photopro2

That really is excellent news, and thanks for sharing it. Obviously, I could only report on the situation as I had experienced it. It would be good to hear from others to confirm that the issue has now been fully resolved.

Oop's sorry Don, it was your reference to 2 advance reservations in Chef's Table that led me astray. DV's normally only get one. I know from personal experience, social media and talking directly to numerous people directly on board that this is a real "thing" at the moment. It seem to have become worse in recent months, maybe as the ships are getting full again? It would be interesting to know when you last booked on MVJ without any issue?

I completely and wholeheartedly agree with you. It is generally better not to have fixed reservations for all the reasons that you mention. Occasionally though, people may wish to set up a special meal ahead of time. It might be a birthday or anniversary or simply because they know in advance that there will be a late start the next morning and the opportunity to “live it up” the night before. That is why I am unhappy with Viking unilaterally removing the My Viking Journey advanced reservations process to a section of their customers, while still promoting it as a benefit on the website. It is one thing to choose not to make advance reservations and another to be prevented from doing so. I would make an analogy with the binoculars that are provided in the DV cabins. To my mind they are of such low quality as to be virtually useless, so always bring my own. However, if Viking removed them but continued to list them as a cabin benefit, I feel that would give legitimate cause for complaint. Hopefully you will forgive me hijacking your excellent thread to again exercise this bee in my personal bonnet 🐝. Viking do so much, so well.......but I will continue to call them out at every opportunity when they fail to offer customers something that they have guaranteed. Whether the customer chooses to use it is another matter, as you quite rightly say 😁👍

Thanks donaldsc for your excellent summary of dining arrangements. I would just like to make two corrections, one minor and the other more significant. In the buffet you will not be seated but simply select your own seat and waiters will come to you for your drinks order. More importantly, regarding the above, I would like to point out that for some time now the majority of passengers in DV cabins (including ourselves on our last two cruises) have been completely unable to make any advance reservations using the My Viking Journey portal. Immediately the booking window opened in November for our recent cruise I contacted customer services. They confirmed the problem with MVJ was a “known issue” and even they were not able to make reservations for tables for two but only for shared tables at the times we requested. My response was that we could accept any alternative times that were available, to which I received the following reply from a customer services agent by email: “I have left the reservations as they are, as the tables for two have predominantly been taken up on all legs of the cruise. On a particular time, we have just one table for 2 and a sharing table is normally available alongside it, however we only reserve 70% of our alternative dining spaces prior to departure, so you will be able to modify the bookings with our Restaurant Reservations Desk, which is located in the entrance to the World Café.” Viking continue to state in their advertising material that DV cabins have “1 guaranteed priority reservation at each alternative restaurant 60 days prior to departure”. In practise, it seems that this guarantee currently only applies to reservations onto a shared table and can only be made through guest services. In fairness I should say that we were, indeed, accommodated once onboard although at later times: 7.30 at Chef’s Table and 8.00/8.30 in Manfredi’s. However, this does not negate or excuse the fact that the advance bookings relevant to the DV cabin category (that are promoted as a cabin benefit) are still not being made available as advertised. I fail to see how a reservation that we can only make through customer services and then need to modify once on board can honestly be described in Viking's advertising as a “guaranteed priority reservation…..60 days prior to departure” Please note this issue only relates to those in DV cabins. You may not have experienced any difficulty yourself, donaldsc, as your post suggests you may be in a higher grade cabin.

Oh yes, that would've been a big night 😀🍾🍾

Thanks for the tip on excursions. I would also be interested to know of any special events that you recall and on which evening of the cruise they took place. I'm thinking specifically of the Explorers club reception and dancing under the stars but anything else you can remember would help with dining planning.

This whole thread reminded me of the wide-ranging conversations that take place around water coolers or ice machines. For instance if I met you, TayanaLorna, by an ice machine or cooler I might tell you how much I agreed with your comments on a recent thread which has since been closed. I would probably also mention how happy I was that you got 14 likes for your post and that you and OnTheJourney at least had the last word on the subject. Apologies for the subject drift and to everyone who has not the slightest idea what I'm talking about 😁

Wisconsin Travellers, having read through your post a number of times I’m still at a complete loss to see why your experience seems to have left a “nasty taste” The lowest cost categories of cabins on Viking Ocean have never included pre-voyage table bookings. They are also last in line for shore excursions. This is all made clear in the Viking promotional material and you did not provide any explanation as to why you feel it should be different for you. It was completely your decision to book a “guarantee” cabin. If you did not like the restrictions that came along with that lower price offer you were free to walk away from the deal and take another cruise at another time, possibly with another company. The side-line you mention regarding on-board credit is equally baffling to me, all that I can say is that I think the clue is in the name. This and other threads have highlighted the difficulties that customers in DV cabins have had in making the advanced bookings promised by Viking as being included within their booking category. In contrast you appear to have had exactly the experience that your booking category specifies, hence my surprise at your dissatisfaction. I have high hopes that you will enjoy your time with Viking and find, in the end, that booking a cabin at the "guarantee" rate represents good value overall.

