tsakishuman

Right next to the sign for berth 93 there is a ride share area with benches. We got off the ship yesterday morning around 0830, called a Lyft and got home by 0930. I’m sure you can easily get a Lyft or Uber to LAX. Our 36 mile trip was around $55 before tip. 

4 hours ago, Murt22 said:

How about SPAM?

There was “Hawaiian sushi” that had pieces of spam inside. 

On 12/30/2023 at 12:12 PM, CurlerRob said:

 

The previous Dec. 12 sailing was missing the live TV channels as well - also explained as due to "location" issues. Strangely enough, the news channels reappeared to 2 days just short of Hawaii.

 

My cynical view is that it had nothing to do with location and everything to do with cost of provision or contractual issues between Viking, Starlink and/or the various providers.

 

No big deal - lots of ways to get news, especially when the internet is very good without having to share bandwidth with the TV streams. I saw a 25% decrease in speed for the 2 days the live TV was available. Enjoy your trip! 🍺🥌

As you said, the channels reappeared today two days out of Kauai 

A few comments to add. As always, the staff are superb. So attentive and friendly. Our cabin steward is delightful. Sleeping has been somewhat challenging. While I enjoy rocking to sleep, the motion has been more jolting as if somebody picked up the bed and dropped it. So far have played baggo, music trivia and two dance classes. Lectures are quite good. Food, yes I know, very subjective, has been hit or miss and not quite as good as our previous cruises. Here are a few of my personal misses: while the scones served at tea in the winter garden are delicious, I found the finger sandwiches to be very lacking in flavor. I love corned beef hash for breakfast, but this version looks oddly like powdered meat. Anyway, we have many meals to go so I’m not judging based on a few things. Tonight we have chefs table. 
Something I wasn’t expecting is the choice of TV channels. GS told me that due to the itinerary, they are only offering four channels: Smithsonian channel, Arts and Culture,Movies now and then and Movies now. So for you news junkies, no news channels. 

MVJ was updated today and they added the line which they highlighted. 

54 minutes ago, PRH said:

We board the Octanis on Oct 1 in Toronto so the question is whether Viking staff will agree that no pre-boarding lab test is required.  I won’t even bother calling Viking as customer service rarely seems to have up-to-date information in my experience.

We are going to test anyway just to make sure we don’t have any issues. I chatted with Viking today and they are still operating under the sept 23 guidelines. 

Today received an email that our bike excursion in Toronto has been cancelled. Just booked it last weekend. Hard to believe they can’t find another bike tour. Very little left to choose from now and nothing that interests us. It also put $300 pp back into our voucher account which we are struggling to spend before we board. 

We also logged in at noon PST today to book our excursions. Miraculously, we got all that we wanted but we are doing things like kayaking and cycling which seem to be less popular. I was disappointed that the only included excursion in Saguenay (and the only one I was remotely interested in) was sold out so we have nothing planned for that day so far. I also thought that due to the high cost of this cruise that the excursions, with the exception of some very expensive ones like helicopter rides, would be included. Alas, not. Even our kayaking adventure in Halifax is $400. Fortunately, we had over $1600 pp in two year old voucher money to spend so all of it went on the excursions and I still have some left over so we will likely use it towards Silver Spirits and pre-paid gratuities as we must use it or lose it. I am hoping we will get to make use of some of the watercraft on the ship like the zodiacs and the RIB's as they were mentioned for each port but mysteriously disappeared when the excursions became available to view. 

We are arriving in Toronto at 0615 on departure day. We have Viking air. Will Viking still pick us up if we arrive that early?  We won’t be able to get on the ship for several hours I believe. 

We are also supposed to depart on Jan. 12 NL. We are also doing a three day pre-extension in Iceland. Who knows what will happen? Our excursions opened on Saturday and it seemed weird to book excursions for a cruise that will probably not happen but we did. We only booked three optional excursions and the cost was over $1,000 per person. They all seemed quite expensive. There was a wolf experience that we had thought about doing until we saw it was $750 pp. Yikes! We still don't even have air booked yet. We have over $24,000 in vouchers locked into this deal so it would be nice to know if and when this cruise will cancel so we can figure out how to use these vouchers later in some hopefully less covid restricted situation. 

I think Viking opened up a can of worms when they implemented this contact tracing business on the ocean cruises. It gives governments free reign to do whatever they want with people who simply have the misfortune of being too near a passenger who tests positive. Bermuda doesn't quarantine contact traced individuals so why even contact trace if there is no outcome? There is no contact tracing on the Viking river cruises. Why is that? I work in a hospital and for the last 18 months have come into contact with countless positive covid people but have not gotten infected by using common practices such as masking, hand washing, etc. If we contact traced and quarantined, nobody would come to work. Time to ditch the contact tracing discs of doom.

On 6/28/2021 at 7:57 AM, FoggyEthan said:

So that if someone tests positive, they can quarantine anyone who was near that person.

