CDNPolar

Not to scare you, but hopefully your connection time in Munich is 2 hours or more? If you are a non EU passport, the lines for passport control can be long. We have found the two airports that we want at least 2 hours if not 2.5 hours are Munich and Frankfurt. These are two airports that we frequently arrive to as the first Schengen country. You want that connection time because the likelihood of your flight being delayed in departure is high.

I have not pursued this yet, but have friends that have booked a cruise as a referral from us and the silly part is that one referral credit was given to one of our friends and my husband's name on our booking but the other credit has not been issued to the second guest and to me. We also - as we had in the past - given our friends our booking number and they were told that has no use to Viking, they need our individual customer numbers? We did not even know where to get those. We have referred twice in the past and the application of the referral bonus was done efficiently and quickly and without hassle. Now, this just confirms that there are problems inside Viking with more than just this program. I am NOT going to spend my time calling or emailing Viking for a measly $100. It is just not worth my time. Viking now have some repeat guests from our referrals but my referrals stop when I have to chase them for something that they should be executing quickly and efficiently. This is supposed to be a "Thank you" for referring someone, not something that I have to chase for. IMO Viking should be considering a loyalty program - that is retroactive - for their repeat guests, rather than this $100 pp referral bonus.

Exactly - the hauling suitcases is one thing for sure. How many times have we been forced to pick up our rolly bag carryon and carry it down jetway stairs instead of a connected jetway. How many times has an escalator been down and we have had to carry bags down or up stairs. All of this can be a workout in itself.

We did not explore on our own in Bucharest, but rather only what Viking offered. Sorry, cannot be of more help, and hopefully someone else will have more advice for an extended pre stay in Bucharest. One tip is look at what Viking do on their Pre in Bucharest and look to that as your itinerary and create it yourselves.

Unless a new addition for newer ships, the answer is no. There is not a shaving mirror on Viking Ocean. The mirror in the bathroom is large and well lit however, if that is any help.

We purchased online. This is not a physical SIM, but just scan a code from the online site after purchasing.

I don't dispute anything you say here. I agree that there are some - and I say SOME - great TA's that are professional and great at what they do. We have also come across many that are no more knowledgable than we are ourselves and they also charge a fee. One that we have used, wanted a $150 fee to start the research into our trip. It was booking a Norwegian Coastal Cruise. What research am I going to pay her $150 for? Obviously she has nothing to bring to the table in knowledge if she has to do the research and we have to pay for it. We chose to do the research ourselves and then we transfer the booking to a TA for the cash perks that we get through another TA. Most travel we do however we have found it easier to do on our own, but we totally get why some rely fully on the TA to do all the booking arrangements.

Haha... I am doing everything I can to not be the guy that cannot do stairs, walk, and enjoy travel and life in general. Also recent studies show that the more sedentary you are, the higher risk you have of dementia.

True... but, on Viking Ocean we have always had our cabin steward knock on the door within 15 minutes of arriving in the cabin... On river, we did not meet our cabin steward until day 3. On the first day, they were no where to be seen, and did the cabin refresh while the whole ship was at dinner.

Covid coverage was not there in the beginning, and then as time went on the insurance industry was including coverage for before and after. I guess the question is, because we are largely accepting of Covid now, are we checking what is covered for Covid? There is still the risk of serious illness. That would be interesting to see if something like a requirement mid-trip changing that you don't meet, would allow you to interrupt or cancel.

They may also be a strong repeat guest. We know, or we are told, that 75+ percent of every Viking cruise are repeat guests, and ourselves, we have cruised 7 times now with Viking with 3 future bookings. It could be that they just leave well enough alone... Especially if the experience is that other lines do something about this kind of behaviour.

While on the ship you will move to the ship's WiFi.

There were enough for us, but depends on how many things you want to hang. Perhaps there were 10'ish?

Stay tuned to this discussion. We do a movie for each cruise that we were on. The movie for this cruise is still in production. Here is the link to our current videos, and if you subscribe, then you will be notified when the Eastern Europe is uploaded. I will also post it here. You have to copy and paste this link to access the videos. https://www.youtube.com/@lktraveljournal4554

We were on Ullur. Nice Ship. Great crew - if you get Andre and Vladimir in the dining room, Claudiu and Dawid in the lounge and have the Program Director Hana, you will be laughing. I attached a document that outlines what we originally signed up for in both optional and included. When we got on the ship, we had more included excursion tickets than we signed up for because if it could be fit in, the ship just signed us up. (You did not have to go...but we did). We were gone most days all day long. We would come back from a morning excursion have an hour to have lunch and be gone again. The excursions that Viking signed us up for are not on this list, but we loved everything that we did. We would not eliminate any of them. One of the highlights was visiting a family home in Croatia where we were served cake in the woman's dining room, and she told us of her life. This was outstanding. Make sure you do that one. Viking Excursions Passage to Eastern Europe.docxViking Excursions Passage to Eastern Europe.docxViking Excursions Passage to Eastern Europe.docxViking Excursions Passage to Eastern Europe.docx

Email tellus and ask your questions. They will likely respond with a phone call, but then you can ask them to put in writing the response. It is so concerning that you call and get different information from each person you talk to. Please reference this to tellus as well.