That follows the usual pattern then. The problems with on-line booking relates mostly to those in DV cabins. However, as these make up the majority of passengers, it has resulted in a large number of people being affected on each cruise.

As you mentioned making two reservations in Manfredi's I suspect you may be in a higher category cabin than the majority in DV grade cabins, who are those generally encountering difficulties.

Expecting guests to use shared tables seems to have become standard practise in recent months. When advance booking opened for our next cruise, the page on MVJ Immediately showed that all available tables for two had already been booked: On contacting Viking the only "other available options" offered were for shared tables. This is backed up by the OP's comment that they had booked tables for four without difficulty, however I am sure that getting a table for two in advance would have been a different matter. Given that Covid is not completely behind us I am disappointed that the sharing of tables between strangers, as well as those travelling together, is now being promoted/encouraged by Viking.

That makes sense, advance reservations only seem to be available on tables of four or more. I just wanted to be sure people were aware of that and not caught out. Sorry if my question about the date of the cruise caused some confusion. It was intended for CDNPolar as I'm interested to know how up-to-date their information is.

Did you confirm if these were tables for two or on a shared table? The reason I ask is that we did this and were surprised when we boarded to discover that the reservations were on shared tables. However we did then manage to change the bookings to tables for two at a later time on same evenings.

Would you mind if I ask when this cruise was? My perception, both from personal experience and anecdotal evidence, is that on board reservations are becoming noticeably more difficult to obtain as time goes on.

Thanks for the thread Jim, you are certainly building the excitement for us as we will be on the same itinerary early next year. If you have chance to speak to the beverage manager, Jasna could you ask if she will still be on the ship in February? We had the pleasure of her company on 2 previous cruises and would love to do so again. In any case I expect you are keeping her department busy 😁 Finally a very happy Christmas to you & yours 🎄

We are on that itinerary but not until 2024. We will be looking for tips/suggestions though, so any posts about your experiences would be of great interest. Good to hear thanks. It is a "bucket list" trip to mark DW joining me in retirement so we plan to make the most of it!

I think I have the answer to your question. We have Chilean Fjords and Southern Atlantic Crossing booked as a BtoB saving Viking the cost of return flights to South America. The invoice shows a reduction in the form of an "Air Allowance" of £500pp.

That was our experience previously. However on our most recent cruise (September 2022) getting the reservations that we wanted required a great deal of determination and good natured persistence on my part. I did very much feel that we were being "squeezed in". Once seated in the restaurants there always seemed to be empty tables around and adequate wait staff, something that was particularly noticeable in the Chef's Table. This leads me to the suspicion that Viking are currently having difficulty recruiting sufficient experienced chefs to maintain the volume of service in the speciality restaurants that they did pre-Covid. As a result it seems they are penalising DV category passengers by reneging on the promise of one reservation in each speciality restaurant prior to boarding. Well put, I could not agree with you more!

Sorry for the slow response Mapomp but I have just started a thread that at least partially answers your request for a recent wine list. You can read it in full by clicking on the image above. Unfortunately I didn't photograph the full list and there were more wine is available by the bottle that are not shown but hopefully this is of some help.

While on our last cruise I took a quick snap of the wine list on my phone so that I could browse it at leisure back in the cabin. There have been a number of questions on the board about available wines and my first thought was to post these images to one of those threads. It then occurred to me that it might be useful to have a single thread showing a selection of wine lists, from various Viking ships and cruises, that people can be referred to. This could be expanded and kept up-to-date over time. If you already have any photos of wine lists you could post them straight away or you might be able to collect images on future trips to post later, as I will try to remember to do. I think it would be helpful to include the name of the ship, itinerary and date as in my example below. Note: Unfortunately I did not photograph the whole wine list, as I recall there were additional reds by the bottle and sparkling wines on other pages. Skål 🍷🍾 Viking Sky - Ancient Adriatic Treasures – September 2022

Apologies to everyone for the “topic drift” I feel it is worthwhile to point something out even though, sadly, it is not relevant to the main thread or to uktog’s circumstances. It may be possible to fly to America the day before a cruise and still get a free Viking transfer. We are flying to Miami, overnighting there at our own expense, then transiting onto San Juan the next day where Viking will transfer us to the ship. This is not considered a deviation as we are in transit for less than 24 hours in Miami but makes the whole trip to Puerto Rico much more comfortable. Hence why I want fellow Brits to be aware of the possibility.

