CCWineLover

Thank you SO much for the wine list, Moonlion! This makes us feel encouraged for our upcoming cruise in a couple weeks. Nothing more disappointing than getting Silver Spirits and then the claim supply chain shortage so hardly anything available. Fortunately, upon several calls to Viking when back home, we got vouchers back for the price. They must have realized the issue with so many complaints. Can't wait to try all the fun wines! We use the SSP to sample as many wines we don't know as possible. Another question - does your ship have the special Wine Tasting sessions (they used to have a couple each cruise - held in Manfredi's during the day). I think they also held various spirits tastings too but not sure since not interested in them.

On our last Viking cruise, the room steward gave us a "blank" card to keep in the card holder on the wall - so we could take it out or not and still have our room cards with us.

Cost? Difficulty with local politics, rules, red tape?

Clay - absolutely stunning! My first thoughts are it reminds me so much of the Giants Causeway in Northern Ireland. Same geological formations (Basalt hexagonal columns). Your adventure on your own makes me wsh we'd done something like this when we finish our Saturn cruise in Reykjavik in June. Perhaps another time! Just such wonderful scenery.

Get a good night sleep. It won’t matter. You will be able to get what you want when you get on board. We always do that. And gives us a chance to see what the chefs table menus are.

Double and triple confirm - again.

Moonlion - sure love your wonderful attitude about everything. You are going to really enjoy your whole cruise - i can tell that! Wish more were like you. Interesting regarding The Restaurant. DW and I have speculated on this phenomena. As has been said before, every cruise and itinerary is very different in passenger behavior. There often are no common practices. We've had Viking cruises where Manfredi's was so popular you could barely get in, and CT was begging for people. Then the next cruise it was just the opposite. We've seen lines for washing machines early in the morning on some cruises, and then nobody there early on others. Who can say? On our 2 cruise out of Florida however (Ft Lauderdale), we did note the common thread was this habit of lining up really early for the World Cafe and The Restaurant for dinners. Like up to 30 minutes early. In the WC, people would go in (even while they were still setting up) and sit down at the tables waiting. Such an odd thing. Speculated that perhaps lots of Floridians are used to going to dinner and the buffets early and it is just part of their habit to wait in line for dinner. 🙂 We've had other cruises where we could walk up at 6:00 the Restaurant and be immediately seated! It's a crap shoot! Once a certain behavior pattern is observed on a particular cruise, it seems people, as it the case in human behavior, experience that FOMO feeling (Fear of Missing Out) and rush to line up (whether it is for food, drinks, washing machine, excursions, etc). We've even seen people pack the Star Theatre 45 minutes before showtime. Isn't human behavior interesting?

What’s the deal with that? Easy: DEMAND > SUPPLY = PRICE INFLATION. Unfortunately, and particularly since COVID, this is a common practice now with any cruise line that offers paid excursions. The reason is that so many tour operators and guides left the business in 2020-2022 and only now are things gradually ramping back up to meet demand. (also likely a part of the reason the quality of tours offered has been described as poorer than before). When demand exceeds supply, as is currently the case, prices go up. As such you will not find prices until you are ready to book. Best case: ask someone on your Cruise Critic Roll call who has a suite to send out to everyone the prices and list of excursions. (Not sure where you are seeing an excursion list - if MVJ OK, but if just on Viking's web site, those are just examples of what's been offered in the past and are not indicative of what they may be able to procure for your specific cruise). One more affect of COVID!

Depends on how you dress, what your weather variability is, and many other factors.

I never never use Viking insurance. it costs too much, it’s too inflexible, and why get it via the same company that sells the cruise. Bad personal business practice. with a good 3rd party insurance you won’t have thes issues and can easily do what I suggested.

Good action! Glad there were rooms available.

Andy - we are so sad to hear about your issues. We've so enjoyed your wonderful, often humorous, and always informative posts on the Viking threads. Just so sorry to see this happen to you. Happy sailing! Kent

More than "apt" to be! From our experience we will NEVER book a room under the World Cafe (Deck 6 aft). It was really quite bad with all the scaping. Beyond annoying. Couldn't sleep. Usually began around 3 or 4 in the morning. I do have good hearing though.

