Viking Alaska Cruise - Shore Excursions

[arlowood]

Hi there

Booked on Viking Orion in August to do the Alaska Cruise from north to south (Seward to Vancouver)

When we originally booked the cruise (about 18 months ago) I am sure I recall seeing a gold panning excursion on the itinerary (probably at Juneau or Skagway) and also the White Pass scenic rail trip from Skagway.

I've just logged in today to my Viking Journey planner and had a look through the excursions on offer (too early yet to book anything). I can't see any mention of the gold panning or rail excursion listed. 

Anyone able to comment on whether they have been removed or are they likely to appear later as the cruise date gets closer?

[SantaFe1]

We are on the Aug. 14 Seward to Vancouver cruise, which is perhaps your cruise also.  About ten days ago the excursions for our cruise went up.  They were not due to go up until April 26.  Once up, they created quite a bit of talk on our roll call because they aren’t quite right. Under Skagway are listed the Sitka excursions.  Under Juneau some of the Skagway excursions (but none of the trains). Under Sitka are listed the Juneau excursions.  The excursions for Valdez are listed for the morning, although the ship doesn’t dock until 1pm.  Our roll call members finally agreed that what we are seeing is a draft or something, which wasn’t ready to be made public yet.  After calls to Tellus, one roll call member was told by Viking to be patient.  So that may or may not answer your question.  I’m just going to keep checking back every week.

[arlowood]

@SantaFe1

 

Thanks for the response. Yes we are on the August 14 Seward to Vancouver cruise. UK based so just hoping that the flight connections work seamlessly to get us to the ship on time.

 

Also appreciate the heads up regarding the roll call group - I'll have a look for that and keep tabs on any developments regarding the shore excursions. I must confess that I did not survey the listed trips in depth so did not spot the errors in the trips and ports of call. As you surmise, it is probably a draft of some description and will be amended and corrected in due course.

[Dukefan]

We have similar concerns on our port schedules and excursions for our June 25 Vancouver to Seward Alaska and Inside Passage Cruise. (Check out our Roll Call for this discussion)   I have contacted TellUs@vikingcruises.com several times for various classifications.  They say they will let us know but so far nothing.   I can understand when schedule changes happen while on a cruise due to weather or ship problems but to not have your port schedules and excursions set less than six months before a cruise in my opinion is a serious lack of planning.   A cruise passenger can enhance their cruise experience by researching and planning their various port options.   This research becomes extremely difficult if you don't know for sure  when you are scheduled to be in port or if you don't know which port you will be in (Haines or Skagway for instance).  I have been a tremendous Viking Ocean fan but I am seriously questioning rather they now have gotten so large that they can no longer effectively manage their business.  If this is the case it would be a terrible shame.  I believe a final payment shouldn't ever be required until a cruise company can tell you their port schedules yet I believe everyone on the June 25th cruise has already made their final payment.  

[SantaFe1]

I spoke to Viking yesterday on another matter, and asked them to look at the excursions published for our trip.  They looked into it, and agreed, it was just released too early and was a flawed version.  The correct version is due to be released for our August 14 trip on April 26.  As someone else said, they asked for patience.  As for the ports, those are actually set years in advance.  There are various websites you can use to see which ships are in port when.  I checked this morning on CruiseMapper, and sure enough, the Viking Orion is in Skagway on August 19 as scheduled.  So I wouldn’t worry about the ports, just getting the excursions sorted out in time for booking, which for us isn’t for several months.

[sunbrookgal]

HI,, no matter what, I'd skip gold panning altogether. Not a wow. Ok, thats a personal opinion.. The train is a great trip.. 🙂  Happy sailing. BTW, we were on the Orion last April. Tokyo to Vancouver. Wonderful trip. I think we hit 8 ports in Alaska alone. Was beautiful.