SWFLAOK

We were in an Explorer Suite. Our laundry would be picked up while we at breakfast, and returned to us during dinner on the following day. Based on our experience on Viking River, we trusted Viking Ocean with much of our laundry, and they did not shrink anything.

We purchased the SSBP on the Viking Ocean cruise we just completed. There was only a few bottles of Woodford onboard, and they didn't last, even if hidden at certain bars. There is no comparison between Viking Ocean and Regent when it comes to drinks. On Viking, you get nothing worthwhile in your cabin, even in an Explorer suite, just a few low end miniatures. The bars have mostly low end drinks (until they run out), and the wine is the worst we've ever encountered (even trying to pick from the SSBP menu). When Frontera is one of the better included whites, you know that it's bad. The 1.75 bottle of Frontera was 7.99 today at Publix, and their prices are high for our area.

My medication is in the same class of drugs as Enbrel. My medication must be stored between 36 and 46 F. It's sent to me once a month via FedEx in a styrofoam color with 3 ice packs and a lot of bubble wrap. If it freezes, it turns cloudy and must be discarded. It can be allowed to go to room temperature (maximum 77 F), but must then be used within 14 days, and if not, be discarded. Living in Florida, room temperature is often above 77. On our recent Viking Ocean cruise, I didn't bring a thermometer since I didn't need to bring my medication, but I haven't seen the drawer type refrigerator before, and have no idea where the cold and warm spots are. I'm really hoping Viking will respond with a policy statement on this.

Unfortunately, their experience is not "unique". I also have a medication that I need to inject every 2 weeks, and needs to be kept in a temperature range. We were lucky enough to be traveling for 2 weeks where I could take my injection on the morning before we left for the airport, and then next one 2 weeks later when we arrived at home after disembarking in Fort Lauderdale and drove home where my injection was waiting for me in the refrigerator at an optimum temperature. We booked this cruise before I needed this medication, so it was only a coincidence that the shots lined up perfectly. Otherwise, I would have been in the same situation as 17pandd's husband. There are many other people who need this service. If Viking can't provide it, they need to make it public so we can try to book our cruises around it. Skipping our medication can have severe results for us. Thanks for your consideration of all future Viking quests.

We were just in an Explorer Suite on Viking Mars, and asked for something other than the 4 minis provided when we boarded. No other options were available. And the 4 minis were not brands we wanted, but there were no alternatives. We usually book Regent, and they give whole bottles in your refrigerator (2 choices per cabin). Silversea also gives a whole bottle. We were disappointed in what we got from Viking Ocean. Viking River gave us a full bottle of white and red wine in our Veranda Suite, and replaced them as needed. We drank a couple of minis, which were replaced several days later, but just went to a bar for drinks since we bought the beverage packaged. The seas were rough for most of our cruise, and our cabin was at the front. We often went to the Atrium bar for less rocking, rolling and slamming. We took our bottle of champagne home (we were driving home from our last port). We didn't get to it on our first 2 days onboard, and after that, I didn't feel able to drink when at sea, and in the ports we were out on excursions. We left the minis behind, but did take the candy bars to eat on the way home.

Four of us in 3 cabins traveling together met at the Coffee connection when it opened each morning. We had our choice of coffee (mostly cappuccino) and a good selection of small breakfast items, both healthy choices and my new favorite - the totally unhealthy but delicious cronut. After that, an early excursion meant we were back to our cabins to get ready. Breakfast at Compass Rose was only for late morning or early afternoon excursions, or sea days (only 2 out of 14 days). But we enjoyed our second breakfast on those days (and didn't need lunch). None of us had a cabin large enough to comfortably have 4 for room service breakfast (none of our cabins had 4 chairs).