I certainly agree with him and I wouldn't recommend that you made that journey in one go. As you probably know international passengers transferring onto US domestic flights have to collect checked baggage from the carousel and take them through customs before re-checking them. This, along with the immigration procedure, makes for a lengthy process and usually results in either an unsettling dash through the airport if the connection time is short or a sometimes lengthy wait at the airport for a later connection. Neither of these is ideal after a transatlantic flight. Our solution (as we have to collect the checked bags and go through immigration anyway) is to book a hotel room at our arrival airport in the US. That way we can go through the arrival procedures without any time pressure, get a good nights sleep in a proper bed, then continue with the domestic flight the following morning. Viking arranged our flights so we could do this on the TA we made from San Juan a few years ago and they have done the same for our Caribbean cruise with them early next year. We land in Miami and spend that night at the airport at our own cost. We then fly to San Juan the next morning arriving around midday. We know from the last time that we will get there rested and ready to enjoy the ship straight away. In contrast fellow Brits who have made the trip in one go will arrive at the ship late the same evening and I expect totally frazzled from the journey. We thoroughly enjoyed both San Juan and the TA that followed. It is a very walkable and historic city with a Caribbean twist. I hope that you can get your wish to visit someday and maybe this post will help persuade your husband that it is certainly possible to make the journey in a reasonably comfortable way.

The first thing to note is that Viking do not have to allow the change and in a worse case you might lose the whole of the sum paid if you cancel. That said, the very good news is that (while it is not guaranteed) Viking will allow you to make a change like this if they possibly can. In fact I was surprised to find that they even go so far as saying exactly this in their terms and conditions for UK bookings. The reason I say that they are likely to be as helpful as possible is based on the following paragraphs from the T&Cs C1.1 If you want to change your travel arrangements in any way you or your Travel Agent must inform us in writing as soon as possible. We will try to help you, although we cannot guarantee that we will always be able to do this as changes are subject to availability at the time. Please note that typically changes to scheduled flight tickets are very restrictive and may not be possible without having to cancel the original flight and rebooking. C1.2 Where we can make a change, we will charge for any additional services, facilities, or other items changed, at the price which applies on the day the change is made. In addition, we reserve the right to apply an administration charge of £100 for each person on the booking together with any further costs we incur, for example with our suppliers, in making any change. I suggest that you use this link https://www.vikingcruises.co.uk/terms-conditions to read through the T&Cs for yourself, to Vikings credit they are written in fairly straightforward English, not legalese. Armed with this information you can then talk to your travel agent tomorrow. One thing to be careful of is to make clear to your agent that you don't want to cancel the booking at this stage, but that you are just enquiring about transferring the deposit over to a new booking. I have read on this board about people who were caught out by an overenthusiastic agent who canceled the existing booking first before setting up the new booking which messed up Viking's system and lost them their money. Good luck with this and do post again to let us know how you get on.

We are doing this itinerary in January and so maybe I could tack on my own question to this thread..... I do like to be up at dawn sometimes to watch the sail-in but I'm not sure that I want to be up that early every single day of the trip. Are there any port arrivals on the West Indies Explorers cruise that are known for being more/less photogenic than others?

If you are looking to get into the forest, the El Yunque Rainforest excursion out of San Juan is described as moderate. We did this earlier this year from the Viking Octantis and I expect the one available in December will be much the same. I would say that 2/3 of the excursion would be accessible even to someone with a degree of mobility difficulties. It was an easy walk from the parking area into the newly reopened forest visitor centre and the bus parked just across the road from the waterfall. The only questionable part would be the walk we made down into a valley to see a rocky river section of the forest. It was about 30 minutes down 30 minutes by the river and 30 minutes back. I'm not sure what you mean by "slipper slopes" if that is a typo for steeper slopes then you might have an issue with that part of the trip. These things are hard to quantify but the pathway zigzagged down into the valley and was somewhat steep in parts. However the path was relatively well made. I have attached a photograph which is not particularly great in itself but is the one which best shows the quality of the path. We very much enjoyed the excursion overall especially the informative and knowledgeable guide who was from the UK, now living on the island, with many years experience in sustainable forestry. Hope that helps!