Gdansk--Malbork Castle--Stockholm to Bergen

[Dauntless]

Though this topic has been touched on in other threads, I'm posting this thread to get all information together. I'm not on the cruise until next year but since there are circumstances to deal with, I'm trying plan ahead. This year the ship is in Gdansk on Saturday but next year it will be Sunday so that can effect things traffic wise. I am wondering about the interest in this excursion? Does it tend to sell out? We arrive very early and leave shortly after lunch so that might have some bearing on being able to enter the castle at a certain time. I am in a V1 cabin so I can't sign up early, so this is the reason for my inquiry. I have found another option if it is sold out but I hope to do the ship's excursion to insure there are no transportation problems. If some one could post this info it will help me decide a plan of action.

 

Thanks

[id4elizabeth]

I thoroughly enjoyed going to this castle. We did not have any real traffic issues on the maiden voyage. If you're going on a Sunday I would think you wouldn't have any traffic issues. You could google Malbork's website and I'm sure it would tell you the opening times on Sundays. My DH did the Gdansk Brewery tour and was pretty disappointed. The Brewery turned out to be a restaurant where they had two different beers and their was some beer making equipment behind the bar.

 

Back to Malbork - this is a huge castle with a lot of history of the Tuetonic Knights. We got to see most of it. Our tour bus was not full. I would say maybe 35 people. There was only one Viking tour bus. I don't think you have to worry about it being sold out - most people seemed to do the Gdansk tours. Unless there are some kind of capacity restrictions like going to see the British Crown Jewels, which there really isn't in the case of Malbork, what Viking usually does once one bus is full is to add another bus and another guide and split the group in two.

 

And not to worry if the bus is late coming back - if it's a Viking tour and it's late, the ship will wait for you. If you're out on your I own, it may not. The Star waited an hour and a half for one Viking bus that got stuck in traffic coming back from Berlin.

 

Hope that helps.

[Dauntless]

Coming from that direction, how many hours did you have in port and when did you arrive and depart? We only have 7 hours. I think it is around an hour to hour and a half to get there and I guess the same for return. According to Viking, arrival is at 600 and departure is 1300. That should put us at the castle about 7:30 ish? Still too early for opening, I think, unless they have a special arrangement. We'll see. Were most of your ship arrival and departures on time?

[Vineyard View]

I would say that if anything we were early arrivals more often than not. Departures were on time - if I remember correctly - all but the Berlin port sure to late returning bus. Does that sound right Elizabeth?

[id4elizabeth]

Gdansk was a 1:00 pm arrival and a midnight departure. So even though it sounds like we had a long time in port (11 hours), we really didn't have a long time for the excursion. I remember a little over an hour bus ride each way and a couple of hours once we were there. There wasn't much to see there other than the castle (like cute little towns etc), so we spent all our time at the castle itself.

 

I agree with Vineyard View that we were normally there either on time or a bit early. Don't know how you'd classify our London experience where we were "there" on time at 7:30 but couldn't get off the ship until 11:00. We were told this was due to difficulty tying up to the floating dock and bouey. But I chatted with 2 different press people who both boarded in London between 8:00 and 9:00 so I'm not totally convinced of this excuse. But, that was definitely the exception, not the rule, and by the time of your trip the onslaught of Press Corps and other VIPs should not be an issue.

 

Do keep in mind that even though the ship may dock at 6:00am, your tour may not leave until 7:00. There was at least a half hour from the time we docked and the time the first tours departed. They need to get port clearance, get the gangway down, etc. But sounds to me like you'll still have plenty of time with 7 hours in port.

[Vineyard View]

Yes, our long Gdansk port time was a waste of time - because the remote port location made you rely on tours - which were all 4-4.5 hours in duration. I would much rather have had less time there and more in say Tallinn!!!

 

In London it did take a long time to obtain clearance - the other ports this was not an issue. We generally cleared in a normal amount of time.

 

But we were at The Tower of London (we took the public water taxi from the same pier that the tender ferried us to) before 10:00...I want to say we were on a tender around 9:00.....our return though had us waiting on that pier for the tender for an hour because the London Port Authorities were only running 1 tender instead of the 2 they were supposed to be running.

[id4elizabeth]

Unfortunately the Viking tour groups were held in the Star Theater and the Toshavn lounge for literally hours. They were telling us that they were having difficulty tying up to the floating barge that we were supposed to be docked to. We were scheduled to depart on our tour to Canteberry at 8:30 - we finally left the ship at 11:00. If you left at 10:00, that confirms for me that what we were being told was not exactly correct. (We also heard the story about port clearance delaying our departure which didn't ring quite true since the British authorities had boarded the day before and checked all the passports that we had to personally present to them to "pre-clear" the ship.)

 

I think one of the major differences in your experience and that of others is that you did so much on your own and didn't take many Viking tours. I would say that of the issues we had with Viking, about 70% of our frustrations were surrounding Viking Shoe Excursions. In looking back at our whole 50 day cruise, I think our favorite part was the Istanbul to Venice segment. Even though there were more technical difficulties with the ship itself, most of our excursions were private group tours organized by Cruise Critic members. We only did 2 Viking tours for that whole segment. Unfortunately, for the rest of our cruise, we depended on Viking tours, and I think that made a huge difference.

[Vineyard View]

Yes, we were off the ship around 9:00. We waited until then because they did have some issues and it was two hours after we 'arrived' - a bit before 7:00. I think we were on the 1st tender, but maybe it was the 2nd. I wasn't really counting.

 

After our Honfleur horrible excursion on Mothers Day, we didn't take any more Viking excursions. I cancelled what we had scheduled - Except the bus into Gdansk because it was the only real way to get there. We had a great time without them. That said, I respect how important that piece is to many people, so I would absolutely agree that is an area Viking needs to focus on and fix.

Edited June 11, 2015 by Vineyard View