To bring this back to the "immersive" topic that started this thread, that would be the end of our Regent cruising. We go for the ports. We have no desire to stay longer in ports, and spend more days at sea. I have no desire to spend multiple nights in a commercial port, and more and more cruise ships are being docked in commercial ports rather than in the heart of the destination. I think we were already hit with this on our Bangkok to Abu Dahbi in April. One of the most important stops to us was Phuket. When excursions opened for us, the first one I booked was SPECTACULAR PHANG NGA BAY, which was our most anticipated excursion. After a few months, we were notified of a change in our itinerary. We would be skipping a small island that few ever visited in Indonesia so we could spend an overnight in Phuket. I had actually been looking forward to that as well, since who doesn't want to visit a small tropical island where your small ship is the only one there? But it meant that I needed to quickly rebook our anticipated excursion for 1 day earlier, which luckily I was able to do. When I looked at what the overnight in Phuket meant to us, it was nothing worthwhile. They had added a number of evening excursions which mostly left from the ship before we returned from our 8.5 hour excursion late in the day. I doubt we would feel up to a night on the town after that. And some were expensive dinners out, so more money coming in for Regent. After the overnight in Phuket, the ship leaves the dock at 8 AM, so no additional excursions the next day, just an additional day at sea in place of our remote island stop that was removed. We go for the destinations, and we already lost one. If they were to do this on our cruise on the large scale done on some of these examples, we would not be happy at all. I think this is a play for the new young cruisers who haven't been on Regent (or maybe any other cruise line) before and are looking for as many opportunities to post on social media about their well known ports of call.

I just checked the bags from my last 3 Regent cruises (Navigator April 23, Splendor back to backs September - October 22, and Voyager back to backs December 19 - January 20). The Navigator and Splendor cruises were in concierge, and Voyager in a penthouse. We received the gold straw textured bag last April. It's very large, with prominent Regent decals, and has only a small zipper pouch inside. It's poorly made, with holes in the seams and the full zipper across the top is nearly impossible to pull. The other 2 bags are smaller, dark navy with small discrete decals. They both have a full zipper across the top, and have a large divider pocket on one side, with 2 small pouches within the divider. On the other side of the interior there's a zippered compartment as part of the lining.They're very nicely made. We had 2 cruises before that, but I didn't dig deep enough into the closet to find them. I seem to remember that one from our first cruise in 2017 might have been open at the top without a zipper. By the end of the cruise, I often have some extras purchased on the trip and I have often used the tote bag. As someone else said, if you're paying more for the same size cabin, they have to give you something to make it seem worth the concierge upgrade. I thought it was the coffee machine, but I haven't been able to get a working one on my last 2 cruises. Replacement machines didn't work either. It was very frustrating. Now I'm happy going to the Coffee Connection when it opens for cappuccino and a cronut.

Absolutely agree with that. People arrive at Aquavit over an hour before it opens just to get a table. We don't mind sharing a table for 4 with a couple we've talked to previously onboard, but sitting at a table for 8 to 10, even if we knew one other couple, was overwhelming to us. We're hoping Viking Ocean won't be like that. We've booked tables for 2 at the Chef's Table and Manfredi's (although we don't normally eat out for Italian since it's so easy to make at home), and will need to check out the other dining venues once we board to see if small tables are available. We might need to use the antisocial excuse if they try to send us to the giant tables. When we moved to our condo here in Florida over 10 years ago, a neighbor asked if I wanted to join the social committee. I said no, but if they needed someone for the antisocial committee, I was available.

