photopro2

We would vote for "Into the Midnights Sun" The long, almost endless, days are amazing and it gives the opportunity to visit some out of the way places in the far north without it being too cold!

Well spotted! Thanks for taking the trouble to do that - the stats are very interesting and I will see if I can green anything from them.

The first part of this post is just another retelling of the same story that the OP has previously added into several threads. Amongst other responses to those posts it was pointed out that acting as a travel agent for their parents, without having the background knowledge to do so, was an underlying cause of the problem. As the matter had been so thoroughly discussed I, and indeed the rest of the community, simply ignored this thread when it was originally started back on 18 July. However, following this thread's reappearance on the board I decided to investigate the screenshot data on which the thread is based, only to discover it does not relate to Viking Ocean at all. It is taken from an item on TripAdvisor where a Viking river cruise is listed as number 1 in "Lignan-De-Bordeaux Attractions". https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g1939161-d10813724-Reviews-Viking_Cruises-Lignan_De_Bordeaux_Gironde_Nouvelle_Aquitaine.html See screenshot below. While the absolute numbers of reviews in each category have naturally increased very slightly since the started on July 18th, they are close enough to make clear that this is where the screenshot data originated. I feel it is highly deceptive and unhelpful of the OP to paste this screenshot of ratings for a particular river cruise on the Viking Ocean Cruise Critic board, with the implied suggestion that it is accurate data in relation to ocean cruising in general. Hopefully the moderators will take note of this and act accordingly.

Bless you! 😄

I do agree with much of what you say but I am not sure the opinion quoted above is quite correct. Obviously people do get older and have to stop cruising at some point. But at the same time younger people grow older and enter Viking's target demographic at roughly the same rate as people age and leave it. Therefore, the customer base that Viking is marketing to remains more or less static. Appealing to a younger base is no bad thing of course, because the younger you get customers the longer you have the opportunity to keep them. However, Viking seem to have found their niche by appealing generally to more "mature", more affluent, customers. This seems to have worked for them very well so far and, I would suggest, is probably sustainable. We have done the exact opposite. Having visited most of the places in the world that we were interested in as fully independent travellers when we were younger, we are now happy to put up with the "limitations" of cruise travel. Time has moved us into a stage in life where we are looking for relatively stress free travel and are happy to have most things arranged for us, making us a good fit for Viking as detailed above. Coming back more directly onto topic...... Viking do seem to have noticed that some of their expedition ship offerings have been overpriced. I have just received a brochure from Viking UK, where a number of the Explorer itineraries are reduced in price.The most dramatic being the Antarctica and South Georgia island itinerary, departing 28th of October 2023, which has been reduced from £17,995pp to £9990pp

Viking have dropped the word "guarantee" in regard to dining reservations in the cabin descriptions on the website. They are now simply described as "priority" reservations. Don't worry, they are really just a marketing ploy to give something of apparent value to those in more expensive cabins. The reality for all cabin classes has always been that, once on-board, getting the required reservations is not normally a problem.

Sorry to hear that. It is a reminder that we are all likely to come to a point when our horizons are limited by health issues. Fortunately there are many excellent European itineraries on Viking, requiring only short direct flights from the UK, still to be enjoyed. Thanks for starting the thread though, hopefully it will have helped others discover that there are alternatives to a San Juan embarkation that don't involve a rushed transit through a US Airport and a very late arrival at the ship.

Does anyone recall where the Viking shuttlebus stopped in Buenos Aires city centre? This snippet of information would be a big help to my planning - Thanks in advance. 🙂

Ooop's it was a 787-10. I thought I had better correct that before @FlyerTalker spotted my mistake!

Thanks for reminding me @KBs mum On our Caribbean trip we flew out economy as we find these tolerable for daytime flights, even longer ones. Maybe we are still somewhat young at heart 🍷 @Jim Avery 😁 However, we did upgrade to business for the return. This allowed lounge access during our time in Miami and a (sort of) bed for the night on the way back too in the much improved Club World suites that BA have on the 777's out of Miami. The A380's still have the old style ying yang set up.

