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Thanks for the thread Jim, you are certainly building the excitement for us as we will be on the same itinerary early next year. If you have chance to speak to the beverage manager, Jasna could you ask if she will still be on the ship in February? We had the pleasure of her company on 2 previous cruises and would love to do so again. In any case I expect you are keeping her department busy 😁 Finally a very happy Christmas to you & yours 🎄

We are on that itinerary but not until 2024. We will be looking for tips/suggestions though, so any posts about your experiences would be of great interest. Good to hear thanks. It is a "bucket list" trip to mark DW joining me in retirement so we plan to make the most of it!

I think I have the answer to your question. We have Chilean Fjords and Southern Atlantic Crossing booked as a BtoB saving Viking the cost of return flights to South America. The invoice shows a reduction in the form of an "Air Allowance" of £500pp.

That was our experience previously. However on our most recent cruise (September 2022) getting the reservations that we wanted required a great deal of determination and good natured persistence on my part. I did very much feel that we were being "squeezed in". Once seated in the restaurants there always seemed to be empty tables around and adequate wait staff, something that was particularly noticeable in the Chef's Table. This leads me to the suspicion that Viking are currently having difficulty recruiting sufficient experienced chefs to maintain the volume of service in the speciality restaurants that they did pre-Covid. As a result it seems they are penalising DV category passengers by reneging on the promise of one reservation in each speciality restaurant prior to boarding. Well put, I could not agree with you more!

Sorry for the slow response Mapomp but I have just started a thread that at least partially answers your request for a recent wine list. You can read it in full by clicking on the image above. Unfortunately I didn't photograph the full list and there were more wine is available by the bottle that are not shown but hopefully this is of some help.

While on our last cruise I took a quick snap of the wine list on my phone so that I could browse it at leisure back in the cabin. There have been a number of questions on the board about available wines and my first thought was to post these images to one of those threads. It then occurred to me that it might be useful to have a single thread showing a selection of wine lists, from various Viking ships and cruises, that people can be referred to. This could be expanded and kept up-to-date over time. If you already have any photos of wine lists you could post them straight away or you might be able to collect images on future trips to post later, as I will try to remember to do. I think it would be helpful to include the name of the ship, itinerary and date as in my example below. Note: Unfortunately I did not photograph the whole wine list, as I recall there were additional reds by the bottle and sparkling wines on other pages. Skål 🍷🍾 Viking Sky - Ancient Adriatic Treasures – September 2022

Apologies to everyone for the “topic drift” I feel it is worthwhile to point something out even though, sadly, it is not relevant to the main thread or to uktog’s circumstances. It may be possible to fly to America the day before a cruise and still get a free Viking transfer. We are flying to Miami, overnighting there at our own expense, then transiting onto San Juan the next day where Viking will transfer us to the ship. This is not considered a deviation as we are in transit for less than 24 hours in Miami but makes the whole trip to Puerto Rico much more comfortable. Hence why I want fellow Brits to be aware of the possibility.

I certainly agree with him and I wouldn't recommend that you made that journey in one go. As you probably know international passengers transferring onto US domestic flights have to collect checked baggage from the carousel and take them through customs before re-checking them. This, along with the immigration procedure, makes for a lengthy process and usually results in either an unsettling dash through the airport if the connection time is short or a sometimes lengthy wait at the airport for a later connection. Neither of these is ideal after a transatlantic flight. Our solution (as we have to collect the checked bags and go through immigration anyway) is to book a hotel room at our arrival airport in the US. That way we can go through the arrival procedures without any time pressure, get a good nights sleep in a proper bed, then continue with the domestic flight the following morning. Viking arranged our flights so we could do this on the TA we made from San Juan a few years ago and they have done the same for our Caribbean cruise with them early next year. We land in Miami and spend that night at the airport at our own cost. We then fly to San Juan the next morning arriving around midday. We know from the last time that we will get there rested and ready to enjoy the ship straight away. In contrast fellow Brits who have made the trip in one go will arrive at the ship late the same evening and I expect totally frazzled from the journey. We thoroughly enjoyed both San Juan and the TA that followed. It is a very walkable and historic city with a Caribbean twist. I hope that you can get your wish to visit someday and maybe this post will help persuade your husband that it is certainly possible to make the journey in a reasonably comfortable way.

