CannotSwim

I've seen MVJ locked when Viking is changing something, but are you sure you or a travel partner hasn't logged in on another computer or phone (or in another browser)? You should be able to call Viking to get it cleaned up, but it won't be fast.Viking Vela

I find the cruises themselves an incentive to continue to cruise year after year. And if Viking gets worse I'd be glad there wasn't a financial incentive to continue to book Viking.

Sometimes the My Viking Journey date/time for excursions is accurate, sometimes they open earlier. (Same for specialty restaurant reservations.) If you are in DV or V check every few hours starting the day before. You want to take full advantage of what is available. If you are in PV try to reserve the first day but you probably won't have problems (except for excursions with limited capacity). If you are in a suite don't worry -- just reserve before the PV gets a chance. Get the optional first. If you miss an included Viking will get you on the excursion once you are on the ship. If you miss an optional keep watching. On board ask if there is a wait list, and keep checking if there isn't a wait list.

I haven't studied recently, but a few years ago I compared prices in Barcelona. We were doing a pre and I was trying to figure out what to do on our own and what to do with Viking. In some cases the difference in price was lower than cab fare to the start and back after. (And that wasn't counting our wasted time riding the cab.)

Some Viking Ocean excursions have multiple busses. Bus assignments are usually made when you show up to check in (sometimes on the dock, sometimes in Star Theater). You get on the same bus by having one person gather all the tickets and hand the pile to a staff member. For Viking River excursions bus assignments are typically done ahead of time and you can talk to the service desk to get assigned to the same bus.

We have little experience with other cruise lines, but we have been very happy with Viking excursions (River and Ocean). Almost all have been very good, many have been exceptional. What makes an excursion is a good guide. Viking does read reviews and hires guides with good reviews. I've also chatted with some guides and they try to get good reviews to get rehired by Viking. They say that Viking groups are more interesting than the typical (and also tend to tip well). Many excursions sell out, but more so especially interesting excursions or excursions with a limited number of participants. Eventually excursion times sell out when there are multiple excursion times. If you don't care about excursion times you can wait. When you board Viking will always find you a slot on an included excursion, but it might not be the time you want. Time slots matter if you want multiple excursions in a day -- some combinations work and others don't. It also matters what stateroom class you have. V can have slim pickings. For DV you really want to jump on excursions since a large percent of the cabins are DV, but some things will be sold out when you start. PV should expect no problem the first day, but some things unavailable after a few days. Higher levels and only very limited extensions would be a problem. You can also join wait lists on board if you don't get a non-included you want. Sometimes that will work. I don't know if there is a way to combine bookings. I'd suggest sharing passwords and have one person make the shared reservations for both. (You can add payment methods to your MVJ and the person who logs in can use them.) The way I would do it is two separate web browser profiles (or two computers) so you can be logged into both at the same time. (Test this days ahead of time.) Start with the most important shared excursions (you probably won't find all four of you want to go to exactly the same set of excursions) -- reserve them (included) or put them in the card (optional), then check out both accounts to lock in the reservations. Then make a batch of less important reservations and check out, and so on. (And triple-check. It's easy enough to make a problem, like forgetting to add one person to an excursion or choosing the wrong time for one person, when you are working with just one couple. The possibly errors and potential confusion multiplies if you work with more than one account.) I think that addressed all of your questions, but feel free to as again if I missed something or caused you to think of other questions.

I expect so. Viking typically wants you of the stateroom by 8:00 and off the boat mid morning, and they usually have trips to the airport starting hours before that. One way to check: Find what Polaris is doing after your trip. If they are taking on passengers for a trip starting that day the ship will dock early so passengers can get off in the first part of the morning so all the rooms can be cleaned for the incoming passengers.

That's surprising. I looked at the Dates & Pricing page for the two on vikingcruises.com and each said "3 priority reservations at each alternative restaurant".

The maximum number of advance reservations per stateroom is fixed (except for very long cruises), so the number of pre-reserved dining slots per day is lower on longer cruises. I checked Alaska (one week) and Australia New Zealand (two weeks) -- both had 4 advance for OS, 3 for ES, and so on. So you will have better luck reserving when you board on Australia/New Zealand than Alaska. For the Mediterranean there are overlapping 1, 2, 3, and 4 week cruises. If you have a reservation on a 1 week cruise some people at a lower cabin level on a 4 week cruise might have reserved before you. But not many -- ES1 on a 4 week cruise (at least the cruises I checked) gets 3 reservations for four weeks, the same number as an ES1 for a 1 week segment. While

I just received an e-mail message mentioning the change for my June cruise. I expect everyone will get a message before the date they can select excursions. My cruise is 155 days out (the 1 June transition is 149 days out) and the new furthest advance selection is 147 days prior for the Owner's Suite. I reviewed all of the levels on Viking Homelands -- the stateroom descriptions now list the old and new day counts. The change was to move excursion reservations 40 days earlier for everyone. There were no changes for restaurant and spa reservation dates. I had wondered if they were adding additional levels -- for example letting P1 choose, then PV2, then PV3 -- but that didn't happen.

In our experience the first tenders of the day and the tender for the last scheduled return to the ship tend to be annoyingly packed. We have seen lighter loads in-between, but we see those less often as we tend to spend time ashore.

