up to date with announcements and press releases. Thank you again for your interest, we are thrilled to add Viking Sea to our ocean fleet!

 

Best regards,

Viking Cruises

Hi, I locked in my excursions after much planning and research. I had priority booking, logged in and chose excursions in the first hour, had them confirmed, then just by chance some weeks later, I noticed one excursion/tour moved, without notice, and in conflict with another booking, and now all other choices booked out, so we will lose our booking. This will waste our opportunity in that port. Why did Viking do this behind our backs? Big fail viking. I am attempting to get a resolution, if not it will be my LAST Viking cruise - they can not be trusted. Captain Hornblower

Viking passengers should be advised that Viking may change the times on excursion reservations you made on MVJ (My Viking Journey) website without notice. They won't notify you about the changes, and you might not find out about them until you're on board.

 

We're booked on the Star for an upcoming voyage. Last month, I logged on to MVJ at 6am the day the booking window opened for our cabin category, and made reservations for the excursions we wanted to go on. I selected the earliest available time slot for each, in order to leave the afternoons free for other private tours or activities. Being the 'early bird', I was fortunate to get the first time slots listed.

 

My booking requests were all accepted, and I obtained a printed confirmation of the tours and times for our trip planning folder. I verified that the various tours & times were all loaded into the My Calendar pages on MVJ. In the weeks since, I made arrangements with guides or drivers for some private tours in a number of the ports, at later times in the day. I thought I had our various port days all planned and under control.

 

A few days ago, I happened to be checking My Calendar to verify arrival time in one of the ports. To my surprise, I found that fully half of our reservations had been unilaterally changed by Viking. Two of them had been moved from the first time slot in the morning to tours in the afternoon. Viking did not notify us of the changes - had I not happened to check our MVJ My Calendar, I would never have known.

 

This was not an isolated event on our file. Travel companions on this trip (who had made similar shorex reservations) also found unexpected changes to their bookings when they looked on MVJ. Viking must be having some IT issues with their on-line reservations system, as depicted here:

 

So a word to the wise (I include all CC members in that cohort): double-check the times of any shorex reservations you've made on MVJ, especially if you've arranged your own port activities that could be impacted should Viking make changes to your schedule.

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