SantaFe1

Agreed. I would add it to my already long list..

Well, now, sail ins are a different topic. Sydney and Rio for sure.

Looking forward to that one next year.

Went back and tried to edit but too late. Techinically, the port is Messina, but Sicily.

Again in no particular order St Petersburg Cape Town Sydney Barcelona Bora Bora Taormina.

Yes, thank you, I thought you might chime in. This isn’t apples to apples. We had already bought the business class tix. But Delta would not rebook us on another class. So, I withdraw my comment. Not apples to apples. But still frustrating!

We’ve missed Morocco twice, so I will be happy if we finally get there. But I am going for Malta. I’ve been intrigued by it for years!!

We aren’t until Nov. 2025, but we haven’t heard anything.

Really glad to hear this. We we had been on United!

From past experience I would say the only way you can do this is book it as two one way tickets, one in business and one in Prem. Econ. Even with a multi city flight you can’t mix. The airlines seem strick about this and in Milan Delta would not even let us downgrade to PE from Business when our flight was canceled and we had to rebook. We had business class tickets and we could only rebook as business class, and since there were no Business class seats available on the flight we wanted, we had to take a less desirable flight. Really made me mad!

Even when we lived in L.A. and even when we were younger, I had no wish to do that flight in ANY class. Our solution? World cruise leaving Miami on Jan 2 and arriving in Sydney on March 15. 2 1/2 months comfortably traveling to Australia.

On our WC in 2019 we were supposed to have two days in Port Stanley. We booked both a morning included excursion and afternoon optional excursion. We stayed in town for lunch and caught the second excursion from town, no going back to the ship. However, we were supposed to be there two days, overnight. The seas were so choppy, that the first night around 8 pm, the Captain rounded up everyone from the three pubs and brought them back to the ship and we sailed out before the deadly winds. So you never know what you will get. I’d book two tours the first or only day and hope for the best. and I should say upon editing, that we lost our Penguin excursion the next day. We booked another later on

Without getting into details, the worst cabins we have ever had were a gty PV1 and an upgrade from PV1 to PS 1. I have a specific cabin we like, I book it every time and I don’t want Viking messing with it!!

Agree!

We we in Portsmouth on our WC in 2019 after something necessitated a schedule change. We went to Stonehenge and I just loved the port. I’ve also been on a cruise with Regent that docked in Southhampton (for London), and I just hated it. Just too big and industrial. To each their own, but for my fantasy BIE2 cruise, I’d choose Portsmouth.

We did it too.

Well, from your mouth to god’s ear, as they say. I would book this in an instant. I think I’ve been to all the places suggested, but not all at once and most many years ago, in the 90s, mostly. And I really do like the Greenwich to Greenwich aspect. Just a RT plane ticket to London. Thanks for taking the time to do this!

Oh I’m so glad you chimed in. I have a proposal and many questions for BIE II. I have wished that the BIE cruise could just be a circumnavigation of the British Isles. London to London. So much easier flights. Bergen is hard to fly from. Now if you haven’t been to Norway, then BIE I is for you. But if you’ve been to Norway many times, as we have, then maybe just lop that last part off. But, although I love York, it is not a port. Are the ports in NE England? I would personally love to visit the Channel Islands, the Hebrides, the Faroes, and visit again Skye.

Oh, I want to like this three times! It is so often missed due to weather. Originally, I think, they had it on the British Isles Explorer cruise, which we did in May, but they took it off due to it so often being missed.

Nope, I just pulled this off the website, under the Viking Difference: One complimentary shore excursion in every port of call

So, is this about you feel cheated? I’m really not sure quite where you are coming from? Believe me, I’ve had worse “tours” when there WAS a guide.

I would love to do this! My husband has been asking about a trip to Greenland, so I will have to look into this. And I would do Iceland again in a heartbeat.

Well, this is the million dollar question. It changes by the port and I can’t for the life of me remember how it worked in Reykjavik during Covid. Often, you just set it out the night before and never see it again, you don’t have to claim it the next morning, it just arrives at your house the next week. And again, you can track it on their website. But sometimes if they aren’t allowed admission into the terminal you have to retrieve it and take it somewhere else when they are stationed. This happened to us in Barcelona and Los Angeles. But on your printed instructions it will say, and Viking Guest Services is always happy to double check for you. I’ve never really had a problem.

Yes, we had problems twice. We used them the first time on our WC in 2019. I had bought a cheap suitcase to take because we had so much stuff. It was in our room in FLL when we arrived with the zipper broken. I guess you get what you pay for. I still had the receipt and they reimbursed me. The second time we had a problem was last year in Alaska. We got to our stateroom on the ship and the suitcase was on the bed. Great! Opened it up to get things out to wear to dinner and everything was damp and mildewed. It had been sitting in a warehouse for a week and had gotten wet, I guess. Viking, in a colossal act of kindness sent everything to be laundered, pressed or dry cleaned before dinner!! But, my white cashmere sweater had had something bleed color onto it, and it was ruined. Unlike the cheap suitcase, this was an expensive sweater. But I had bought it online at Nordstrom the year before, looked up my past orders, and sent them the e-receipt. LF paid the full price back to me. So, not too bad an experience either time.

We’ve used them twice this year, (and will use them again this fall for our Rhine River cruise) Once domestically to L.A. for our Hawaii cruise and once to London for our British Isles cruise. They can go locked domestically, but not internationally. They still don’t allow air tags, but I guess you can sneak them in. The website allows you to track the bags’ progress anyway. The content restrictions aren’t bad—mostly things I would carry on anyway, like medications. The strangest one was no clothes with the price tags still on them (go figure). But the convenience really outweighs the restrictions. Coming back from Iceland three years ago, we would never have made our connection at JFK if we had had to claim our bags!