I've told this same story for a Viking River Cruise so I'm sorry if you've read it before. We paid in full for our cruise in November 2018 to get the 3 percent discount, for an Amsterdam to Budapest cruise in May 2020, and included a 3 night post in Prague at the upgraded hotel in the old town. We also asked for Viking Air, Business Class. As we all know, the 2020 cruise was cancelled giving us the option to rebook the same cruise for 2021 (no money back was offered and this was a better deal than an FCC, and we still wanted this cruise). I thought for sure May 2021 would be "good to go" since we did a back to back cruises on Sea Dream in the Caribbean that we booked post Covid shutdowns for April 2021. But once again, Viking River suggested that we postpone our cruise, and we did. If we hadn't, it was cancelled and we wanted to stay in control of our cruise, so we moved it to May 2022. The 3 of us in 2 cabins successfully took our back to back Sea Dream cruises from St. Thomas to San Juan and San Juan to San Juan, and really enjoyed it. We had all had vaccines, and passed the test required to get onboard, which was collected by the onboard doctor, and tested by the onboard nurse. We eventually took our Viking River cruise over a year after our Sea Dream cruises, in May 2022. We were booked on a Delta Flight in business class from Miami to Atlanta (it was actually called a first class seat, but there was nothing special about it other than being close to the front of the plane) then Atlanta to Amsterdam in business class where we had paid Viking for 2 nights pre cruise. We immediately complained because there was less than 2 hours between our MIA to ATL and our ATL to AMS. We asked that our ATL to AMS be changed to the later flight. Viking told us that if it was OK with Delta, and they would not change it. Over the next few months, the time between flights decreased twice. We complained each time, and asked for the later flight, and were told no by Viking since Delta said it was OK. As you might have guessed, our flight from MIA to ATL was delayed, and they told us onboard to run as fast as we could and we might make it. We ran along with a much younger man traveling for business, and Delta slammed the gate door in his face when they saw him because they had already given our business class seats away to people in premium economy on the next flight. There was only 1 business class seat available on the next flight over 3 hours later, and they had already booked it for him since he had paid more than Viking had aid for our seats. We told him we were good with that since he had to work in the morning, but discussed whether we wanted to go home or sit in uncomfortable seats to Amsterdam. Rather than lose all of the money we had paid a long time ago, we took the later flight. Delta wouldn't let us into the business class lounge since they caused us to no longer be in business class. It was nothing like the business class lounges we've been in on other airlines with way too many people and unsupervised kids. The seats in premium economy were the worst seats we've sat in, with no leg room for tall people, and a forward leaning head rest in the wrong place for our bodies. Most of the seats were filled with college students celebrating the end of the school year. There were long lines of them waiting for the bathrooms since free drinks were available to all those 18 and older. I almost had an empty seat next to me (seat 3 of 4 in our middle row), but after we took off, a flight attendant brought a young woman to take that seat since she felt afraid and intimidated in her seat in economy. As it turned out, it wasn't a problem for either of us since I always stay quietly in my seat, and she wasn't one of the party crowd. We had tried to contact the emergency number for Viking Air. They were closed, and asked that we call back the next business day. We did enjoy our river cruise and our pre and post. When we returned home, we contacted Viking Air to ask for our money back for our business class upgrade. They told us it was not their problem and to contact Delta. We did. Since we didn't get our money back, we called Delta again. They told us that they had given our money back to Viking 2 months ago. It took us 2 more months to get Viking to give us back the money that Delta gave them. So, we will never us Viking Air again, and we booked our own air for our first Viking Ocean cruise. We have allowed Regent to book our airfare for us, since we've been OK with what they have booked for us except for our first cruise a number of years ago where they booked a flight through Atlanta to Vancouver with an hour in between. We only made it because it was the same plane, and the same flight crew on both flights. We now tell Regent that neither Delta or a flight through Atlanta are acceptable for our included air.

We took a Med trip on Voyager pre-covid in July. There were many large family groups on board, and the teens and tweens were not well behaved or supervised. They were taken on the excursions but were uninterested, and acted up while the rest of us were listening to our guides. There were 2 sisters that kept pushing me, and laughing. I told them they were acting childish for their age, and they stopped. We had some of that on a Mariner Alaska cruise the previous summer, but at least the kids stayed onboard during excursions since there was a program for younger kids, and the teens and tweens hung out in the pool during the day. After that, we've never cruised in summer again, on Regent or any other cruise line.

