CDNPolar

Wow! I have been waiting 2 years for interview! Perhaps this will be a wave of approvals. The fact is that the backlog will be considerable if they don't do something.

This is interesting - the zodiac cruising. I am not sure that our line offers that? I have never read about that before. There is another mention of zodiac cruising in this thread I think... Going to look into this.

We have medical and evac insurance through work that it better than we can purchase separately.

My understanding is that if you are in the 400'ish range of passengers, to get everyone on shore every day - weather permitting - then you will only get one landing per day and most state that the landing time is between 1 and 2 hours each landing. We have to be aware that they are shuttling people via zodiac boats back and forth and that just takes time. We understand that we will be "scheduled" each day with a time to go ashore. We had friends that did a much smaller ship and they got 2 landings everyday. I would go directly to Viking for this information. We are not sailing with Viking so our information may be different. I do know that ships with more than 500 passengers cannot do landings, so the closer you have to 500 the less time and number of landings you will have.

We have changed our thought process on insurance completely. Unless I am missing something, we all pay Viking far before any penalty of cancellation kicks in. For instance, we pay Viking typically about 6 months before sailing. There are NO penalties to cancel until 120 days before or 4 months. In that two months after full payment I can still get back all but $100 per person to fully cancel. Anytime before that 120 days I can cancel for any reason that I want and lose $100 per person from my deposit or just move my sailing to another date and lose nothing. (Which we have done several times) Now, I don't know how air works with Viking and that cancel before penalty? I think it is still ok since they don't ticket the air - unless you ask for tickets earlier - until about 75 days before sailing. We however now typically buy our own air and we ensure that we are buying air that has no change fee and has a one or two year credit for cancellation. We have moved to never buying our cancelation and interruption insurance until a few days before the 120 day penalty period kicks in. Why would you pay for insurance before any penalty is in place? You are just giving Viking and the Insurance company money to make money with. And I have heard negative things about moving a trip with Viking's insurance... you might lose the cost of your insurance.

Thanks, but we are doing Antarctica, but great trip if we do Norway in the winter!!!

My Nexus expired August 2020. I had an appointment booked at Toronto Pearson for September 2020 and I don't remember why it was after my expiry...? Anyway, that appointment was cancelled because of covid and the fact that they shut the Canadian centres. Originally the message was something like a one year extension, then went to a two year extension, now my message is vague with no date. Due to a significant increase in application volume, we are extending the grace period to allow you continued full benefits while US Customs and Border Protection is finalizing your renewal application. Odd part is that my husband and I renewed at the same time and he was granted online immediate renewal and got his new card, and I am required to report in person. We have still used Nexus a few times returning to Canada from overseas (we don't really ever travel to the USA) and my card works like it should.

We are sailing with Hurtigruten in December - next month.

Pre-pandemic Viking Air was different. My Opinion. Now, we have been booking our own air. There is no advantage now for us to book through Viking unless it is Free Air. We were quoted on a recent trip BC air at over 6K per person, and we booked it for 3.5K on our own. Same airline. It seems that there is a lot of trouble with Viking Air Plus lately. I don't necessarily put all the blame on Viking because any air bookings in the last couple of years are frustrating even on your own, but when dealing with contract rates, I would presume Viking's Air Plus agents have their hands tied. I have also experienced that you call once and get once story, call twice and a third time and get completely different story.

Helpful for some experience for sure. Thank you. I don't get the impression that BC is a popular insurance, but then it is not available in every province....?

Patrick - this explains why you did not answer a few questions.... Not sure if you are good to go back and see some of the questions?

Totally agree with your thoughts here...

I don't know what your deal was for price, but Viking were just launching their expeditions to Antarctica when we were booking our upcoming cruise to Antarctica. We are loyal Viking cruisers BUT we found a cruise line that has been doing Antarctica for a long time and has very good reviews. We also bought this at less than half the price of Viking per person. I know that Viking have submarines and this line does not, but that was not enough for us to pay double. This line did not offer free air, and we could only book our air ourselves. This line did not have any contract pricing from Canada. Even purchasing air (Delta One) we are still half price the air included price of Viking. We like to have control over our airline and class, and we would not do Antarctica if we could not pick our cabin solely because of the Drake Strait. Because of the potential for extremely rough seas for 2 days each way, I would only book a mid-ship cabin and would not want to risk being forward or aft.

Thanks for your responses, but I am only thinking about purchasing cancellation and interruption insurance with NO medical attached. I have medical through work that is a very good plan. More so, my question is does anyone have experience with a claim to Blue Cross? Especially interruption or cancellation? My insurance broker tells me that they have a very poor claims payout timeframe and high frustration level for claimants. Under the annual interruption and cancellation plan, you can have a year of coverage for unlimited trips up to 31 days for about $1000.00 (for the two of us based on age) but it only compensates up to $5,000.00 per person regardless the cost of the trip. We are considering doing some land based tours over cruising in the next couple of years and we could do multiple that are under the 5K limit in a year. This would be a considerable saving on cancellation and interruption insurance, but is the saving worth the hassle? Our broker wants us to buy single trip cancel / interruption insurance through Manulife instead.

