CDNPolar

Next year's New Year's Resolution will be to try something new, like a new cruise line.

Absolutely. We have been with friends on a cruise and both did the same excursion but on a different bus and guide and our reviews of the excursion have been very different. Again - all subjective which makes the whole exercise difficult to have real value. Once discussion threads get too long - 25 plus responses - I tend to stop reading them unless the subject is really compelling to me. I feel like these would be pages and pages of responses very quickly and then who is going to read from page one to page 25?

A rating system would be great.

True - I have seen many have issue with the easiest of rated excursions. Cobblestones should always be mentioned.

You have looked at the two that are best known for "Adults ONLY" with NO KIDS. Many other cruise lines state that they mostly attract adults, but they all allow kids. Other lines that are mostly adults are that for a couple of reasons: 1) They tend to be more expensive and are more in the luxury area of cruising 2) They have a lack of kids programs and don't have waterslides, and the like to entertain kids In other words, there are not facilities for kids and therefore parents don't typically select these cruise lines. But, if you want no kids, then you are stuck with Viking and Virgin. The mostly adult lines you can consider are: (Don't know where they all sail) P&O Cruises Exolora Journeys Silversea Windstar Cruises Seabourn Regent Seven Seas Crystal Azamara Uniworld I am a Viking loyal and have now been on more than 10 Viking Ocean and River cruises and we have four future Viking cruises booked. I am very early 60's and my husband is younger. Viking does have an older crowd that is very loyal to them and you find different age groups depending on what the itinerary is, and how long the cruise is. Evening entertainment on Viking is not Broadway or big show style like on cruise ships of 3500 people plus. Viking evening entertainment is a 45 minute show from a foursome of singer / dancers that headline the show most nights. Sometimes there is a magician, or a different entertainer, but the shows are not BIG shows. There is the Torshavn Lounge that is the nightclub and it is small and the Viking Band plays there every night. We love Viking because: 1) There are no kids 2) There are no casinos, and art auctions 3) Viking is about the destination and culture of their itinerary 4) So much is included in the cabin price we don't have to think about what extras will cost 5) We love the understated elegance of the Nordic decor and ambiance of the ships 6) We love the food on Viking 7) Most of all, the crew and the service on the ships is outstanding Good luck with your search and hope this helps.

What I am going to suggest is based on your statement: "Been planning to book" This means to me that you have not as yet booked? A couple questions to consider: 1) Are you going to book your air directly yourself or through the cruise line? If you are booking yourself, make sure you are booking air that can be cancelled for a small fee or changed for a fee. We always look for cancel up to the departure time of the flight. This might cost you a few bucks more, but it would be worth it. We had to cancel $8K worth of air at for a trip booked in January, and it cost us $400.00 total to do so. That was direct with the airline. We have 3 round trips booked with Korean Air coming up and all three have cancellation up to departure at $200.00 per ticket. No insurance, no medical reason necessary, just cancel if we want to. 2) If you are booking air through the Cruise Line, then they must have some contingency in place because if their passengers cannot get to the cruise, what are they going to do? I would look into this. Regarding insurance, I agree with both CC members above @GeezerCouple and @klfrodo have said above. Good luck with this, but good on you for looking at this in advance and not booking blindly and then getting bitten in the backside later.

I know that it looks like we are sending you off to do research instead of directly answering your questions and trying to help. The challenge is that Viking loyals will tell you how wonderful Viking is, and Avalon will promote Avalon, and same with Emerald. Go to each Cruise line and look for reviews and you will see the pros and cons. More so, look at individual itineraries. Each cruise line varies slightly in the ports and the length of the cruise. If this is your first River Cruise, then you probably cannot go wrong with any of these that you are looking into. All are reputable and good at what they do. I am Viking loyal, so I would urge you to go to Viking! I have not cruised with the others because my first River Cruise was with Viking and I loved the experience. I am hesitant to try another line because I may be disappointed. I am however like that... If I go to a new restaurant and like the dish I had, I will have that dish again and again when returning to that restaurant. I am afraid to try something new in case it disappoints.

I agree that this would be a great idea, but only a great idea... Why? Because soon the standard excursions would have 1000's of replies with 1000's of opinions and too long and too subjective to read through. Where would you start and where would you end? The other thing is that as we all know on CC is the discussion would quickly get off topic and might not return to the original topic. I really like @Clay Clayton 's idea to put the recorded port talks on MVJ because first we want to know in advance much of the information they share about the port, or city, or country - minus the day's weather of course. Then we want to hear about the excursions themselves. I think that they could also really emphasize how demanding the excursion is for these recorded versions so that folks know in advance. This would help with issues like the Mekong Delta that Clay mentioned. This would really help with

Agree with you on that with your comments about seasoned, but we have not had that experience or had a seasoned agent to work with a second time. Every time we have had a great agent at Viking, we try to email them or contact them in the future, they have been gone, or just don't respond. Good for you that you have the luck you have had with your 7+ year agent.

There may not be other excursions available... For one, Viking only offer one included excursion per port - as a guarantee. We have seen two days in one port with the exact same excursions offered on the second day. I would write tellus@vikingcruises.com and ask this group. You will receive a phone call, usually within 48 hours, and this group is more knowledgable than the average phone agent.

Yeah... not a lot in the grand scheme of things, especially if you are getting points. We now have 4 TD Aeroplan cards all with bonus points in the first year and will be replacing two of these in June to get the latest annual bonus points awards. We get far more firepower out of the points and free airfare than the cost of foreign transaction fees.