We had the same reluctance when we booked our first Viking River cruise, and paid in full more than a year and a half prior to our May 2020 cruise. We did save 3 percent by paying with a bank transfer rather than our credit card (where we would have at least gotten rewards). As it turned out, no Viking cruises sailed in May 2020 so we took the choice of rebooking our Grand European cruise for May 2021 rather than taking a future cruise credit. When it came time again to decide if May 2021 would allow us to take the cruise since we would be traveling from the US to Amsterdam, then entering many other EU countries while they were still worried about us bringing them more Covid, we rebooked to May 2022. There were still all kinds of Covid tests that needed to be done (with the weekend results needed to allow us to fly Monday morning costing 250 each), and the Delta flights to Amsterdam were booked too close to make the connection resulting in us being rebooked on the next flight with no business class seats available. I complained to Viking a number of times as the second fllight moved closer to the first, and they said if Delta says you can make it you will. We will never fly Delta again, and while Delta refunded our upgrade fee to Viking, we had trouble getting our upgrade fee back from Viking. So we paid in full in October of 2018 for a cruise that we were not able to take until May of 2022. We did, however, enjoy it, and had only 1 case of Covid for a passenger who tested positive at the airport in Budapest at the end of the cruise. Many of us did a 3 night post in Prague, and no one tested positive before going to the airport. After returning from our Viking river cruise, we decided to book our first Viking Ocean cruise for December of this year, and once again we had to pay in full within a few days of booking. We made our own flight arrangements this time since we don't trust Viking to do it. We constantly get advertisements from Viking saying that you can book for 25 dollars. I have never bothered looking at these offers to see when the rest is due. It's probably the next week. We've cruised on a number of other cruise lines (Regent, HAL, SeaDream, Paul Gauguin, Silversea), and none of them asked for full payment so far in advance,

How long do we need to continue a question that was asked on the Viking Ocean forum by a person on a Viking River cruise? My biggest question for a Viking cruise would be which ships will be allowed to dock in Amsterdam in the future. I suspect that the river ships will be, but the Viking Ocean cruise ships will not. But the OP needs to find the correct river cruise, with no more discussion on Viking Ocean.

After paying for an upgrade to business class through Viking, and questioning them 3 times about whether we could make the Delta connection, we were told that Delta said we could and they would not let us move our business class seast to the next flight out of Atlanta. Our first flight was delayed on both arrival in Miami, and arrival to Atlanta, as we anticipated. Our business class flights were given to economy plus travelers on the next flight, and we were forced to take their seats on a flight 3 hours later. We asked Viking to refund what we had paid for the business class upgrade, and they told us we would need to contact Delta. We contacted Delta, and they told us that Viking had already been given the refund. It took many months before Viking gave us several hundred dollars back which was much less than we had paid for the upgrade. We have never had a good experience on Delta, and will never accept a flight on them again. We also will never trust Viking for a flight. We enjoyed our Viking River cruise other than the Delta flight which they would not let us change when Delta gave us a connecting flight time of just over an hour. For our Viking Ocean cruise, we booked our own flight in first class, and the flight credit more than covered it. We are only flying one way since the cruise returns to Florida.

Just a question for those who are seeing excursions going from included to being priced. Do you already have an excursion booked for that port? On Silversea, there are included excursions in each port. If you book one of those excursions, the other included excursions then become priced. If you go back and delete the included excursion that you originally booked, the other originally excursions go back to being included. I haven't tried that with Viking Ocean since I was able to book the excursions we wanted, and I don't want to take a chance by cancelling them. But maybe it works the same way as Silversea.

