SantaFe1

Oh, oh. We are on Neptune in three weeks and I don’t really know what this means.

From our 2019 WC

We are taking our first River cruise this fall on one of the typical Longships. 190 pax 53 crew.

OMG,I hate the beds, so hard. Give me a back ache. My husband loves the beds. He hates the pillow top at home. We travel a lot on Viking, so I guess it evens out, lol.

We have this same pic from the observatory at the end of the 2019 WC.

Boy oh boy, Linda, so scary. Glad we are doing British Isles Explorer and Rhine the rest of this year.

And we use Aardvark—“Aardy”. Recommended by AARP, we have used them for years. Again, they are a broker, and you can compare insurance policies online. Their agents are just so helpful!

Exactly!

Unlike others here, mine adds the credit upon making final payment 6 months out. That way I can use it toward shore ex.

Hi Dee. We are a week behind you, arriving in London May 6 and embarking the 9th.

Go check again quickly. I just checked, and it is showing two left! EDIT. Sorry, thought this was posted on my particular roll call. So I have no idea about what you might see on yours.

You are missing my point. Which is that Hilo during that time frame either has a usable port or it didn’t. I know that things change. But to change and then chance back without explanation is just plain not honest. Look, I have been on a lot of VO cruises, including a WC. I know things change, I am good with that. But this is just plain not honest!

This happened to us twice on our Hawaiian sojourn cruise last month. About a year out, they said we had to skip Hilo because of “dock issues.” So we got two days in Honolulu instead. OK. Well then a couple of months before the cruise, we got a notice that we would not be going to Kauai because they couldn’t get sufficient shore ex. Instead we would be going to Hilo. Viking’s veracity is in question I think.

I think many who travel with Viking are long past thinking of cruises as vacations, although they may have a budget. Once retired, we just travel, hopefully not at peak times. Do we have a budget, sure, but in retirement, we have determined what is most important to us. It is traveling. We have 8 VO cruises under our belts, with three more and a river trip coming up. Viking must be doing something right.

I’d like to,”like” this three times. Yes! We are coming to the end of our big travel years, and Viking just fits us so well.

I hate to admit this, but I do the same thing. After a WC and 7 other VO cruises, and usually in the same room. My husband now just automatically says “turn right” when the door opens.

Yes, yes, yes. I am directionally challenged. I am going to stop talking on this topic…

Just for fun, here is the “official” explanation.

Well, I think like the couple of people who missed their March 2 birthdays on our WC crossing west to east, the ship will decide what it will do and do it. Maybe they will label reservations May 2 #1 and May 2 #2, lol.

Yes, as soon as you cross the line you go back to the previous day. So going West across the line you would get two May 2 and going East you would get no May 2.

There are certainly a lot of cruise ships, but we’ve done Alaska multiple times and there is still a lot of the world to see.

We had chef Joseph and he was great.

Yes. I realized after I wrote this that you would be going East. We were on he 2019 WC on the way to Australia etc. so you will get the groundhog day effect. But I think all the WCs go east. I would love to do your cruise, but we did Alaska last year, and wouldn’t want to repeat that.

Jim and Andy might have other memories, but I remember we crossed the IDL on March 2. It just disappeared, and at a certain hour it became March 3. They had a special birthday party for the few who had missed their special day. And I remember the Captain talking about how he loved the IDL, because if he had a bad day he could skip over it, or coming back, if a good, one he could live it again. Groundhog Day style. It is a bit disconcerting.

Amen to that!