SM77

Thanks Knoxclone for your review of this Panama Canal cruise - this is one that we are interested in and your experience and the others who commented will certainly help us in our planning and setting expectations. My primary interest is in the canal transit so that is where my focus is. Everyone's comments are very helpful.

We always had good luck and experiences booking our flights through Viking Air and just prefer to have Viking handle everything. For us, the costs have either been less w/ Viking or about the same. Back in early 2019, due to the Boeing 737 Max problem, American Airlines just canceled our flight from Hong Kong back to the US and just emailed us that we needed to work w/ our travel agency. We were in Bali(two days before going home) and between my travel agent & Viking Air (with a 15 hour time difference) worked out a much better flight arrangement back to the US from Hong Kong. We have booked our own air for non-Viking cruises and it has worked out OK - I just prefer all the transfer arrangements that Viking does, especially at the start of the trip. When we had to cancel or were canceled due to Covid, four cruises, we really had to wait until United canceled our flight that we booked ourselves for an Oceania cruise that we had canceled early on in the pandemic to be able to ask for a refund. We will be flying in late April going to Prague to do the Cities of Lights river cruise and I hope we do not have connection issues in Brussels. Not a lot of flights from Brussels to Prague so I hope things go smoothly - I did have very good service in working w/ Viking Air - going through Brussels was my decision, I hate traveling through Frankfurt. This will be our first overseas trip in almost four years so I need to go with the flow with how things have changed the past few years.

Our first river cruise was in 2016 on Viking from Passau to Budapest - We had a land portion prior to that which started in Munich and included Salzburg. I think today you can add it in as a pre-extension. It was a fabulous trip - loved being in Salzburg, great place to visit. Munich is a big city but a major international hub so it would be a good airport to arrive at, much nicer than Frankfurt to do any connections. I highly recommend starting in Passau heading towards Budapest - on Viking, you arrive at night into Budapest and it is quite a dramatic arrival - Budapest is quite the party town. Stopping in Linz is where we did a day trip to Cesky Krumlov which was delightful. We did not do Krems but the Melk Abbey; loved our day in Bratislava; just to give you a sense of the other small cities/towns. That was our first introduction to Viking and we have been on a few of their ocean cruises and other river cruises. We are doing their Cities of Lights river cruise in late April. I cannot speak to other river cruise lines but I know many who have done Tauck and they have been very pleased. You cannot go wrong w/ a cruise down the Danube. If you do the extensions w/ Viking, they handle the transfers from the airport and then to the ship and get you to the airport at the end of the cruise or post-extension. That is very appealing to us having the cruise line handle all the transfers. We have done our own transfers on Oceania ocean cruise from Athens to Barcelona which were very easy; did not have an easy embarkation experience w/ Crystal in Hong Kong doing it on our own. Yes, it is much more expensive to do a cruise line's extension but we are at the point that we prefer someone else handling all the connection details.

Hi, I just booked our Eiffel Tower to the top tickets for Monday, May 8th. I suggest trying to book the tickets as soon as it is the 61st day before the date you want and on the east coast, that will be 6 PM. It is worthwhile to try booking tickets before you have to do it to get a sense of how the website works. Also have an alternative credit card available - for some reason, my usual Visa card was not accepted but my other one worked. The website gives you about ten minutes to process your order once you pick a date & time. So I did the order on March 8th once it was 6 PM(midnight, March 9th in Paris). Good luck, I hope you & your mom get to the top of the Eiffel Tower too!

Definitely sail towards Budapest - you sail into Budapest at night and it's very dramatic w/ the Parliament and other sites illuminated. Budapest is quite the party town so the ship will be well greeted. When we sailed from Passau to Budapest in 2016, being anchored in Budapest was the only stop that we actually had a security person. Not sure where Viking is anchored in Budapest today, but then it was right by the Four Seasons hotel.

I would try to get in touch with TellUs@vikingcruises.com and see if they can tell you the timing of the train transfer. We did the reverse, going from Paris to Lyon - left in the morning on the train, think the train left around 10 AM, it was high speed so it only took a few hours. Viking handled all the luggage via a truck, we just had our personal items. We had lunch on the ship. I would try for a very late PM or early evening time. I will be making reservations for the Eiffel Tower in May for our Cities of Light cruise. You will have a wonderful time doing France's Finest - we had a fabulous time on both portions of the river cruises.

