CDNPolar

I don't say anything against Michelin restaurants as I do appreciate the talent that is required, but personally - just my personal opinion - Michelin is never true authentic local cuisine. I have had many opportunities to choose Michelin over local basic very well prepared cuisine, and will always opt for the latter.

We were told by a private tour guide in Barcelona to avoid any restaurant that has their menu outside on an A-frame. This is a tourist restaurant. If you want to eat real Tapas, then look for restaurants down the side streets - in the Gothic Quarter (and other areas) that don't have menus outside. I know, this is not intuitive to us, but try it. We did and we have amazing meals.

I have not cruised solo, but we have met several solo's on Viking. Our experience from their comments are that if you are outgoing then you will meet people and have a great time, but if you are not willing to put yourself out there then you may feel isolated. Ask at the dining room if there are share tables that you can be seated at. Engage with folks during excursions. Excursions are where we have met the solo travellers that we have spent time with. It is my experience on Viking Ocean that people are creatures of habit. If they eat on the Port side in the World Cafe, they will typically always eat on the Port side. Keeping structure like this will put you in front of the same people more often. Not that everyone goes at exactly the same time, but we have found that we recognize more and more people as the days go on. This will allow you to strike up conversations with the people sitting near you.

In my experience with Viking Ocean the night before disembarkation, there is no "special" dinner - it is just dinner as usual. Generally speaking there is a Captain's farewell in the Star Theatre but that is generally two nights before disembarkation. There is generally not a show on that last night either as you have to get your luggage in the hall by 9pm. If they had too much going on, then people would miss their luggage deadline. Personally, I would go ashore, find the Gothic Quarter in Barcelona and eat in a square there.

My experience with Viking Ocean and River is that we have done some cruises with Free Air. Viking offers Air Plus for $50 bucks per person, and you get to choose your airline, the schedule, upgrade if you want, and the seats. We research the airlines, and the schedules, call Viking and book our air. Yes, it is still free when you do this but you pay for any upgrade. The next free air that we got is to Bucharest and home from Budapest, and we upgraded to Premium Economy, and are paying $1,200 CAD per person which is equivalent to the upgrade cost if we were buying the tickets ourselves.

Why are you not doing the upgrade on AC with Viking Air? Would this not guarantee you the class that you want? We have regularly upgraded to Premium or Business through Viking Air? Doing the upgrade with Viking Air gives you the upgrade, because I agree with other posters here, that upgrading after the fact may not be possible because of the original class booked. You may be out of luck.

The lack of general announcements in the cabin has been a pet peeve of mine, because although we don't spend that much time in the cabin, the first morning announcement is often just before we leave the cabin, OR, it is when we are in the World Cafe and people are so boisterously noisy in the morning you cannot hear it. We just came off of another cruise line and we loved their system. You could hit a button on the phone in the cabin and all general announcements came through the speaker on the phone. They did have a set schedule of hours that this would happen, and I think that it was 8am to 8pm. If these hours did not suit you then you could toggle it on and off as you pleased. This was so helpful and welcome.

DV3 5107 is a "standard" Viking cabin. It is the same size and layout as the majority of cabins on Viking, but you have earlier embarkation, dining reservations, etc., etc. As far as a review, I have been in this very cabin on all my Viking cruises but have never actually stayed in #5107 if that makes sense. This cabin is 270 sq ft and the identical layout and furniture to the cabins I have stayed in. Very comfortable. As for the pack lighter comment, we don't pack light and we have never been without enough space to fully unpack. Sometimes, what may normally go in a drawer may end up on a shelf, but for us it all fits. The only thing that I can review that is different is that you are right at the aft, so you will get more motion if you have rough seas, but other than that, it is like all other cabins, very comfortable. We prefer mid-ship to minimize motion, but some love to be aft and some love to be forward.

Yes, there are only a few on each deck and just off the elevator lobby. We were very happy with ours as we have always had the traditional deep cabin, this was a nice change.

Yes, check with the cruise line. We required a negative test for a cruise line on December 28th.

We were on Port side and we had incredible views of everything from our cabin and balcony. We chose specifically cabin 829 because if you look at the deck plans this cabin is wide not deep. We had a balcony that was 12+ feet long. From my experience of just a few weeks ago, other than what AlanCruise says about watching the launch of zodiacs, you have an incredible view of the landscape, icebergs, and whales from whatever side you are on. We spent far more time on deck 11 and you can walk side to side to see all from up there. There was much more to being on the open deck than on the balcony.