May be more expensive to them, but it is half what I pay Rogers for no roaming.

How long did the whole process take from the point you mailed it to receiving the new passport? And I am assuming that you still receive the old passport back? Our passports don't expire until Feb 2026 but we are already planning when we will renew because we want to minimize the time we don't have the passport especially if we are mailing them. We have a cruise in March of 2025 and we are thinking to send them right after that which would be about 10 months before expiry and we will go for 10 year renewal.

We used to roam like home in Europe at $15 per day per person - and both of us would have the phone on. Silly to pay $30 per day. Now we turn on do all our research on the ship's WiFi and go out and do our thing. We turn the phone on if we need it. If there is an emergency, we flip the switch on one phone and we have the phone fully functioning and we will pay for a day. We now send an email to friends and family most likely to contact us, that may not know we are travelling, and let them know that they can contact us via WhatsApp, iMessage, and Email. We also inform them that there may be hours of the day that we are not available because we are not on WiFi. If you are all travelling together, then there is likely no need for phone connectivity. I agree also with the comment about the cost of the cruise and paying for roaming, but in Canada we pay so much already for our phone services, I hate like heck to pay more. We travel often with American friends and they travel all over the world and do not pay a penny more for their plan and they can roam and make calls in any country. The only thing that they suffer is a slower internet connection when on data.

Yes, it can be substantial.... What I find very interesting is some of the comments on this discussion. We never thought to use a USA based TA before, but from other discussions on other parts of CC I see and hear of Americans getting big value from using a TA. I DON'T see that in Canada. What is the difference? The first cruise we went on we used a well known agency that specializes in cruises to the level that "cruise" is in their name. We got NOTHING from them... no OBC, no luggage tag, not even really a thank you for working with them. This is the one that by mistake sent us the cruise invoice with their commission. We were FLOORED with the amount and the fact that we got nothing. This is when we decided to do it on our own. Now we have a TA we used once that wants to charge US to use her services! Only wish our favourite line would allow booking through the retail outlet that has a TA division, but they took that away from them because they were giving too much to their customers in the cruise lines opinion.

Viking have always produced a document that shows your requirements for entering any country and I think that this started with Covid. Go to your SPECIFIC cruise on the main Viking site: Click on Resources on the right: Then click on Pre-Cruise Requirements. This will give you current requirements for Covid vaccine, visas etc. I believe that these are still updated and reliable.

We just took this to Viking recently through the tellus@viking email. We have a cruise coming up with two different types of shipboard credit (SBC). One was given to us by the TA and one is from Viking as perk because of a challenge we faced. Two very different ways to use them too. The SBC from the TA, will be automatically applied if we add Siver Spirits or book excursions before embarkation. The SBC from Viking can ONLY be used once we board. If we want to use this credit towards SS package, then we would have to wait until we board to add that to our account. There might be those that have different experiences, but this is direct from the mouth of Viking. Oh, and we booked a cruise recently where Viking were giving a SBC of $325 CDN pp at the point of booking, and this one falls to use for SS or shore excursions before we board. We have seen many times in the past because we typically add SS at the time of booking that the TA SBC goes immediately to that. Call Viking and ask them how this particular SBC will be handled, or email tellus@vikingcruises.com

The best cancel for any reason generally is associated with the cruise company or tour company - generally - because they just give you a voucher for future and are not losing any money. I am in Canada and there are some insurance companies that offer this but you must be aware of the limitations. Generally you have to purchase the policy at the same time or within a limited number of days from booking the travel, and pay the deposit, and there cannot be any penalties at the time you book... so in other words, you have to book outside of traditional penalty periods or before penalties kick in. In Canada what I have seen is that these companies only give you 50% of any non-refundable money paid. What we always weigh into the decision, is that we don't want to pay the $1,000.00 or more for the two of us in a travel policy, because we book so far out, and until penalties (which with our favoured cruise line are not until 120 days from sailing) kick in, we can cancel for any reason, and only lose $100 per person. We don't want that money tied up for so many months where if we did cancel, we would just be losing the premium for the insurance. Once we get to the 120 days, we know then that we fully intend to travel, and that likely if we did decide not to travel that it would be for a covered reason in the policy.

Thanks Mia, We don't have Safeway in Ontario, or my area anyway. Costco are supposed to carry it but have looked and asked and they don't have it in my area anyway... Will keep looking.

I also use insulin - Tresiba - and it is safe out of refrigeration for 56 days as long as it is kept below 86F. I never refrigerate the insulin pen that I am using currently and when I travel, I take what I need plus one extra and these are never refrigerated either.