CDNPolar

Some of these things just need a bit of patience. I have done a couple of claims and one took a couple/few weeks to come back and ask for more, and the other was 5 weeks with no contact and I found a cheque in the mail.

Yes, I am aware of that. I am responding to a previous post that indicated that MVJ had an app.

I have sailed on ships (twice) that were 2500 passengers and this was 20 years or more ago. My husband and I together have only ever sailed on ships under 1000 passengers. I would consider 2000+ a big ship. I cannot imagine being on a ship with 5K or more passengers. To me that would be the equivalent of going to Disney World on the busiest day of the year. A nightmare come to life.

This type of thing is what I refer to as a hedge with insurance. You calculate what you will lose if you cancel and you come to terms with that. If you would not be happy based on weather, then the loss is quite small over going and being miserable and the cost outlayed. We are not phased by weather, but I understand why some are. We did a river cruise on the Rhine this past December and it rained every day. We were good with this. You may not be.

Agree. Anyone who is NOT putting a full page or some sort of identification inside their luggage is risking a lost bag. It is not uncommon for luggage tags and the airline baggage tag to be separated from a bag.

Hi, and welcome to Cruise Critic. Viking does not really go "on sale" at any time of the year. Viking has promotions of free air, or reduced air, or $25 deposits, or OBC, or the like, but cabin prices don't typically go on sale. It is our experience after 10 Viking cruises and 4 future Viking cruises booked, that when you see something that appeals, grab it because all that will happen by waiting is the cabin category that you want will sell out and then you are paying more for a cabin category that you perhaps did not want to start with. There are promo codes and there is a discussion in the Viking Ocean forum for these:

What @gnome12 said and I have also indicated. Uniworld on the Nile I would say that most men were in shorts and t-shirts in the dining room. I think this is a dynamic policy that is adjusted for the cruise itinerary. This Uniworld Nile cruise was the most casual cruise I have ever been on.

We have only done CDG once and most often through AMS so we know AMS better. Personally I think that it is about the airline, the connection time, and time of the flights. To me an airport is an airport and you just navigate what ever you are going through. This might be overthinking the situation.

Here is how Viking Air or Viking Air Plus works. You have two options. We generally go with option one: Option 1: We book most of our cruises with Viking at least one year out. We start to research our flights at about the 300 days from departure point when most airlines have their schedules up. We add Viking Air Plus when making the reservation (and deviation if we are doing that) and we call Viking Air Plus in the 270-300 days out from sailing. Usually closer to the 270 days. We give our first choice of flights that we have researched and generally get these but we also know from Toronto Canada who Viking has contracts with. Flights are done and dusted and locked in - for the most part. This does not mean that there are not schedule changes between booking and flying. Sometimes there are multiple. I have flights booked for next March and we have already had 4 or more slight schedule changes but nothing that impacts us to have to change. Option 2: Do not add Viking Air when you book, BUT if you know you are going to do a diversion make sure that this is reflected in the dates of your booking because then you are going to let Viking populate the fights for you. Generally this happens about 180 days before departure. Now you go onto MVJ and you have options to change flights, upgrade, etc. You can do all this yourself without paying for Viking Air Plus. IF you don't like the options there (including the upgrade and price upgrade options) then you can add Viking Air Plus at this point and be directed to Viking Air department and talk directly with them. Advantage of Option One over Option Two: For us, we have access to better schedules and airlines. Waiting until Viking populate flights for us reduces - in my opinion - the options we have further out. Regarding your final question can you upgrade cheaper on your own? Sometimes, and sometimes not. The $799 is a great price. Often when we see this price and then $2198 for PE, we do our own price search and most often find that the price is in line with what we would pay on our own.

@Janie1229 There are other companies that offer CFAR Insurance, and it is expensive. This is one of the reasons that Viking's TripMate is expensive. Remember that in this case, TripMate (the insurance company) is not underwriting the CFAR, that is Viking and you will as you noted above only get a voucher if you use CFAR. We hedge our bets on travel cancelation insurance in the following way. 1) Regardless of when you purchase your Viking cruise in the USA and Canada (as long as it is not a longer segment cruise) the first penalty does not kick in until 120 days from sailing. This means you can cancel and get your money back for all but the deposit. 2) Then you have a sliding scale of refund from Viking down to 30 days before sailing. We don't buy cancelation insurance for the full amount of our trip because we hedge that as much as 120 days out if all looks good, then we move forward. We have an annual plan that only pays $5K per person, and a credit card that pays $2.5K per person, so until somewhere in the final 30-45 days is when we might actually lose a bit of money by canceling. Insurance is a game in my mind and we play it to spend the least possible and hedge some of our bets...