We maximize points on cards rather than look for things like no foreign transaction fees. We will move cards annually after all the points bonuses are paid to get the new promotional points. We so rarely buy anything when we are away that the points are worth more to us than the foreign transaction fee. Perhaps one night hotel before a cruise, or a meal or two, but the total charged value is so low that we are talking a few dollars at most in fees.

During winter months, we always fly at least one day early, if not two, to ensure that weather is not a delay or cancelation factor. It is not the airport you are in or going through it is where your outbound flight is inbound from.

Exactly! This is the challenge with modifying or rebooking. When. you call in do you get a seasoned Viking Agent that knows how to do something like this or will you end up with someone that will put you on hold 10 times because he/she/they is consulting with their Supervisor? We have had both and sometimes it is hard to know who you have until you get part way into the maneuver. Some will outright say it cannot be done, and others will bend over backward to try to do it and please you. You could lose your post cruise booking, or the cabin number that you really wanted. Again - for us - too little value to risk all the hassle.

Not sure if you consider Canada an international address (it is but...) but we receive our tags very prompty. However the packaging that Viking now mails or couriers these in, have been broken open 2 out of three times with the last ones sent. It is some kind of small envelop with a "zipper" type pull to open and this has been open on arrival. There is nothing in there of consequence, however not a secure mailing method. We have reported this to Viking.

Yes - these folks travel like guests on the ship and are around and in ear shot quite a lot. Most of these historians we have really enjoyed, and there are some that I would pay money to see again because they were so enthusiastic, but then there have been that one or two that remind me of the most boring lectures in university.

We have travelled with friends (and family) many times now on cruise ships. We have one rule only. We meet every day for dinner. That's it. We don't pick daily excursions together, in fact we encourage all to pick what interests them and book it. If we end up on the same excursion great, but this vacation is not about being together 24/7. Just dinner and the evening together to share stories and experiences of the day. If we see them going to lunch, we will grab a table together, but if they are already in the dining room and no room at their table, then we eat separately or make new friends at another table. If after coming back from an excursion someone says, let's go back into town after lunch, we will if it suits us, but we don't feel any obligation. In fact if going back into the town or city is our plan we sometimes won't mention it because everyone has different wants with a shore visit like this and we have our wants mapped out already. We will slip away and do our thing. We acknowledge this rule at the beginning of the cruise and it has worked well for us. Dinner is always looked forward to and enjoyable.

We have experienced a 3am disembark time more than once, but that was NOT for the entire ship. We often book air through our cruise line, and is the first flight from the final port is at 6:00am or even earlier, the transportation to the airport may start as early as 3:00am. We have experienced this on several cruises. I would suspect that your individual disembark time is based on when your flights are and if you have transport through the cruise line to the airport.

Just as an aside to your comment, the saving piece for us is that we have the airline apps and also I pay for Tripit as a travel app. All my notifications come through these apps for delays, changes, etc. No need for cellular service as long as you have data or Wifi.

You can have them sent elsewhere. Viking don't want them going astray... We don't care about the red leather luggage tags that they send because we have some 15+ of them sitting in a drawer. We just want the temp ones that you put on your luggage at the final destination so Viking Crew can identify and get your luggage to your cabin. We have landed without these in the past and it is a bit of a surprise that those greeting us at the airport don't have blanks that they can use, and the last time it was a bit of a scramble to get some sort of sticker on our luggage to identify it.

Correct - not by the terms of the vouchers when you purchase them. They can only be applied at the time of booking the cruise, so if you don't have a voucher when you book, you cannot apply them later... BUT.... as per my post #3, we were told directly by the Hotel Manager, that he checked with reservations and you can call and find a work around to apply them - either cancel and rebook, or do some modification to the booking. We just decided that the hassle of calling reservations and attempting to do this was too much. (This is where Viking shared information sometimes breaks down... one person says this, you call and then that information is contradicted. We don't trust that this is actually doable.) We have four advance Viking cruises booked. We won't buy the vouchers because if we are not successful in applying them to our current bookings, then we will be sitting on them for at least 2 years, and even longer before they are actually redeemed. We are booked now into 2026, so we would not qualify to apply them until a 2027 cruise.

The Hop On Hop Off bus is a standard for us if we are self-touring a city. In Barcelona, this gave us the view of what we wanted to invest our time in the next day. We bought a 2 day pass so that we could target our tour locations for the next day and use the bus to get there. In Malaga Spain, we saw beautiful areas of the city that we would not have otherwise. In Sydney Australia, the bus got me to Bondi Beach which I would not have traveled to directly, just for that. I could go on and on... If we have the time in a city, this is one of the first things we do.

We love the Resident Historian talks that are on Viking Ocean. We scan through their offerings and if not on shore, we will go to most if not all. We have sometimes also altered our shore schedule because we wanted to go to a specific talk. This is one of the things that sets Viking Ocean apart for us. This is a country, region, city, town focus that gives you so much advance knowledge of where you are going to visit tomorrow. These historians tell you about the history, but also the present day that is of interest. When you visit these cities, you have some background that you may not have had before. Even on River, often the crew is from that area of the world and can shed light on the history. It was the Cruise Director that shed light for us on Tito when we were cruising Eastern Europe. We did not understand why Tito was so admired but she really helped us to understand the thinking of the people at that time. This is something that in my mind Viking excels with and especially for new Viking guests, check out the Resident Historians and their talks.

Not true in Canada. I can purchase travel insurance through Costco for any travel I do. It does not have to be travel booked through Costco Travel.

With respect, for someone with mobility issues, ships that are rafted often have one or two stairs up and down between the ships and they are not always a level walking field between ships. Additionally, if you are rafting and have to go from the sun deck, the elevators do not go to the sun deck and again for someone with mobility issues, this might be a challenge getting up and then down that set of stairs to the sun deck.