The first thing to note is that Viking do not have to allow the change and in a worse case you might lose the whole of the sum paid if you cancel. That said, the very good news is that (while it is not guaranteed) Viking will allow you to make a change like this if they possibly can. In fact I was surprised to find that they even go so far as saying exactly this in their terms and conditions for UK bookings. The reason I say that they are likely to be as helpful as possible is based on the following paragraphs from the T&Cs C1.1 If you want to change your travel arrangements in any way you or your Travel Agent must inform us in writing as soon as possible. We will try to help you, although we cannot guarantee that we will always be able to do this as changes are subject to availability at the time. Please note that typically changes to scheduled flight tickets are very restrictive and may not be possible without having to cancel the original flight and rebooking. C1.2 Where we can make a change, we will charge for any additional services, facilities, or other items changed, at the price which applies on the day the change is made. In addition, we reserve the right to apply an administration charge of £100 for each person on the booking together with any further costs we incur, for example with our suppliers, in making any change. I suggest that you use this link https://www.vikingcruises.co.uk/terms-conditions to read through the T&Cs for yourself, to Vikings credit they are written in fairly straightforward English, not legalese. Armed with this information you can then talk to your travel agent tomorrow. One thing to be careful of is to make clear to your agent that you don't want to cancel the booking at this stage, but that you are just enquiring about transferring the deposit over to a new booking. I have read on this board about people who were caught out by an overenthusiastic agent who canceled the existing booking first before setting up the new booking which messed up Viking's system and lost them their money. Good luck with this and do post again to let us know how you get on.

We are doing this itinerary in January and so maybe I could tack on my own question to this thread..... I do like to be up at dawn sometimes to watch the sail-in but I'm not sure that I want to be up that early every single day of the trip. Are there any port arrivals on the West Indies Explorers cruise that are known for being more/less photogenic than others?

If you are looking to get into the forest, the El Yunque Rainforest excursion out of San Juan is described as moderate. We did this earlier this year from the Viking Octantis and I expect the one available in December will be much the same. I would say that 2/3 of the excursion would be accessible even to someone with a degree of mobility difficulties. It was an easy walk from the parking area into the newly reopened forest visitor centre and the bus parked just across the road from the waterfall. The only questionable part would be the walk we made down into a valley to see a rocky river section of the forest. It was about 30 minutes down 30 minutes by the river and 30 minutes back. I'm not sure what you mean by "slipper slopes" if that is a typo for steeper slopes then you might have an issue with that part of the trip. These things are hard to quantify but the pathway zigzagged down into the valley and was somewhat steep in parts. However the path was relatively well made. I have attached a photograph which is not particularly great in itself but is the one which best shows the quality of the path. We very much enjoyed the excursion overall especially the informative and knowledgeable guide who was from the UK, now living on the island, with many years experience in sustainable forestry. Hope that helps!

I'm Happy to join you Liz. Have you tried using the brass telescope? I was surprised to find it really works and it's not just there for show. Just spotted the Francis Ford Coppola Zinfandel on the wine list, so that'll do for me 🍷

It seems that Viking’s promise of a guaranteed priority reservation at each alternative restaurant no longer applies – at least to those in DV category cabins. When dining reservations opened and I was unable to make a booking I queried this with guest services and received the following response by email “The higher grade staterooms do have access to pre-book their dining earlier, and regrettably by the time the dining was open for you, all of the tables of two have already been selected.” At first, as with all information from guest services, I took this with a grain of salt. My brother-in-law (who is on a different cruise) subsequently received exactly the same explanation over the phone. Yesterday @crimmj posted in another thread that “Someone in our rollcall finally contacted Viking and was told that all the reservations had already been taken by the higher ranking cabins.” The consistency of the explanations indicates that this was not a glitch in the system but a change in policy which has removed the assurance that priority reservations for DV cabins are “guaranteed”. I have no issue with Viking modifying their policies, they are perfectly entitled to do so and things will naturally evolve as time goes on. Nor am I particularly worried about getting reservations once on the ship, as this has been no issue in the past. What I do find very troubling is that Viking still claim on their website and within their publicity material that DV cabins will have “1 guaranteed priority reservation at each alternative restaurant”. They have then failed to provide those in DV cabins with the opportunity to make any advance reservations at all when the relevant booking date is reached. This strikes me as what I believe is known in the US as “bait and switch” i.e. advertising something as part of the package which is not delivered when the time comes. As I say, I have no problem with a change of policy. However, I will be contacting Viking again to suggest they should immediately remove that valueless “guarantee” from their promotional material so as not to mislead customers who book in future.

The Explorers' Lounge is our favorite place on the ships and one of our favorite places in all the world. This is not only because of expansive views and the fact that Mamsen’s is just around the corner. It is also because, for some reason, this is the place where we often seem to ask folks drinking at the bar “may we join you?” Those four words have resulted in meeting the most charming of people and enjoying fascinating, enriching conversations that we will never forget. That interaction continues to a degree though this forum. However, while the topic structure of the forum is certainly helpful for asking questions and passing on information on particular themes, people are (quite rightly) discouraged from posting comments that drift too far from the subject of that topic. I would like to propose this Virtual Explorers' Lounge topic as the place where everyone can let their conversations take any direction they wish just as in the real Explorers' Lounge - CC forum guidance permitting of course! As well as offering the opportunity for more social interaction this could perhaps provide a partial solution to topic drift as people would be able to suggest “drifters” post here to continue their chat, rather than clogging up a particular topic. If enough people feel it would be useful, then our moderator might even consider making the topic a “sticky” where everyone can find it easily. What do you all think?