carken47

20 hours ago, Teryle said:

However, the Viking agent I use does amazing accommodations to an unpaid existing cruise. Stay with one agent and over the years and many cruises,

most helpful. 

I agree.  We've used one Viking agent for 10 years and before payment is due, it is adjustable.  

I have found that once you are booked you don't get notifications of sales that include your itinerary.  That's why this board is so great.  And I agree they will not adjust something that is paid in full and in the penalty period.  

For what it's worth, we don't use a TA.  We have always booked directly thru Viking and for our last 7 V trips we have used the same representative.  He is always accommodating and changes our booking, when and if we find a code. I change things a lot and he is always very gracious about it.    Of course, he can only do what is allowed, but I think until you get into the penalty period, you can make changes, cancel, rebook etc. We may miss out on some TA extras but I don't think you do much better than Viking good specials/flash sales etc.....I could certainly be wrong.  Once you are in the hands of a TA, the V reps will not handle it.  That TA was either very foolish or not well informed.

Florida Founder, many thanks for posting the AVS24 code.  We booked one day earlier without it, and when I saw this post, called Viking, they applied it and we saved 3600 plus shipboard credit.  I never knew this thread existed, but now I will always post the deals I receive.  I was just frustrated by the price, Into the Midnight Sun, and probably would have cancelled had I not found this.  Now it is a go!

FYI, and you all probably know much more than I do, but once you book, it appears to me that you will no longer receive mailings and notifications of sales that include your trip, until after cancellation charges begin.  

Anyway, thanks to all of you for doing this...I am so glad to have found this thread and be able to add to it when appropriate.

I wouldn't make assumptions that HAL is handling this all correctly.  We were not on this cruise, but my husband saw it on the internet yesterday.  I knew my cousins were on the cruise so  called to see what was going on with them.  As of Sat. morning they had not been notified, 2 separate cabins, and only were made aware by us.  For the record they booked directly through HAL.  When they called HAL, they were not very helpful and said they sent a "letter" on Wed, and that it couldn't be dealt with until Monday.  All other correspondence has reached them, just not this notice.  Eventually they were able to rebook, but on a different date....not everyone can do that.   On the same date or within a day, they were only offered an inside cabin, when their original  booking was a balcony.  And, fortunately a different agent was more helpful, and able to do this on a Saturday! 

I am a 4 * mariner and not likely to criticize HAL, as we obviously like the cruise line.  But I think this was not handled well.

In the end they made out ok, but not everyone will and it doesn't do much for customers who are not HAL loyalists.  They need to compensate well to keep new and old customers.

Having had a Neptune twice and one coming up in 2 weeks, I feel very badly for Mimi.  It is a very different experience from a balcony and you pay a lot more.  Although we find we will book anything from balcony to Neptune, not everyone will and HAL should have been aware enough not to simply rebook them.

Anyway just my opinion...

Hope the water level improves for all of you. Keep in mind, Viking built these 2 ships a few years back, and they are more able to take the shallow waters than the old ones. When our ship (Beyla) made it through a few weeks ago, the old ship, which belongs to another company now, was unable to navigate the shallow waters. I am guessing between the lighter ships and the shortened cruise (from 7 to 5 days) perhaps you will be ok. Keeping my fingers crossed for you all!

Which direction are you going? To my knowledge, none had been cancelled before us, but the letters went out for at least 2 sailings before ours. When I say "day to day", that was in Berlin. Once we got on the cruise I think we knew we would reach day 3 of the sailing, then the last 2 were day to day. What we understood was, if the ship could not sail, we would spend 2 or three days docked in Wittenberg, and then swap ships and stay 2 or 3 days in Decin. We would be bused daily to the towns, and distances are not very far. Yes, we unpacked and becuse we were doing the extension in Poland, the whole trip was 4 city stays, so we were pretty much packed in the travel cubes and just placed in the closet in their containers. We could pack and unpack very quickly.

Just returned from our trip. We sailed from Wittenberg on May 15 to Decin, disembarking May 20, and made it all the way. We had received the email alert about a week before cruising. When we arrived in Berlin, they did not know what would be. Once we were on the ship, we were updated each night. As one of the posters noted it's a day to day decision. There were people who canceled our cruise and missed out. There is always a risk on the rivers of too high or too low (perhaps greater on the Elbe). We take the risk and hope for the best. Good luck and hope you can cruise!

It's just my opinion but knowing that more than 20 tourists were targeted and killed from 2 cruise ships, in a well known musuem, would be enough for me to cancel a cruise. Anything can happen anywhere but Tunisia has been a major supplier of Isis terrorist fighters and perhaps other cruise lines like NCL have anticipated potential serious problems.

I spoke to my HAL cruise consultant today about the stop in Tunisia in the fall. HAL has only cancelled those stops through May, but not in the summer or fall at this time. He said they are giving any feedback or concerns of their clients to headquarters so I would encourage anyone with concerns to call HAL and voice them. If a stop in Tunisia would stop you from taking a trip tell them. The last thing they want is people cancelling when final payment is due.

I am not aware that HAL will sell you transfers from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel to the airport if you do NOT use their hotel package. I know you can purchase a transfer to the port from the airport, directly from HAL, but I think in the past they have not allowed the other. If they did, no one would take their hotel package.

We are taking this cruise from south to north on April 27. This is our second Viking cruise and we are very exciting. Our first was on the Viking Sky and we loved the experience. This longship looks much nicer!