Booking Viking Excursions

[Cyber Kat]

24 minutes ago, Squawkman said:

Somewhere on this board I referenced having to book an excursion for one as there was only one slot left. I did get the second slot about 2 weeks later. This was a river cruise.

 

There are some river cruise optional excursions that sell out, but they seem to be able to accommodate more easily.  Sometimes if there is enough interest, they just add another group 

[Parsley Cruises]

I must admit I have a penchant for large aft suites, although I do find the corner part of a balcony a bit of a waste of space.  

 

We don’t think we are on a lofty perch, just careful with our planning which we do to ensure that we get the best out of our plans.  We do enjoy VO, we do enjoy not feeling crammed in, and any perks are appreciated.  

 

Meanwhile, I just wish people would be content with their plans. After all they are the authors of their plans!

 

Meanwhile, as they say in the UK: ‘Keep calm and carry on’.

 

 

[lackcreativity]

7 hours ago, Heidi13 said:

We also consider Viking a single class cruise line, as the entire ship is available to all pax, regardless of cabin category. Viking also has no loyalty program, other than a discount on all cruises after your first.

 

Similar to Seabourn, higher priced cabins have certain perks, which on Viking this includes earlier access to booking shore-ex and dining reservations. However, for us this is not an issue, since we consider this a marketing ploy to encourage demand.

        .........

Are you wrong with respect to perceived hassles - only you can determine that based on what is important. For us, we have no issue with most of Viking's policies & procedures. Hope you do book a Viking cruise and enjoy the experience.

I agree with your entire post, but these parts especially. We always book a Veranda cabin, wishing to spread our travel dollars to cover more cruises, not more expensive cabins. We love the feeling that once we walk out our cabin door, we enjoy the same experience as everyone else.

 

We accept the potential problems with booking excursions, and have never had a problem finding an enjoyable meal once on the ship. I know that some optional excursions may not be open to us, and we will either choose something else, or make outside arrangements. The issue under discussion at the start of this thread focused on a new and  different problem, where the actual booking system is not functioning properly. Guests in all cabin levels expect reasonable access to excursion booking when their time comes, and I expect that Viking will get this issue sorted out quickly. At least, I hope so!

[Gail Boertzel]

Thank you "Lack Creativity" for capturing the essence of what my original post was trying to convey!!

 

Next week will be specialty restaurant selection. Once again, I will not be moaning if I do not get a 7 pm reservation on a sea day.  I just hope the booking system allows me to choose from what is available and make the reservation. Fingers crossed! 

[just_dont]

Thank you "Lack Creativity" for capturing the essence of what my original post was trying to convey!!
 
Next week will be specialty restaurant selection. Once again, I will not be moaning if I do not get a 7 pm reservation on a sea day.  I just hope the booking system allows me to choose from what is available and make the reservation. Fingers crossed! 

And even if you can't get EXACTLY what you want through early booking, it doesn't necessarily mean the restaurant is "full." It just means they aren't taking any more advance reservations for that time. Quite likely they are not allowing all tables to be reserved ahead of time, and these will be available onboard.

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[Karber]

Our long awaited booking time for shore excursions opened just about an hour ago.  After reading this thread, we were dreading what we thought might be a frustrating long process.  We are in a DV cabin on a 15 day cruise. Thankfully, it took us about 10 minutes to book everything we were hoping for, all at our first choice times. Granted, all 9 of our choices were for included excursions, as we prefer to do our own planning and exploring the rest of the time in port. So if paid excursions are the real problem, please disregard my comments. Just a couple tips that may help future cruisers:  My husband and I were both online simultaneously, one on the computer, the other on an iPad. We each selected different excursion choices to book. Divide and conquer!  We did have several instances of “spinning and spinning” but discovered it helped to refresh the page. For a couple of our choices, after refreshing, the choice came up as successfully booked.  Sooo, perhaps we were just lucky, or more hopefully, Viking has heard, listened, and worked to solve the problem!

[lackcreativity]

5 hours ago, Gail Boertzel said:

Thank you "Lack Creativity" for capturing the essence of what my original post was trying to convey!!

 

Next week will be specialty restaurant selection. Once again, I will not be moaning if I do not get a 7 pm reservation on a sea day.  I just hope the booking system allows me to choose from what is available and make the reservation. Fingers crossed! 

We don't get any restaurant reservation options until we are on board, and it still works well for us. We like to coordinate our dining plans with what is taking place on the ship as far as enrichment lectures and shows. We have always been able to get several specialty restaurant reservations once onboard. Trying to match our schedule with the menu in Chef's Table gets complicated (loved Sweet & Salty, the Mexican, and want to try Lotus), but we have mostly liked all our meals there anyway.

 

If you want to make additional reservations after embarkation, work on that early in the cruise, as things do tend to book up towards the end. On the other hand, people change reservations throughout, so you can always check for last minute spots too. Enjoy!

[Parsley Cruises]

On ‎8‎/‎1‎/‎2019 at 5:19 PM, Gail Boertzel said:

Parsley Cruises,

I think you are missing my point. I fully understand the number of cabins on the ship and how that plays out for the timing of  booking excursions. The reservation system for excursions was set up by Viking. Viking knows on any given day how many cabins are permitted to start booking excursions. The system should be designed to handle this recurring situation. The excursions I was trying to book were not sold out in which case, booking a higher grade cabin to have an earlier selection date would be a legitimate solution. The 15 day cruise we are taking only has three sea days and we will be spending our time in ports, out of the cabin. Thus, we choose not to take a bigger cabin. And, the "solution" to the Viking problem should not be to force one to take a more expensive cabin.  I was not looking for an earlier opportunity to book excursions, just the opportunity to do so based on the system and timetable set up by Viking.

Nobody, but nobody 'forces' me into any decision.  We go for the larger accommodation just because we are used to having room to manoeuvre, and because that's the way we like it.  I don't see why we should be in smaller accommodation just because we are on a cruise.  

As I read it you state above that the excursions you were trying to book were not sold out - so I presume you reserved the excursions you wanted.  So, what's all the fuss?  (Yawn).

 

When we don't like a system, we don't get involved with it.  Currently we do like the VO system