Browsing excursions

[perlgirlnj]

I can see from "My Viking Journey" when I am eligible to book excursions. What I can't find is the brochure or list of what are all the possible excursions for our sailing (included or extra). At what point, and where, will I be able to see what Viking offers in each port? I want to start to get a handle on what's available. Is there a pdf somewhere with a list? Thanks.

[Peregrina651]

I can see from "My Viking Journey" when I am eligible to book excursions. What I can't find is the brochure or list of what are all the possible excursions for our sailing (included or extra). At what point, and where, will I be able to see what Viking offers in each port? I want to start to get a handle on what's available. Is there a pdf somewhere with a list? Thanks.

 

Based on my last two cruises, they won't load the tours into MVJ until a couple of weeks before the Explorer Suite residents start booking at the 97 days out point.

 

In the meantime, you are stuck with reading the proposed shorex on the itinerary page of your cruise on the regular website (unless you are going on a new itinerary for which they haven't yet figured things out).

 

I forget which cruise you are going on so I just grabbed a link to any old cruise and if you click here, you will see what I mean by itinerary page. On the itinerary page, down the left side you will see the Days and Cities that you will be visiting. Click on each day and it will show you the shorex for that port of call. Scroll down to see them all--and then a little bit firther for "previous" and "next" buttons. Click on learn more to see a full description of the proposed tours and perhaps prices (subject to change). It will not show you times. What you see here may or may not be the tours that are actually offered for your cruise. For example, I'm cruising in winter on an itinerary that is also offered in the summer but I'm pretty sure they won't be offering us "Sail & Swim along the Riviera."

 

There is no pdf available. I used the snip tool and a word processor to make my own so that I could print something out for my husband to read. Once they are loaded into MVJ, you will be able to print them out --but only the short description that appears on the webpage, not the full description you get when you click on "Learn More." (Yes, frustrating).

[perlgirlnj]

Peregrina, you have come through again! I don't know how I missed that feature, but I had definitely missed it and was getting frustrated. I still wish it had prices (only a very few did) and times of day but it's more than I had this morning.

 

Were the included excursions always first thing in the morning or were some of them offered at other points in the day? Is it possible to do both an included excursion and an optional one on the same day?

 

BTW, we're on the "Into the Midnight Sun" itinerary on the Sea in June 2017 (if it makes any difference).

[CharTrav]

It is unfortunate that they stopped doing the pdf version of the itinerary with excursions like they used to do for Viking River. Perhaps the issue is the complexity of the itineraries with excursions involved in a VO cruise. And then the considerations of how to present and maintain all that content on their web site.

 

Anyway, as Peregrina said, you can go to the main web page for your cruise and laboriously build your own consolidated excursion itinerary by copying and pasting the info for each shore excursion for each port call. This is what I did for Viking Homelands last Summer. Started the process in 2015 using the info provided at the the time. Went a little nuts as I tried to grab and consolidate every available bit of info provided while, at the same time, formatting the whole thing so all the info was presented in a compact yet readable way. When MyVikingJourney went live last Spring, I updated my Word document with the latest info including the actual departure times for each excursion. When I was happy with it, I posted the whole thing to GoogleDrive and Dropbox.

 

Since I was already subscribed to the roll call for my cruise, I used it to announce that I had it and where folks could get it. I also announced it on a broader VO forum so that anybody going on Viking Homelands last Summer could use it.

 

Sorry for the long preamble. What I'm leading up to is to suggest that you search for a forum thread dedicated to your particular cruise, ideally the roll call for it. And post a request to find out if anybody else has done something like this and request they share it like I did mine. You might also do a search for a thread regarding your cruise in general without regard to exactly when. There's a good chance somebody out there has already done it but never thought to share it on places like Dropbox or GoogleDocs. If your request hits paydirt, your problem is solved. Otherwise, your only choice is to do like we did. Took me many evenings to gather the initial batch of excursion info and many months afterwards working intermittently in the evenings or on weekends to whip it into the form I wanted and that I felt good enough about to inflict on others.

 

Good luck!

 

 

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Edited September 29, 2016 by CharTrav

[CharTrav]

Were the included excursions always first thing in the morning or were some of them offered at other points in the day?

 

Is it possible to do both an included excursion and an optional one on the same day?

1. You can use the ship's itinerary (arrival and departure times) along with duration cited for each excursion to make an educated guess as to when the excursion will start. Especially if it's a long one. If it's relatively short but the time in port is long, there might be two or more. But again you can guess. When MVJ goes live you can update things.

2. Sometimes yes. I did. But it's not an easy thing to do. We were only able to do it once for each of us. Again it's a matter of how long the ship stays in port and the duration of the excursions. They typically schedule 3 or 4 times for included waking tours. Sometimes more depending on demand. Also remember that if you do a long paid excursion, part of that excursion may include stuff from or actually overlap and add onto the walking tour.

 

Does this help?

