Mich3554

I look at booking a cruise not unlike booking an airfare. Prices go up, prices go down. When I find a price I’m ok with, I book it and rarely look back. But I just did for the next few cruises we have booked. We leave in a week for Northern Lights. There is about a $200 difference between booking and now. After that, we leave from Bangkok to Vancouver. That cruise is now $8000 pp more than what we booked. Next year, the Australia circumnavigation is also $8000 pp than what we booked it.

You’d never know that there is a laundry room there if you didn’t see the sign for it. I’d stay in one of these rooms.

When we went in 2021 and in 2023, it was the same spot. I don’t remember the statue, sorry. The bus we were on just pointed out the shuttle drop off point. Since one trip we were on our way to Monserrat, another a seaside town, I didn’t pay too much attention to it. We had been to Barcelona pre covid in 2019, but there was a Catalan demonstration going on so no day in Barcelona. Viking docked there long enough to drop off passengers to take to the airport.

Barcelona, the shuttle drop off/pick up is at the statue at the top of Ramblas.

They still know where they are going after their current contract ends….at least the next 2 contracts.

People can only book beforehand how many reservations they are allowed. So someone in a PS cannot book Manfredi’s every night of a 14 night cruise, even if it was available. I do not get advanced reservations at any of the restaurants. We always eat where we want to eat, when we want to eat. Hell, I have a hard time planning dinner this week, I have no idea what I’ll want to eat 3 months from now! Usually, I’ll look at the menus in the morning and decide where i want to eat that day.

My only suggestion is to avoid the ATV excursion in Svelbard. It was a disappointment in that we took the road out of town a couple miles, turned around and came back. The ATV excursion we took in Isafjordur was much, much better. That one, he took us to the top of a mountain, and despite the fact it rained, sleeted and snowed all the way up, and the view was totally socked in by fog, it was much better.

If you are staying on board when others are getting off, you can pretty much do what you want. We usually use this time to do laundry, and go to breakfast later than usual to allow those that need to get off the time without us in the muck of things. We just try to stay out of the way. After others have departed, we then go out and do. In Bergen, we went out for a late lunch, to do some shopping and to find an ATM for local cash (most of the cruise was in Norway).

It needs to be complete, but that doesn’t mean that your number can’t change. I had to renew my passport before the WC. All the info was entered into my record. When I renewed my passport, I went in and changed the number.

We missed all the ports in Greenland due to ice in June. However, the weather in Iceland and Canada was spectacular. It was weird that we were there.while there was almost 24 hours of daylight, but despite losing several ports, it was a fantastic trip.

I think it has far more to do when you come for dinner. I have noticed a few times when we are dining with friends and dinner seems to go on much longer that the dining room clears out more on one side than the other. I think towards the end of the night, they direct diners to the starboard side, and start clearing out the port side to set up for breakfast the next morning. We have walked out of a 7 pm dinner close to 9:30, being the last people on the port side, but dining is still finishing up on Starboard. That being said, we tend to eat around 7:30 and have gotten seated everywhere.

The only line to board we have ever waited in was for the world cruise last year. This was because there was a delay of US immigration releasing the ship, and all the people who would have trickled in from 11 am on all were allowed to start boarding at 3 pm. Even then, it went fairly quickly and it only took about 30 min. Every other cruise we have taken, there is never a line. Depending on where we are and what we have been doing, we might show up at 11 (when we checked out of our hotel) or we might show up much later (like when we hired a tour guide to drive us from Santiago to Valparaiso, wine tasting along the way plus a private tour of Valparaiso). I think it was nearly 6 when we boarded.

On the tickets you receive for excursions, there will be a cancellation date and time. If you cancel before the date, the excursion costs get credited to your account. If you reserve another excursion, the price will get debited from your onboard account. If the cruise ends and you’ve not spent the credit for the excursion, if you paid for it via ACH check or credit card, it will get refunded to you as a refundable credit. If it was purchased by OBC given to you, then it is a non refundable credit.

As of this past Friday, Viking has not yet announced the 25-26 WC. My Viking contact has said any day now. If the itinerary changes any from the current one, we are going to jump again. I don’t think we will do the Ft Lauderdale to NYC again though. I do concur that the expectations are a bit different from shorter cruises.

Some of the roughest seas we dealt with in last years world cruise when we exited CA, and blew off Santa Barbara trying to get ahead of a storm that was going to hit California, we went waaaay directly south before we started angling to Hawaii.

We have done South America and Chilean Fjords….twice. I’d do it again too. It is just so enthralling to see areas of the world that few get to. It was weird seeing land on both sides of the ship, but absolutely no lights at all.

Room service is a possibility. We used this on a few evenings we got back late from excursions. Viking will not let you go to bed hungry.

Yesterday a year ago, we were getting onto the Neptune in FL. I hope we can do this again, it’s definitely not a ‘one and done’ for us.

Quite excellent. i have sent lots of delicate stuff with ‘cold wash only air dry’ and it comes back perfect. This includes cashmere sweaters, dressy linen knits, lace tops and lined wool dress slacks (which were dry cleaned…..or Viking’s equivalent of it). They are also fabulous at getting out stains, especially grease. I have gotten such that I automatically send stuff to laundry if I wind up wearing part of a meal.

I spoke to the ship manager about this on the Neptune earlier this year and asked him about it. The USB ports on the back are not accessible, and in his tenure on the ship, the ONLY time they got someone in to make it accessible was for a Bluetooth device to amplify the sound for a hearing aid passenger.

We always wind up with a collection of wine glasses in the cabin that we have hauled back to drink in the cabin.

This is not the norm though. I know people who did deliver their meds to the medical center and they were stored for them during the cruise. I can’t explain why the OP had the problems he did, because what he was informed was what *should* have happened. I hope Viking sorts this out for them.

That’s strange. We did the GE on the Bragi in April/May of 2022 and I bought 16. We could only use one per person per new booking.

Yes, you can book a river cruise on board an ocean cruise. No, you cannot book a cruise while on a river, but you can buy $200 vouchers for $100 while on a river cruise that are good for ocean, river and expedition.

Exactly! Viking did this on our Trade Routes cruise, where we’re were supposed to have a day in Barcelona before tossing us off. Unfortunately, we get to the first stop in Spain and are told we are only stopping in Barcelona to disembark….no tours. Turned out, there were protests going on and while that they hadn’t gotten violent, Viking was not willing to take a chance. We had already booked a hotel for an extra 3 days in Barcelona, so it wasn’t a big deal for us, but there were a lot of unhappy people at the end of the cruise needing to get off the ship and go directly to the airport. As for the protests, there was a huge police presence and we did see quite a few demonstrations, but just exited stage right to avoid getting caught up in them.