We also always bring Euros and make sure we have small change after finding out that many bathrooms in Europe require you to pay to use the restroom. In the US, there are places that indicate a tip would be appreciated, but the attendant in many bathrooms in Europe made it clear that you had to pay to enter. We keep the leftover small denominations and bring it next time. In SW Florida, it is not easy to exchange US dollars for any other currency. We were once able to exchange 100 US dollars for euros at one of our local banks, and not only was the exchange rate bad, but there was a substantional transaction fee. The other option offered was to have the foreign currency sent to us, with a bad exchange rate, a transaction fee, and shipping. Now that we have enough to pay for the bathroom on arrival, and a tip or 2, we find a place that takes US dollars, pay with that, and keep the local currency they give us as change. We've always found that it cost less than exchanging in advance. Even the airports here are very expensive for currency exchange.

Shore excursions are bookable on Regent by Concierge and higher suites 365 days out, while others can book 300 days out. Dining reservations are bookable by Concierge and higher suites 90 days out, while others can book 75 days out. We always book our cruise early, in Concierge or Penthouse, and book our excursions and dining as soon as they open. Since only a few high end suites have an unlimited number of dinner reservations available prior to the cruise, and most are limited to 1 reservation per restaurant, dinner is usually not a problem, but shore excursions do book fast. The disadvantage of booking early is that we have already paid a big deposit by the time special offers become available, with lower fares or very low deposits. We've been told by Regent that taking advantage of those would require us to cancel our reservation and rebook, which could result in losing our suite, or other benefits we may have had from booking early. On our last cruise, we had a friend and a relative booked in 2 separate single cabins. If they wanted to rebook to get a last minute rate, they would have lost the single cabin discount that they had received when they booked, and paid 100 percent single supplement instead of 50 percent. We have a Viking Ocean cruise coming up that we paid in full for last year. All summer, we have received the advertisement for 25 dollar deposit until the end of September for Viking Ocean Cruises. Our cruise is sold out, so it wouldn't have worked for us, but the same cruise 2 weeks later was still available. Since we already booked our own airfare, we didn't even consider cancelling our booked cruise and rebooking 2 weeks later. Viking Ocean opens their shore excursions based on your cabin category with the Owner's suite starting 107 days out, Explorer suite at 97 days, Penthouse Junior suite at 87 days, and so on. Dinner reservations open 7 days after your excursions open, with a limit of 3 reservations for each restaurant for Explorer and Penthouse Junior suites, 2 each for Penthouse Veranda, 1 each for Deluxe Veranda, and no priority dinner reservations can be booked for Veranda suites until after boarding. We haven't been on Viking Ocean before, but enjoyed our Viking River cruise back in May of 2022. We had booked that cruise for May 2020, and paid in full for it late in 2018 to get the 3 percent discount. Since Covid cancelled the cruise for 2020 and 2021, with no refund available, it wasn't a good investment.

While I always bring a book with me on every cruise that I plan to read, I always check the library as soon as I board to see if there's something of interest. I also enjoy a good mystery, and contemporary best sellers, along with a horror here and there, and a science fiction with a historical background. And often I have found a good book to read on our Regent Cruises, and have finished it very quickly. On our Viking River cruise, there was nothing at all of interest in their small library. It was nearly all travel related, not all in the area we were traveling, but I had already read about the area we were traveling through.There was really nothing to read just for pleasure. I finished the mystery I had brought with me and asked at reception if I should leave it in the library. After reading its summary, she said that the crew would enjoy reading it, and put it behind her desk.

We paid for a Silver Suite on our first Silversea cruise. Our previous cruises had been on luxury cruise lines, and the Silver Suite was the biggest cabin we had ever had, but not the most expensive. But, it was amazing, and since we had a single relative onboard with us in another cabin, we enjoyed the extra space for dinner in our cabin when we didn't want to do formal dress. But we didn't receive anything extra on that cruise, and were never offered anything from Silversea after that as far as a good deal or discount. So consider yourself very lucky to get an upgrade to a Silver Suite. We did, however, book the Silversea World cruise in 2025, since the itinerary was what we wanted for many new ports, and those we enjoyed in the past. Dawn is bigger than we like for a cruise ship, but has many public areas (restaurants, bars, fitness center). But there was no way we could afford anything more than a Veranda Suite, and there's no chance of an upgrade that doesn't double the price of the cruise (and is only available now and then when someone cancels). We booked in August of last year with a very large deposit. We won't find out about included flights until sometime next year.