Only asking about Trip Interruption and Cancellation. NO medical in the plan.

I am not asking about Medical. I am only asking about trip interruption and cancellation. I have more than sufficient medical coverage for travel through my job.

Hello, Anyone with experience with the Blue Cross Trip Interruption / Cancellation plan? This plan allows for multiple trips per year but only compensates to a max of $5,000.00 per person per trip. Anyone with experience with a claim payout? My Insurance broker is advising against going with Blue Cross.

I have never given mis-information. I know that anyone on the ship has access to every wine, spirit and beer. This is not in question and never has been. This is a personal preference of ours to buy SS. We are known to the crew as having SS and there is no issue with ordering anything that we want. There are no "bills" to settle at the end of the cruise. I am not oblivious to the fact that I can get what I want without the SS package. My goodness, people just want to fight any small point here. We all have our own ways and opinions. We prefer to buy the SS because we feel comfortable doing so. Enough said.

It is our money and we spend it the way we please. We personally think that anyone that books a cabin above a V1 or V2 is wasting their money - DON'T Hate on me for this statement - because we spend as precious little time in our cabin as possible. We don't do room service breakfast, we don't sit on the balcony, we are there to sleep only. We don't care about the coffee maker, we don't care about advance bookings for excursions or restaurants. We don't care about the extra space in some cabins. We buy the SS package and we admit that sometimes we may not get our money out of it, but that is what we do.

Is the included wine "just fine"? For us, no. As wine enthusiasts we have grapes and regions that we prefer and the included wines offered daily will never meet our taste. One day we may feel like drinking Pinot Noir vs. the next a Rioja. The SS package gives us this flexibility. To us - no offence to anyone else - the expanded selection is key for us and we probably don't even drink enough to pay for the package! We buy it solely for the selection.

Not a good sign... We are cruising in December and starting to wonder if this is a good thing. We cruised during the pandemic twice with Viking and felt "safe" with the mandates in place, but now, not sure. We don't feel that people are taking covid seriously now. I WILL submit for testing if I am not feeling well, and I will do my required isolation if I must, but I don't want to be in this position when my next cruise is Antarctica. Imagine spending all that money and then being isolated?

Purely out of curiosity, what is the demographic of the guests on board? What countries are people from and is there one country that has a majority? This is one of the things about cruising that I love - meeting people from around the globe.

Any update on Covid count? Just curious on how Hurtigruten is handling this overall. We have sailed Viking during Covid and they have PCR labs on the ocean ships and test all crew and passengers daily. Viking were successful in preventing outbreaks like just happened on the Majestic Princess in Australia.

RR, this remains a mystery, but on some digging and discussions in forums like Trip Advisor, below I have pasted an apparent response from Hurtigruten: Return flights from Ushuaia to Buenos Aires are confirmed a couple days prior; guests will be notified of the return time on board the ship. Due to late notice about the return charter flight times, and the changing of airports, we strongly recommend planning a 10 p.m. or later flight, or an overnight stay in Buenos Aires at the end of your cruise. We are unable to accept responsibility if you miss your booked return flight in the event of a delay of the flight between Buenos Aires and Ushuaia.“ From the above and other discussions I have read, it would seem that not all the charter flights necessarily depart and arrive at EZE which is where I assume that you are flying from? You could be landing back in BA at a smaller regional airport and have to arrange transport to EZE. Because we could not get absolute information from our TA on this, we decided to extend our stay in BA for a few days, thus eliminating the fear or concern of making a flight the same day as the return from Ushuaia. I find it interesting that they don't tell you - and perhaps Patrick can confirm this fact - when your flight time is until "a couple days prior". How is one to plan for this? Also in this apparent response from Hurtigruten, they are denying any responsibility for a missed flight out of BA based on your return after the cruise. I suppose the question is, IF you booked your air through Hurtigruten, when would they book your flight home? We could not book flights through Hurtigruten as they have no contract rates for Canadian travellers. We had to book our own air. Interesting to see this play out. This is our first experience with Hurtigruten and there are bits and pieces that we find frustrating - this being one of them.

Part of the problem that I see with all of this is that so many are passing this off as a mild cold and nothing to worry about. More and more evidence is coming out now about people who have had 2 or more mild cases are having long covid issues, and other heart and lung issues. Some are popping up 2-3 months later. I personally know too many people that are not concerned any longer, and I get after 3 years of lockdowns and masking that no one wants more. Heck, I don't want more, but I also don't want lingering or worse health issues later. I am approaching retirement and want to enjoy life and travel and not be held down by illness because others are careless or misinformed.