@Janie1229 you would be best to ask this question in the Travel Insurance forum. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/499-cruisetravel-insurance/ Here there are discussions about successful claims, and advice on insurance to purchase for each need. Note that you have to look at where the CC member is from as insurance has different rules and purchase conditions based on the country. For instance, with me from Canada, we have different insurance rules and types available than you do in the USA. Just as a note on waiting to be reimbursed, have you checked with the insurance company to ensure that they have everything that they need?

In the App Store, I only see Viking Voyager with a Viking logo associated. I don't seen any MyVikingJourney even as a .net.

Are you flying to Egypt and boarding a Nile River Cruise, or are you on a ship that embarked somewhere other than Egypt and is stopping in Egypt? My knowledge is that if you are flying to Egypt and then boarding a ship in Egypt you will need a Visa in advance. If you are sailing to Egypt on a ship, your ship may handle the Visa for you but this is something that you must clear with your cruise line and the Canadian Government first. Don't chance this.

Just be cautious with this because you cannot always upgrade once you get your flights through Viking. It all depends on the contract rates and the code you are booked under. We have had economy flights with Viking that we could upgrade after being ticketed and some that we could not upgrade.

Price is always dependent on what you are covering and how much you are covering. If airfare is a credit if canceled then it cannot be claimed on your insurance. Example: I buy air for two people and the total cost is 5K but if I cancel the flights I retain the value but must pay a change fee or change in fare. Insurance is not going to pay on this because it is essentially not a lost cost - you still have the value. When calculating what cost to cover, make sure you are not including costs that are either refundable or become a credit. You may know this, but just in case.

Also can depend on where you are cruising and the overall temperature. We were on Uniworld on The Nile River and we found the dinner dress was a lot of the time whatever people wore during the day on excursion. The only thing I did not see was sleeveless (muscle) shirts on men. T-shirts and shorts were very common. Depends on the itinerary, but if we are back with time, we generally always 'fancy up' just a bit for dinner regardless of what others do.

Thank you! ... and for mentioning the America's Cup Race as we have talked about that. One of your favourite excursions ever...? That seals the deal for us... we will book that one too! We only have one day on our cruise in St. Martin. We are TA from Barcelona and the day before the end of the cruise is in St. Martin. Don't know if we can do more than one yet.

I personally feel that this is kind of like trying to compare ocean to river. They are not comparable. IMO.

Not fully understanding the UK deposit and refundable vs. non-refundable thing, if available I would purchase trip cancelation insurance for the amount of the non-refundable deposit. If health issues are what you are concerned with then if you do have to cancel closer to the point of final payment, then you are probably going to do so under a covered reason. Right? If you reach final and full payment, or you have to add payment as time goes on, just add that coverage to your cancellation insurance so that you are covered for the full amount. That would be the way that we would play it because we do book up to 2 years in advance. We would go for it, but we have great deals - with Viking - on deposits now so even if we were to lose the deposit we wouldn't care.

We are on West Indies to Iberia which does have a stop in St. Martin and offers this optional tour for snorkeling. My husband has never snorkeled before - is this fit for a beginner?

Of course you can check in and drop your luggage and you may get lucky and they have a room. We have had that before... but at the very least drop your bags and go. We don't mind this becasue if we got the room we would be enticed to have a nap where we know ourselves and we tend to push through the entire day until 9pm before sleeping. Early arrivals in Europe we always do this. The Movenpick is right on the water, and just a hop, skip, and a jump from the train station, and about a 10 minute walk to Old Town. It is a convenient location. I don't know where the Doubletree is.

That would not include the Air Plus and the deviation fee. That is just the air.

Cannot agree more. I think that many buy insurance and really do not understand the ins and outs of insurance. Folks think they are covered and aer possibly not covered. Read every policy and ask many questions. Understand effective dates. Understand coverage for pre-existing conditions and what a pre-existing condition is. (You might be shocked) Understand stability periods.

We have not yet had the pleasure of the Signature Suite, but hope to in the future. Agree, Toronto Pearson is not a great airport. Old - even the newest Terminal - and needs a major redesign in many ways. Crowded, dirty - especially toilet facilities - and bad food options.

You have to ask that of the insurance company directly. In Canada, for annual programs it does depend if you are buying for the first time when penalties kick in if you are talking about cancelation insurance. For instance, if you buy today and your first trip is next month and then you cancel for a covered reason, they are going to investigate to see if this reason was reasonably known or expected before you bought the package. Example would be a loved one that is in Hospice or close to death and the does pass in the next month, then they likely would not cover this. Once they investigated they would learn that you could have reasonably expected this and then assume that you bought the insurance just to get out of the trip. Sorry for a blunt example. For medical most plans will cover you immediately unless you have pre-existing conditions and they have a stable period prior to departure. They probably will cover you for anything but the pre-existing condition... Call the insurance company and ask questions and share any concerns for them to answer.