I just checked MVJ and the buttons to change seats, upgrade or change flights are still there.

Well, what you have said may be absolutely correct but it would have been nice to get something more that an email stating the flights are canceled and work with your travel agent when we were 15 hours time difference and just a couple of days before the canceled flights were suppose to occur. I guess it's better than showing up at the airport and finding out that the flights were canceled.

Airlines give themselves plenty of time for on time arrivals and I'm hoping for some tailwinds. Thanks for providing your thoughts that 2 hours 15 minutes should be sufficient time to make our connecting flight. We have had great experiences working w/ Viking Air on all the flights that we have booked through them. In fact, they worked really well for us when AA canceled our flights back to the States from Hong Kong to Dulles a couple of days before flying home & we were in Bali. AA basically told us to figure it out w/ our travel agent and left us hanging. Viking Air got us on a much better non-stop flight from Hong Kong to Dulles on Cathay Pacific instead of the two flights that we had w/ AA. The pricing for the premium economy were too good to pass up since we got free economy air included in our cruise. But given our experience having paid independently for flights for one of our cruises that was canceled during the pandemic, we had to wait until United officially canceled the flight to get our money back. We just prefer Viking handling it all. It has worked well for us.

They did not say that specifically but I already knew that from experience. That's why once you have decided on your flights, one should go ahead and ticket the reservations. I'm still looking for any feedback on whether 2 hours 15 minutes is sufficient for connection time in Brussels at 7:15 AM. I still need to do a little research but I know that there is a much later flight to Prague from Brussels if we missed that connection. I'm inclined to think that we may get into Brussels sooner heading from the US. However we have also experienced changes to ticketed reservations from the airlines so I need to be more tolerate traveling these days.

Yes, both did.

Yesterday was the first time since we traveled in 2019 to request flights through Viking Air for our upcoming 2023 Cities of Light Viking River Cruise(yes, I know this is the Ocean board but the information is relevant). I want to thank everyone on this board who posted their tips in working w/ Viking Air in this new era. I did not have the direct number so I went through the regular Viking phone number. The agent was trying to discourage me from talking to Viking Air but I was insistent and he transferred me. He did give me the direct number for Viking Air -1-877-523-0580 - I did book my travel through a travel agent and in the past, she would do a three way conference call or get permission for the Viking Air dept to talk to me directly. Wow, the Viking Air person, Alem, was so nice and patient. It didn't matter that I had booked my cruise through a travel agent. I was able to get my first choice outbound, United Dulles to Brussels, Brussels to Prague. I was limited in picking flights since I am trying premium economy, United doesn't seem to have many flights w/ premium economy seats. I do have a question for folks, do you think 2 hours 15 minutes is sufficient connecting time in Brussels at 7:15 AM? And in booking the return flight, United non-stop from Paris to Dulles, Alem informed me that Viking had already reserved seats for us! We are not ticketed yet, but I was able to go ahead and pick our seats on the Dulles to Brussel flight through United's website. Final payment is the end of September so I will ticket the reservations after that. Of course, Alem did caution me about the airlines canceling flights and changing reservations but I told him that I am prepared for that. We have had our business seat assignments changed at the airport without United trying to make accommodations to sit us together. So thanks to everyone for your advise! We feel much more excited about being able to do this cruise. It's been such a long time.

It depends on where we are traveling. In Europe we definitely get euros and other currencies. When we went to Russia the preferred currency was US dollars. In South America, US currency was also preferred except in Chile, we bought Chilean pesos beforehand. Also for tipping extra to the stewards, we gave them dollars. Many of the crew did a lot of shopping in the US before going home so they preferred US currency.

I cannot be told to go to the machine since I don't have an ATM card for that bank. Maybe you need to switch to a bank that has better customer service!

I don't use an ATM; I actually interact w/ a teller when I get cash.

This is great information about the increase in tips - I try to collect new bills as well since foreign banks are very particular about the condition of money when exchanged for local currency. Sometimes when getting cash from our local bank I ask for new bills if possible, lately it has been hard to get new bills.

I like being able just to use the pump on the container instead of picking it up, opening tube, closing the tube, less touch points when washing hands.

If you have a iPad, tablet, cell phone, I like to bring a longer cable(6 ft instead of 3 ft) to plug into the USB port to recharge & use the device while in bed. I prefer using liquid hand soap to wash my hands so I bring an empty pump bottle & fill it w/ the liquid body soap.