Not really as it is all about the time you have on the Continent. We had one hour on land - give or take - each landing. The snowshoeing seemed longer because there was equipment to get on and we had to wait for all to get the boots strapped in, but in the end we were only one hour on the trail. The kayaking also seemed longer because of the time to coach and then actually get in the kayaks, but all actual events once started are about an hour. The general landings when you are more or less walking/hiking without a guide, you could steal a few more minutes because it is honour system to get back to the landing site, but then you may prevent someone else from landing. You are told very clearly at each landing site when your feet hit the ground what time to be back there. The only extended thing is the camping, but I don't think you are hiking with this.

Agree. Will be a cold day in hell before I would walk on Russian soil.

Agree with this piece... We just came off an Antarctica cruise - not with Viking - and the biggest part of this was that plans could change at anytime and they did. No research or planning would allow you to know that you were not going to get to this landing point today because weather threw those plans out the window so we are now landing here... We are planners in many ways, but we love the anticipation of the Chef's Table and we leave the knowledge of the menu until we sit down. We don't wan't to know in advance, and we have even said don't give us a menu and surprise us. This will likely get people riled up, but I think that many want to know too much that is really not that important. To me anyway.

I have said this on other discussion threads. We book the lowest ocean category of cabin because for one, we don't ever intend to spend time in the cabin that we are not either showering or sleeping. What comes along with the lowest category of cabin is an absence of being able to book anything in advance in regard to restaurant reservations. We have NEVER had a problem booking the specialty restaurants after boarding and even on the next day. Pre-Covid or during Covid. The last cruise we were on had over 700 (I know not full) but we got Chef's Table 5 nights for each new menu at the time we wanted with no concerns. We got 3 Manfredi's nights as well at the time we wanted. There seems to be endless hype (sorry for the word) and worry about restaurant reservations in advance - same for excursions - that I wish that Viking would either build a better mousetrap or take away advance bookings so that everyone was on level ground on boarding the ship. This advance booking system seems to bring a lot of anxiety.

We have air tags, but these won't stop a bag from disappearing but may help in retrieving it. We have traveled internationally through Pearson several times over the past 2 months. We see all the media scandal of what a mess Pearson is/was, but we have not experienced this at all. We have sailed smoothly through checkin, security, and boarding and had no issues. I am not saying that chaos has not happened, but I do believe the media grabs a picture of chaos and then it goes viral, but this is a moment in time. 3 times through Pearson in the last two months - round trips - and we saw none of this chaos. Pack necessary one or two days of clothes / shoes in your carry on. Be prepared for the worst.

Just goes to show that you must read and understand the policy in full. Never assume.

Just goes to show that you must read and understand the policy in full. Never assume.

We have personally never done this, but my understanding is that when you decline Viking Air, there is then in the Air section of My Viking Journey a link to book transfers. You must be arriving and departing however the same schedule as if Viking Air were bringing you in which would mean that you arrive the day the cruise departs port (or starts) and you depart the last day when the ship docks. If I am correct with this, if you have a pre or post extension that you booked on your own, and not through Viking, you don't qualify for transfers.

Yes, you are correct, you should get one landing per day and boat cruise where they run them - all weather permitting. The lottery excursions are: Camping, Snowshoeing, Kayaking, and Science Boat.

We had to wait for one smaller ship to leave the area at one landing point before we could land. There is a max number of people allowed on the continent at one time at any landing point, so if a ship is there you cannot start your landing. This is not per ship max, it is a max at that landing point. We passed and saw other ships, but there was never another ship landing at the same time, or kayaking in the same bay. My impression is that the ships book these landing points in advance and have to stick to their times otherwise it would always be chaos. We looked frequently on the cruise tracker and there were often 15+ ships on the vicinity map.

Very true, and I would never push this with crew... I would ask politely and offer them the option of not answering.

There seem to be a lot of opinions of how gratuities are distributed, and from an email inquiry that I just received a call back for this was Viking's response: All monies received in the gratuity program are distributed directly to all onboard staff as a bonus. No monies are put into enrichment programs or equipment for the staff - all is as a bonus. I asked if this was per cruise, or per contract and the response was: We don't have that information available to us. Any additional question that I asked such as % to different departments, the response was: We don't have that information available to us. We will ask crew that we get friendly with directly in future cruises.

Right on! We knew that we were faced with a lottery on the size of ship we were travelling and we would not have liked it if we got nothing, but we were prepared for getting nothing.

...should have mentioned Pergrina651 did, and that is that for purchasing transfers you must arrive when Viking would bring you in if you bought your air through Viking. Arriving early or late will not work. Oh, and the Viking Air that we are using in August is because the promotion was FREE AIR, and the cruise cost was not higher, so we would be foolish to book our own air. What we did was book Premium Economy and that ended up as a $1,299 CDN cost per person, but if we did that without the free air, it would have been a cost of about $3500 per person with PE.