Unfortunately, there are no direct flights from the UK to San Juan. However, we have done the trip a couple of times with Viking. Each time they allowed us to fly a day early direct from Heathrow to Miami. We then overnighted at a Miami airport hotel at our own expense. Jetlag made it easy for us to get up at 4.30 the following morning (9.30 by our body clock) to catch the relatively short flight (2.5 hours) to San Juan at around 8.30 arriving about noon. This gave us the whole afternoon to enjoy on the ship. Other passengers from the UK, who had departed from Heathrow that morning, had to rush to change planes in Miami for a same day onward flight to San Juan. They arrived, bleary eyed, late in the evening - something that I would suggest you avoid at all costs! The return is relatively simple as the evening departures from Miami to Heathrow allow plenty of time to change planes on the way back. The break in Miami (and a night in a real bed) made the plane change quite tolerable and we thoroughly enjoyed both the transatlantic and Caribbean cruises that the trip to San Juan allowed.

My sincerest apologies @KBs mum I misread the last line of your post. I mentally inserted the word "this" and read it as "Does this mean......." So thought it was a question despite the lack of a question mark - sorry about that.

The most authoritative answer I could find is a quote from Lord Murray of Blidworth in The House of Lords on 23rd March 2023 where he said: "The European Commission intends that [ETIAS] will be implemented some six months after the operationalisation of the European Entry/Exit System, which is the photograph and fingerprints at the border system I discussed a moment ago. As the noble Baroness rightly observes, the Paris Olympics fall in June next year. On the latest indications from the European Commission, the implementation date has been postponed from the end of 2023 to an uncertain date. It may be that that date will be after the Paris Olympics, but we have no indication one way or the other."

Once the system goes live, you certainly will..... although it is not intended to be a piece of paper as such, but a purely digital authorisation. There will be two steps in the EU visitor entry process for visitors from the UK as well as most other non-EU citizens. Before leaving home, you will need to apply on-line using ETIAS (European Travel Information and Authorization System) Then, when you first arrive at the border of an EU country, you will be required to register on the ESS (Entry/Exit system) If you have not done so previously at that point you will have your photograph and fingerprints taken to add to the EU's database of visitors. This will replace passport stamping. As you are from the UK, you might find this extract from a Parliamentary debate on the subject interesting: https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/2023-03-21/debates/5E5F203B-F411-40FA-AA73-50366D19409F/UK-EURevisedPassengerRequirements

Not just tit for tat Jim, but also a useful revenue stream for the governments concerned. In this case, the USA adopted this particular form of taxation without representation first 😉 The EU and UK are just catching up! The UK government have made a specific decision not to include fingerprint information on the biometric passport chip. It just holds a digital version of the holders photograph as well as personal details. To the best of my knowledge, US passports are the same. The USA started keeping a database of fingerprints from all UK visitors around 2004 (for other nationalities it may have been earlier) so my fingerprints were taken and added to the database on my arrival in the US when I first visited after the system was introduced. It is this type of system that the EU intend to replicate. There has been some scepticism on the thread that all visitors to the EU after a certain date will have their fingerprints taken, but that is exactly what is going to be introduced and this simply replicates what has happened in the US from the early 2000s onwards. A matching system is currently being introduced, and will eventually apply to all visitors to the UK. Here is a quote from the UK government website https://www.gov.uk/guidance/electronic-travel-authorisation-eta "From 15 November 2023, you’ll need an ETA if you’re travelling to the UK and you’re a national of Qatar. You’ll be able to apply from 25 October. From 22 February 2024, you’ll need an ETA if you’re travelling to the UK and you’re a national of: Bahrain Jordan Kuwait Oman Saudi Arabia United Arab Emirates More nationalities will be added to the scheme later."

You're welcome! 😉

However they do say on their site that ESS will be introduced before ETIAS: ETIAS and the EES will not be launched at the same time. The EES will become operational first and ETIAS will follow a few months after. The exact dates will be announced by the EU later this year. I don't think it will be too much of an issue at airports because we are used to queueing at passport control there. It is the extra time needed to process new arrivals through ESS when a ship arrives at any EU port from outside the EU that I am wondering about.

