Mich3554

I’m sorry to hear that. We flew them in 2019, on a trip to Turkey. It wasn’t the first time we had flown with them, but the most recent. They were fabulous and picked up the pieces, especially when we had to dispute with Pegasus Air. I’m sorry to hear they’ve deteriorated.

Yes, it’s excellent and better than most US airlines.

If Viking is running a shuttle, it’s free. Getting around Boston is very easy on the T.

What I do is accept Viking Air when we book the cruise. As we get closer to the cruise date, I start looking at flights and see what the difference is, costwise (since we need to book business class). if I can book cheaper on my own, I do. I also have to take into consideration the addition of Air Plus as well as the deviation. I just finished booking our flights for the Northern Lights cruise we are doing in Jan. I was able to book our flights about $1800 less than Viking, not taking plus and deviations into consideration. I need to book flights for March as well, and it looks like it’s going to be an even larger savings booking our own.

Yes, you can book a one way fare with Viking. We are doing Bangkok to Vancouver next year and need only one way as Vancouver is a local airport for us.

As mentioned, I treat Viking like an airline ticket. Once it’s booked, I don’t look back. Sometime prices go down, sometimes up. We have a cruise booked next year that is sold out and considerably more than when I originally booked it. I only looked back because we were going to try to book my MIL on the cruise. It all evens out at the end.

I agree with you. The only time I thought that the lectures were too basic was when an evolutionary biologist was lecturing on how the world was populated. She had to give some basic biology lessons, which were very elementary…..for me. I spent 35 years doing scientific research and have taken more biology classes than I can remember! Even so, she did it clearly and concisely.

We used AeroMexico to fly in and out of South America. This wasn’t through Viking though. They were pretty good.

Why cruise?

You can also use a second voucher per person if you do a back to back under a single itinerary. We were able to buy 16 vouchers on our river cruise in 2022. We have 4 left!

They’re separate, and quite nice. Sadly, I can’t use them regularly because my scalp doesn’t like them. My scalp hates about 90% of the shampoos on the market.

Just FYI. I asked about using the USB ports on the back of the TV while we were on the ship. DH was taking a lot of photos and his computer was unsatisfactory to see the detail he wanted to see. We were given a ‘nope’ (quite possibly the first time on Viking we have had). Apparently maintenance needs to be called in if it is done. The manager at the Explorer’s desk said in his tenure, the only time they did this was to allow a man who used hearing aids use a device where he could watch TV through an amplifier of sorts connected to his hearing aids.

I know a woman I met on the World Cruise who managed to not only snag a cabin, she was able to upgrade from a DV to a PV a few months before we left. I know another who was able to upgrade from a PV to an ES a few months before. So on sold out cruises, there seems to be a lot of jockeying around of rooms, probably up until the 120 day point where penalties start kicking in.

I was commenting on the label companies use as ‘animal free testing’. Not anything else.

I can tell you that when we were in Turkey, we did not apply for a visa. We have been to Turkey before and used their e visa without issue but when we hit Istanbul on the WC, we were meeting up with friends, staying in Istanbul and doing things with them. I was told by Viking as long as we were not leaving Istanbul, we were good to go.

This is really semantics. If a chemical has been pre tested in animals from another entity, and Ecolabs uses the same chemical, the chemical HAS been tested in animals, just not by them. Ecolabs hasn’t tested it, so is piggybacking on other companies results but claiming THEY haven’t tested it in animals.

THIS ^. Every time we had an issue, they contacted us if we wrote it on the survey.

We just did 6 months on the Viking Neptune. It’s amazing how crammed sea days can get and you not even touch the stuff you brought along with you! For example, I brought a knitting project along and the only reason I opened the bag and started working on it was because I had 5 days quarantined in my cabin with Covid. This happened about 2/3 the way through our cruise. I also had my iPad, a Kindle (which is loaded with more books than I could ever read) and we brought along a small Bose Bluetooth speaker so we could play music in our cabin. However, we wound up spending much more time socializing with new friends.

It poured on Whitsunday Island. We were out on a snorkeling boat, but it was a crappy day between the rain and the murky waters.

On the Neptune last spring, they shut all laundry rooms down for the gastrointestinal bug. I found out when I needed to wash all my long pants (I only had a few pair of warmer pants) and the room was locked. I sent them out to be laundered instead. We had a laundry charge on our account, then it was removed. While it wasn’t announced, the sent out laundry was being done gratis at this time. I did then send out a few more bags.

There is a laundry bag (usually used for sending laundry out), but it doesn’t hold much. I need to buy another (I tossed the ripped one) for our next cruise as the collapsible basket works much better. It really doesn’t take up much room in your luggage either.

I got back from my washer running 7 minutes early. The dryer had been stopped at least that long. I moved the dry clothes to the basket. It was at least 10 min before I did this. If you cannot be considerate enough to set an alarm to get back early, then you deserve to get your clothes moved for you. Your time is not more valuable than mine.

It was well worth the drive, the views were gorgeous. I wish we had more time to stop along the way though, but even from the bus window it was fantastic. We did get back in time to have a couple beers with DH’s old coworker.

I brought one of these on our World Cruise. Stick it in the corner and fill. Grab the handles and go. Dump your dry laundry in and dump it on the bed to fold. After 178 days, it started to rip, but it (along with the magnets) was the best $7 purchase I made. https://www.amazon.com/Mesh-Popup-Laundry-Hamper-Collapsible/dp/B00HZ0IOJ2/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=2KZWVY7I6B1GD&keywords=Collapsible%2Blaundry%2Bbasket&qid=1693093867&sprefix=collapsible%2Blaundry%2Bbasket%2Caps%2C231&sr=8-1-spons&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGY&th=1

We booked a 4 hour ATV tour in Isafjordur when we were there. It was the same outfit that Viking uses, only we scheduled our tour for after their tour. It was twice as long, and cheaper. The guide was very good. His name is Gunner and his email is info@atv-isafjordur.is