It seems to me it was quite expensive. Would you consider doing it on your own? On our Viking Jupiter South America cruise (we finished in Buenos Aires), we put our own post-extension together and it was quite easy to do and execute - and I think about 1/2 the cost of a Viking extension. Aerolinas Argentinas flies nice 737 jets to the Iguazu airport. We splurged even and stayed in the park at the Gran Melia hotel for 2 nights. Did a lot of hiking around on our own. Even if you aren't considering that, do a search on "Iguazu" on the general Viking site and you will find dozens of threads and response with all kinds of information for you!

Sqwawkman - That's a great question, because it is England and we've read a lot on Cruise Critic about the English views on tipping. Hopefully some of our great British posters can share their opinions on this one! Will follow.

Another example, which has been related on several threads the past month already, that Viking is getting back to the pre-COVID way of doing reservations (opening up more tables for advanced booking). Personally, I'd rather they didn't since that leaves less tables open to book when onboard. I'm still baffled why so many people are all upset about not getting advanced dinner reservations. We don't even know what we'll feel like at dinner until we are onboard! And you don't know the Chef's Table Menu schedules either. We have always had success booking every specialty restaurant at the times we want when we get to the ship - so never worried.

Another technique - have the screen open to the excursion you want the most. if it does go at 3 PM, you will see the time slot "open up" right on the dot, you click it put it in the cart and immediately go pay for it! You can be done in 30 seconds, particularly if you have cut and pasted the credit card information (if you use cr cards) already to go. (I put all my info into a new temporary note and can copy and paste any info I want quickly, then exit without saving).

We have done the same thing multiple times. That is a big reason we don't use TripMate (in addition to the much greater cost). One cruise we rescheduled 3 different times and to different itineraries and our insurance just carried over each time. The good thing, as was stated, is that the pre-existing condition kept transferring along too! With Viking's cruise transfer capability, one of the techniques we use is to take advantage of the $25 deposits. Since insurance costs rises with the age at booking, especially after age 70, we book a "dummy" cruise as far into the future as possible at $25 apiece, get the insurance and pre-existing. That locks in the lower price. Then over the next several years, we can transfer that dummy cruise to a cruise we really do want, transfer the insurance, and effectively have the insurance price at a lower price than the age we are at when we actually take the cruise.

Just remember - as we get further from COVID and more tour operators who are trained and know what they are doing are being involved, things are bound to get better! I saw a distinct decline in the included tours quality overall from before COVID to after COVID. I totally realized why this happened as Viking was scrambling (like other lines) to be operators and guides, as go many of them left the business in 2020-2022. Hope you have some patience and that things are better for you in 2025.

Again - it doesn't matter if it is Jupiter. ALL Viking Ocean ships are laid out the same. As for restaurant noise, we stayed once on deck 6 aft below World Cafe - that was noisy (mostly by staff moving deck chairs and tables around in early morning on nice days getting ready for early breakfast). Something to keep in mind.

Good point! We are doing the first segment this June (NYC-Reykjavik) and the 2nd segment (the other direction) (Bergen-Reykjavik) in 2024. AND, we are actually starting in Bergen on the Mars and doing Barcelona to Bergen to Reykavik (B2B). One more thing I do hear a lot from people about B2B cruises and segments - Viking likely should do a better job communicating this. People aren't aware that at the segment junctions (like Reykjavik, Rome, Venice, Athens, and others), where some people get off and new passengers get on . . . Viking doesn't advance publish excursions for those that say on. When onboard, however, Viking usually does provide some excursions for those that do stay on the ship (like in those cities). Someone the other day was very upset there were no excursions for the major city of Reykjavik and I had to explain that because they were continuing on to Bergen while many got off, there was nothing pre-published, but they would certainly have something when onboard.

Great job Zalusky! I wish we would get one of those offers. I'd jump at it in a minute!!

Good to know! We are doing the Skalanes Nature Reserve in June! Also - re excursions: People do cancel. We with DV were shut out for Vigur Island tour in June. I kept checking nearly every day and suddenly a few days ago 2 slots opened up, so I snagged them! It does happen!!

On specialty wines, did they have most of them on the menu onboard? Hopefully their stocking and supply problem is gone. In January probably 70% of the specialty wines were not in stock and they kept running out of those left very disappointing.

Andy - our last Viking cruise we played trivia and one of the questions was name the Viking Ocean ships in order of their roll out (Saturn had not rolled out yet). Our group was the only one to get it all correct since I felt we needed to include Sun. (Others left it off). Irony is, we'd just been talking about the order the day before and said that'd make a good trivia question!