 

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Edited September 29, 2016 by CharTrav

[Host Jazzbeau]

Everything I have heard about Viking Oceans has sounded first class, but this is a major fail since many other cruise lines have no problem generating a pdf version of all the excursions on your itinerary. There are regular complaints on the Celebrity forum about the deficiencies of their website, but this is one thing they do well -- maybe Viking could copy that section of their code [and only that section, please -- don't duplicate all the bad parts :eek:]

[CharTrav]

Everything I have heard about Viking Oceans has sounded first class, but this is a major fail since many other cruise lines have no problem generating a pdf version of all the excursions on your itinerary. There are regular complaints on the Celebrity forum about the deficiencies of their website, but this is one thing they do well -- maybe Viking could copy that section of their code [and only that section, please -- don't duplicate all the bad parts :eek:]

 

 

I've spent some time wondering why Viking took the "atomize the info" approach rather than gathering it all together in a layout conducive to exporting it as a PDF. And I came to the conclusion that it's a matter of ease of web content maintenance and the ability to repurpose and extend the same content to serve different parts of their web site. I agree that from a user perspective the approach really truly stinks but from a programmer/web developer perspective - it makes perfect sense. Now if they could just figure out a way to satisfy their web developers and us, we'd truly be in heaven, eh? [emoji4]

 

 

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[Peregrina651]

 

Were the included excursions always first thing in the morning or were some of them offered at other points in the day? Is it possible to do both an included excursion and an optional one on the same day?

 

BTW, we're on the "Into the Midnight Sun" itinerary on the Sea in June 2017 (if it makes any difference).

 

Well, so much for my memory! We already mentioned Midnight Sun on another thread, didn't we.

 

On Midnight Sun, most of the time, the included tours started not long after we were cleared to go ashore (and sometimes we didn't get into port until after lunch). One of our included tours was in the afternoon even though we arrived in the morning (I think it was the included tour in the Orkneys that went to the Ring of Bodnar and the Italian Chapel).

 

Also note that there are multiple time slots for the included tours since there are so many people who have to be accommodated. Each time slot will have multiple buses.

 

I never tried to book two tours in one day and the only comments I remember reading were from people who tried to schedule both and were unable to--but that doesn't mean that it is impossible.

 

The big problem seems to be that Viking has this habit of changing tour times on you. You can sign up for the 9am tour but Viking will change it to 10am and not tell you that they have made a change. So, you should print out whatever you can that shows the times you have reserved when you make the reservations and then go back regularly and check on "My Calendar" to make sure that changes have not been made. Even if Viking fixes it for you it does not mean that it won't be changed again (when the next person complains that their tour times have been changed). Check your tour tickets immediately when you board so you can fix any problems.

 

We were traveling with another couple and a couple of times they moved one of us but not the other. We weren't worried about what time slot we were in as long as we were in the same time slot and had no trouble making changes.

[Peregrina651]

I've spent some time wondering why Viking took the "atomize the info" approach rather than gathering it all together in a layout conducive to exporting it as a PDF. And I came to the conclusion that it's a matter of ease of web content maintenance and the ability to repurpose and extend the same content to serve different parts of their web site. I agree that from a user perspective the approach really truly stinks but from a programmer/web developer perspective - it makes perfect sense. Now if they could just figure out a way to satisfy their web developers and us, we'd truly be in heaven, eh? [emoji4]

 

 

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CT, I also think that some of it is that in some of the ports (especially the newest additions) they are still working things out and still negotiating with providers and still making changes based on passenger feed back. I also think that they don't want to publish tentative information because that could cause even more problems down the line (or maybe it has already and that is why they have stopped doing it).

Edited September 29, 2016 by Peregrina651

[CharTrav]

CT, I also think that some of it is that in some of the ports (especially the newest additions) they are still working things out and still negotiating with providers and still making changes based on passenger feed back. I also think that they don't want to publish tentative information because that could cause even more problems down the line (or maybe it has already and that is why they have stopped doing it).

 

 

Totally agree. Hadn't thought of that.

 

 

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[Host Jazzbeau]

CT, I also think that some of it is that in some of the ports (especially the newest additions) they are still working things out and still negotiating with providers and still making changes based on passenger feed back. I also think that they don't want to publish tentative information because that could cause even more problems down the line (or maybe it has already and that is why they have stopped doing it).

 

Azamara publishes their itineraries even earlier than Viking, and their itineraries are more varied every year -- yet they make the pdf booklets available (with incomplete information) very early. The layout is nothing like the website -- obviously somebody has programmed up an Oracle search that grabs the info and plugs it into a template on the fly. I was downloading the booklet every few weeks and watching the offerings increase [OK, I'm retired and have too much time on my hands!]. It probably took a lot of effort initially, but once set up it just works like a robot.

[Vineyard View]

It does become a greater challenge for first time itineraries - when there is no history of excursions in ports. We like to mix it up - using Viking, DIY, and private or small group tours. It was challenging on the maiden Star voyage last year as all ports were new to Viking - and I am sure our next (Amazon) will be later planned for many of the ports. I am hopeful that those in the Caribbean will be repeated excursion offerings (for planning purposes)from the trips to those islands this year and next, however there are many ports that will be Viking firsts - so who knows when those will be determined.

The good news - Viking continues to expand their itineraries as more ships enter the waters. That is exciting to me.

So in the meantime I will research private tours & DIY in case that is the route we choose in those specific ports.

But yes - I agree with all of you that it would sure be great if Viking used a PDF for this and posted offerings further out - maybe without specific times to be added later - so that we all could organize a bit earlier than the current method.