You're not the only one 😕 but this website might help a little: https://travel-europe.europa.eu/key-differences-between-etias-and-ees-2023-06-06_en Yes, that's exactly what I'm suggesting once ESS goes live! The EU will need to get those prints and mugshots from you to add to their database. However, on subsequent visits, you will only need to have a valid ETIAS as that will automatically link to the ESS data when you present your passport on entry.

However the new ESS system that is to be introduced ahead of ETIAS might prove a little problematic ESS requires that visitors have their photograph and fingerprints taken at the first point of entry into the EU. To quote from the ESS website https://travel-europe.europa.eu/ees/faqs-ees_en "If you need a visa to travel to the European countries using the EES, the system will store only your facial image (as your fingerprints have already been registered in the Visa Information System /VIS at the time you applied for a visa). If you don’t need a visa to travel to the European countries using the EES, the system will store a combination of four of your fingerprints and your facial image." As I understand it this means that those arriving at their first port of call in Europe, for instance after a transatlantic, will need to be photographed and fingerprinted to add that data into the ESS system before being allowed out of the port. Therefore you won't simply be able to arrive in Europe and walk off the ship as currently, but will need to be processed in person by immigration first. There are also plans for the UK to introduce a similar system https://www.gov.uk/guidance/electronic-travel-authorisation-eta Of course, I can't resist pointing out that this is all very much in line with what those of us visiting the USA have had to deal with in recent years 😁

No problem, maybe I should have chipped in earlier about the root cause of the issue. You might also be interested to know that the cameras physically rotate to produce the panoramas. This is demonstrated by the wavy horizon that is produced in heavy weather when the rotation of the camera interacts with the movement of the ship. Of course, you may not be at all interested, it might just be me 😁

Sorry to disagree with you Clay but this is not a software issue. You will see from my attached screenshot that the camera is physically misplaced by 90° and producing a panorama of the deck and the sky rather than the horizon. The camera is placed on the highest mast of the forward superstructure and the mast is designed to rotate through 90° so that it can lay flat for maintenance or when going under low bridges. It seems unlikely that the hinging mechanism has failed, so the most likely explanation is that the deck crew have simply "forgotten" to raise it again after it's been lowered. The reason that I know so much about this is we had the same issue on our Midnight Sun Cruise in 2019. When I raised the matter with the General Manager, I was told no uncertain terms that it was not his problem, and he did not understand why I was making a fuss about it. It sticks in my mind as it was, by far, the least satisfactory interaction I have ever had with any Viking staff member! I feel sure that Heather reacted more appropriately when the issue was presented to her, however it seems the deck crew have still not put the camera back in the right place 😕 Maybe someone on-board the ship could point out to management that there is a privacy issue with the camera in this position as it shows areas of the deck (including the putting green) that are accessible to passengers. This is obviously something Viking are sensitive about. If you look carefully at the regular images from the Explorer class ships you will see that publicly accessible deck areas on each side have been pixelated using software so that passengers can't be seen in the images. .

I have always assumed that they are on duty i.e. being paid for the time, but excused from doing their usual work - hence their smiling faces as they take part. For ourselves, we like the experience. The first time it came as a pleasant surprise and now we know it is likely to happen at some point, it is something that we rather look forward to. You obviously feel differently, but I hope you will feel more able to tolerate it, knowing that they are Viking passengers like us who appreciate receiving this sort of greeting from the staff, just now and again.

I seem to recall reading something about there being a charge for freshly squeezed orange, or am I imagining that?

No need for apology, I was looking at the ships as a whole, including cabins. You were quite right to point out that Viking have announced the new sizes for those. That is one of the few things we are not guesstimating 🙂

We are enjoying following along with you and love what they have done with your avatar. I'll save the questions until you get back rather than taking up your time now. Look out for me in the virtual explorers lounge 😁