Pushka

And I'm not even suggesting that it's ok for people to arrive a day early and expect to be collected on that early day but simply show up to the airport by whatever means, on the day you would arrive in, to start the extension. I have no idea why people consider this in any way unethical. It does not impact in any way on anyone nor Viking. 🤷‍♀️

That is so far from being an equivalent situation I can't fathom how you'd use that as an example.

I organize my own travel plans anyway. And I don’t see it as lying. While we do arrive on a plane on the required date for our extension I don’t see any issue of being at the airport on the required date. The cost is already factored in to the cost of the extension.

There is no way Viking can access manifests of people who book flights privately. That is a significant breach of security.

I don't see why this plan of staying at a nearby airport hotel is any problem. All Viking wants is to know that on a specific day, people on their cruise booking are able to be collected at the same airport at a time when flights are arriving. Makes no difference to them how you arrive there, whether by plane, train automobile or even walking.

Make sure you are ready to book the instant excursions open. Book the one you want immediately and pay for it straightaway. Have your credit card details very close by. Our DV bookings opened last Sunday morning, OZ time. A couple had sold out before my window was open. The week before Viking clearly added another bus for one of them as that suddenly became available again. Within 30 minutes of my window many had sold out. As well as the recently reopened one. We have one port where every single excursion is sold out, including the Included one. That will have to change but think there may be logistical issues as it's only a short port stop and a tender to boot. There just may not be enough time to put on another included time slot. V don't open until next Sunday. We also booked some private ones as the one that every one wants to do, is Petra. It's a long involved trip from Aqaba. I've been stressing about excursions for ages. But always had plan b and which I needed to use.

That exact situation happened on the very first Alaskan cruise back in May 2019. But how sad that you also had to spend the next day at harbour as well. Jolly lucky there was space for you that day I guess.

And Ketchikan for us. We didn't go to ISP.

We tendered in one port, there was no berth for us. It was the port where the Aleutian Warrior excursion was held.

These have to be provided by Viking. Although in one port, even that is showing as sold out but Viking has to provide it. Alaska has so many private vendors providing tours and they know the cruise ship drill well so it's perfectly safe to book privately if you miss out. If you can get a PDF of the Alaska excursions then you can work out whether they will be enough for you or whether you need some more activity. The cruise I'm on is quite unique and lots of distance to travel by road (eg 7 hours driving in a day) so people feel safer doing Ship based excursions.

Yes we received one for Passage to India cruise this May, but for the one that was about to leave in 2022. (It's only done once a year as a repositioning cruise north to south or reverse) It gave us an idea of which ones were likely to sell out. DV for our May cruise opened up this week and the same excursions rapidly sold out on ours as well. Make sure when your window opens you are at the MVJ before the actual time and keep refreshing. They opened up to the minute. If there's an excursion you really want, pay for it immediately and don't keep it in the basket while looking for others. If not paid for, it can get sold out before you pay. Within 10 minutes of our booking window opening, many were sold out.

My two DIL are Brit's and know London very well. One is living in Australia, with our oldest son, the other is living in Tunbridge Wells with his wife. Both DIL came from the Wirral. They were friends at school and decided they both wanted to marry our two Aussie sons. Sigh. 😂

We booked a DV for our Alaskan cruise, the first one Viking did, in 2019. The only excursion not open to us to book was the Heritage Railway one which obviously had just a couple of carriages. The usual train one was available to book. However we arranged many private excursions including a helicopter to the glacier to see the working husky dogs and which was absolutely fantastic and so much cheaper than Vikings excursion. We ended up booking two through Viking one was the Aleutian Alaska crab one which we loved, but we were tendering that day so we didn't want to risk booking it on our own. We could also have booked that separately as well. We also booked the Kayak tour in Valdez which was fabulous. We booked private whale boat excursions in two ports. The zip line excursion seemed very popular but we weren't interested. We ended in Seward and privately booked the cruise that goes out into the Bay and Glacier. We did it last minute at the dock. Viking stored our luggage It was breathtaking. So many whales, Orcas, seals and birds. And the glacier - way better than Hubbard. Then at night we took the train back to Anchorage. It was a fabulous cruise.

We each have our financial limits though. London eating isn't cheap but we love pret a manger 😂.

I guess when you consider that you would have received three meals plus, onboard, lost two days of the cruise, a port, then well maybe enough is enough.

Our itinerary for May still doesn't have timings for some ports and up until a few months ago the timings didn't correlate with the hours spent on some excursions.

Also I do have some Koala souvenir clips to ‘cling’ on to any money I might give.

Not sure if it's what you want but we ordered a cartouche online from an Egyptian manufacturer, recommended by someone on a Viking river cruise, on Etsy. https://www.etsy.com/au/shop/EgyCartoucheJewelry?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=609173051 Arrived very quickly and post marked Egypt. Love it.

Thankyou, this is very helpful.

Probably not going to be able to locate the price of a local beer in Saudi Arabia and ME in general. 😂 even the ships alcohol will be removed from sight when in Saudi waters. We don't tip either but notice on all our private excusrions the fare doesn't include a tip kitty. So it's expected. We'd like to tip the driver for 7 hours work but only once he gets us back safely. 😳

Just interesting then isn't it! I'll update to see if any other ports impacted.

They weren't bought in NZ. They might be available there though, we didn't look. But they were packaged as per the documentation above.

Who knows these days. Is there a wind coming up? There was discussion on the FB page of not wanting the ship to get trapped or something because of wind. Sometimes it seems to easy to skip a port and give some such reason. This "Predicted windy conditions in excess of the limits imposed by harbour authorities meant we might have been stuck there for some time."

It was in Auckland. Husband was peeved he lost his snacks. 😂

We have had commercially packaged goods taken from us by biosecurity regardless of the rules. Luck of the draw maybe.