On our Viking River cruise, our first lunch onboard offered us a white and a red. We tried them both and they were not to our liking. We asked if there was anything else, and they brought us an alternate white that they told us would go well with our lunch. We each had a glass with lunch and enjoyed it. After we got settled in our cabin, we found that we had been charged 45 dollars for the bottle (which we didn't finish because it wasn't offered to us as our bottle and would have brought it to our cabin to enjoy later). We had also paid for the SSP when we checked in onboard, but "unfortunately" as we were told, the computer hadn't recorded it when our account was charged for it. The bartender at happy hour figured this out, and got our SSP registered on our account, but could not remove the 45 dollar charge for our 2 glasses of wine at lunch. For our upcoming Viking Ocean cruise, we bought our SSP recently when we booked our restaurant reservations. We might have better wine choices for the Panama Canal cruise than the River Cruise through Germany, but it only takes a few bottles of wine that you didn't expect to pay for to cover SSP, and we can have a happy hour drink and/or an after dinner drink at one of the bars without worrying about an extra charge. When we're already paying for a cruise, we don't like to be worry about upexpected overcharges.

No, I wasn't expecting a bar in our cabin, and we've already used the SSP onboard Viking River. But I was expecting that paying for an Explorer Suite would give us at least 1 bottle of liquor of our choice in our cabin. We didn't have that on our Viking River Cruise, but were in the suite below Explorer level. On all of our other cruises, on multiple cruise lines, we've had drinks included, and they gave wine, beer and a bottle of liquor in our cabin. We did have all the wine we wanted in our Viking River cruise suite, which wasn't part of the SSP. The Explorer Suites on the River Cruise had an in suite bar included, but we were one level below Explorer Suite. So I'm just asking if anyone has ever been in an Explorer Suite on Viking, and what exactly is provided in your cabin. If you don't know, then don't guess.

I think the first thing to do is mention it to the staff, and let them have a chance to mention it. If that doesn't solve the problem, then asking them to keep it down is the next step. Since one of us uses hearing aids, which make it much worse with loud talking, I'd let him inform them of that. If that doesn't work either, we would make a complaint against the restaurant's manager since their job is managing the restaurant.

Having hearing aids makes it even worse when the table next to you is yelling. If you have hearing loss, use hearing aids (they're affordable at Costco, and if you're on a Viking cruise, you can afford them), or order room service.

Small alcohol bottles are in PV and above? We're in an Explorer suite on our December Classic Panama Canal cruise, and have paid for the Silver Beverage Package (which we would have hoped was included in an Explorer Suite). Will we really only have small bottles (like those on an airline) in our fridge in our Explorer Suite? That would be very disappointing.

So many Delta lovers on here makes me wonder what we've been doing wrong, other than allowing Regent to book us on Delta. We did fly Delta to Atlanta and back from Newark many years ago, and we had problems way back then. I was hoping they had improved, but after twice being booked by them with insufficient time between flights, we are done with them. We were told our seats would be Delta One. Our flight attendant while sitting in our Delta "first class'' seats on our delayed flight, from MIA to ATL told us we would be on the next flight from ATL to AMS in Delta One, but we should rush to the gate for our original flight since we could make it. But they had already moved people in "Delta Comfort" on the next flight to our business class (Delta One) seats on our original flight before we ran to it, and they slammed the door on us. At least we were able to sit next to each other on the next flight because of that since that free up 2 seats next to each other in "Delta Comfort" But as tall people, we find Delta Comfort to be extremely uncomfortable, and will never fly Delta again. I was happy to see today that Delta is eliminating the use of their "lounge" by passengers with basic economy tickets, but I still won't be flying on Delta again.