Some people reacted with a ha-ha, but I can't tell if you are serious or not. Tender ports can be a bit of a pain (and any port can turn into a tender port, or be cancelled, due to bad weather), but we still think cruising to tender ports is the best way to get to those ports. The tender isn't as bad as packing and unpacking for each port, which is the alternative to staying on a cruise ship.

I don't know where you got the "50-75" estimate. On a recent cruise I looked at the official seating chart for the Viking tender boat we were using. The official capacity for tender seating was over 200 and the seating for use as a life boat was higher. And I'm not the only person to give this number. Viking might sometimes hire other boats from the port to help with tendering but I haven't seen it.

With a Tender Port you are transferred to shore in a Tender Boat. Instead of everyone walking down the gangplank onto the shore you wait for boats. A boat pulls up, a couple hundred people load, that boat pulls out and another takes it's place (hopefully immediately). When the boat lands the passengers unload. Returning to the ship you have the same wait for tender boats. The result is it takes much longer to get people on and off the boat, and the time to shore is longer. A related issue is whether you leave the ship at city center or far away. The best case is a dock near the city center. The worst case is a tender boat ride to a dock far from the city so you need to take a shuttle bus into the city. We have seen all four combinations. (Part of the reason we like River cruises better is the boats dock near the city center much more often.)

The documents (and some other e-mail messages from Viking) contain the phone number of the ship. You can call the ship. Also taxi drivers tend to know where the ships are.

We had a pre in Venice, and then a cruise from Venice to Athens. The Venice port of the ship was Chioggia and we returned to Venice on an excursion once the cruise started. I wouldn't do that again -- after the transport there wasn't much time in Venice. In the same situation I would explore Chioggia. (I hope to return to Venice on a to-be-planned Italian land trip.) Venice is a great city, and unusual, but I'd want more time in it than a day trip. Ravenna I would consider as it is somewhere I would like to see, but probably don't want to spend much time in.

I store the documents in a cloud, then on the phone I set them for "offline access". Then I turn off Internet and verify they are actually available off-line. (Part of my "prepare for a trip" checklist.) Note that "offline access" doesn't mean that the phone won't try to fetch them. If my phone has a bad Internet connection it might think it can check for an updated version and not load the version on the phone. There have been times when I needed to turn off Internet on the phone to see the documents.

It's the same security reason as with airlines. They want strong assurance that your bags only get on board if you go on board. They won't get to a perfect connection, but it's much easier to keep track if your bag doesn't get on a bus unless you are getting on the bus.

In addition to the differences in the side for the last two cruises there was an Asian specialties section at the end of World Cafe. When we have a morning excursion I usually have an omelet and waffle in the World Cafe. On sea days I start with an omelet in World Cafe and then have a second breakfast of a Mamsen's waffle. (On the Viking Mississippi Mansen's is just around the corner from the main buffet.)

But it's not high quality. (OK, maybe I'm a littleXXXXXX lot pickier than most.) There are also nice cookies and snacks available around the ship for much of the day.

I might have missed something, but I don't think this was answered. With two weeks before you can get lucky, but you will likely find a shortage of seats you want on flights you want -- Viking Air the same as booking direct. They will try to be helpful, but they can't strap more seats on a plane. (And per the later discussion, you can now arrange flight changes on My Viking Journey without Air Plus in some case.) As far as the price difference: Some people have reported getting better deals on their own. But it depends how good you are and how much effort you put into it. And it also depends how far in advance you book and how picky you are on seats and flights. And it depends how reliable a carrier you choose. If you go with Viking flights then Viking will make more of an effort to get you on the cruise than if you schedule your own flights.

I've had the Change Flight button appear for me, I've also had it not appear. I haven't taken enough Viking cruises to figure out the pattern. When it appeared it was very useful -- nicer than calling Viking Air. It's not that I hate talking to people, but seeing prices and times in front of me is nicer than having them all read over the phone. I get Viking Air only if I get bad flights and I know there are better -- and the new Change Flights prevented a call to Viking Air. The costs seemed reasonable after I checked prices on some ticket web sites. I don't know if it is cheaper or more expensive than Viking Air, but I expect cheaper since they don't have a person sitting on the phone with you for an hour trying different options.

It's good to have multiple credit/debit cards, sometimes one gets rejected (even if you notify then of travel) or is hard to use for some transactions. But for all the cards check whether there is a foreign transaction fee. We got a new card when we started traveling abroad often. Since I'm talking cards I'll drop in my standard announcement: If an ATM or credit/debit card transaction offers to let you convert to dollars just deny the offer and take the charge in local currency. The credit card network will give you a better rate. (One European ATM transaction cost me $207 total on my bank statement. The conversion offer I rejected was $237 plus a bank fee.)

I'm a vegetarian -- I don't eat any meat or seafood -- and I drag my spouse to Chef's Table. They are willing to accommodate me, often with items that look very much like the standard items, and I enjoy the style of dining at CT. My spouse gets occasional substitutions as well.

They sat you need to have it picked up by 9:00, but that doesn't usually matter for standard (next day service). Same day service is usually 50% more expensive (and you need to pay the surcharge if you have included laundry), and making the 9:00 is probably required.