Of course, only Viking knows, but I don't believe passengers are quarantined if the tracer indicates they have been close to a person who tests positive. Since passengers are tested daily, there is no reason to expect to be quarantined if you continue to test negative. Here are my thoughts about the tracer - it is possible that Viking is using this technology to gather data. If somebody tests positive during the cruise, the tracer will know who they have been near. If those people continue to test negative this is just more data to suggest that the strategies that Viking is using are effective. As the data comes in, hopefully it will show that vaccinated travelers are unlikely to transmit or get the virus from another vaccinated passenger. As time goes by, the data gathered will allow Viking to make adjustments with regards to capacity, testing frequency, etc. Just my thought. 

If the test has PCR in the name you will be fine. A RT-PCR test means reverse transcription PCR, not "rapid test" PCR. Stay away from rapid antigen tests, they are lateral flow immunoassay tests and NOT PCR. 

On 3/28/2021 at 2:36 PM, Cruise Guy76 said:

Right, but what is the name of the actual test?

The actual name of the test is generally referred to as SARS CoV 2 antigen test. Most often done by PCR which is the gold standard. There are differences depending on the platform the test runs on. For example, there is the Cobas 8800 analyzer, the Amplitude by Thermo Fisher, the Panther Holigic and I'm sure there are others. It would be interesting to know which manufacturer provides Viking with their testing instrument. And I hope they have more than one on board because these instruments do "go down" from time to time and I'm sure there is very little onsite tech support in the ocean.

We have also had an unusual experience with our vouchers. Our May 2020 cruise was cancelled by Viking on March 30 and on that same day we instructed our TA to book the same itinerary for April 2021 using the 125% voucher. It was all completed on that day and we used the extra from the voucher to add on an Iceland pre-extension and we still have a bit left over. About a week later, we decided to also book an additional cruise - Canadian Discovery for October 2022 and put down a $1,000 deposit.  Last week we mysteriously received a credit on our credit card for $1,000. I called my TA to see if she knew why the credit. She told me that she had been working with Viking for over two weeks due to the fact that for some reason they applied the vouchers to the 2022 cruise and not the one we originally booked for 2021. So now I have a cruise that is 30 months away that is paid in full and one in 2021 that is now not paid for and the final payment is due next month. Seriously? My TA is still trying to get this fixed. 

18 hours ago, ingres said:

We have two Viking Ocean cruises booked. I agree that the safest option is to wait for a vaccine. But there is a 5 minute Covid-19 test. I would feel safer if Viking tested all passengers on embarkation.

I work in a hospital lab and run the "5 minute" test. It is the Abbott ID NOW test that is in the news. It actually takes 15 minutes to perform a complete test including the incubation time for the reagent and the reaction afterwards. The five minutes they talk about is if the patient is positive the endpoint of the reaction can occur before the full fifteen minutes.  It realistically can only test about four patients per hour so if there were only 900 passengers on board we would be testing for a while. This test is unfortunately not the answer to widespread testing. 

14 minutes ago, JER/MPR said:

I also thank you for your incredible knowledge of all things on the seas.  Does this apply for all countries or just the US?  Maybe once the 5 minute Coronavirus test is readily available it would make a cruise more feasible?  Just thinking it may be a very long time until most ports will welcome cruise ships again.      

I know there is a lot of news about the “five minute test.” Let me clarify a few things as I am a clinical laboratory scientist manager  who has been trained to run the Abbott Laboratories ID NOW test. As the test is based on RNA amplification of the virus, a positive test can be detected as early as five minutes however if there is no virus to replicate, the time to result a negative is closer to 15 minutes. Additionally this test can only perform a single sample at a time so it is not practical to consider it as a mass testing application. It’s use is more suited to situations such as a patient needing emergency surgery and must be tested prior to surgery. 

Explorers lounge also good for a little line dancing with ACD Matthew on the Viking Sun. Homelands 2018.

This thread has gone off the rails. Used to be informative. Moving on

I chatted online with a Viking rep and asked specifically about this. She said they have no policy requiring doctors “permission slips” for those over 70. Hopefully this won’t change as this kind of measure really disturbs me. I am married to someone over 70. He is in great health and works out every day. On our last two cruises we went on bike rides and kayaked in Norway. He can hang with the best of them. As people get older, they find more and more things are taken out of their control. I would hope that travel is not going to become dependent upon hoping your doctor doesn’t refuse to give you permission. 

If you are going to go through the trouble of “pretending” to wash, why not just do it properly? I’m glad the crew are enforcing this. Why go to the trouble of taking everyone’s temps if morons are going to spread their grubby germy hands around? Maybe they should have passengers sign a hand washing contract with a noncompliance penalty of keel-hauling. 😜

8 hours ago, Clay Clayton said:

Just an FYI, we just boarded Sky in Miami and the enhanced preboarding medical assessment included additional questions regarding travel within the last two weeks as well as a temperature check.  

Any idea what happens if, God forbid, somebody has a temperature pre-boarding? I understand they will not be allowed to board but do they just get left at the dock and have to figure out how to get home?

7 hours ago, Haworth said:

You need to wash for  2 minutes, not 20 seconds.

Please stand between me and the buffet with your I know best attitude

 

Enjoy you next cruise in splendid isolation 

Actually, the CDC recommends washing for 20 seconds. That is also the policy of the hospital I work in.

We will be on this cruise in May. Wondering if anyone has either done or heard about the Local Farm Visit optional excursion in Dublin. Is it any good? It looks interesting. Also, was there any way to get into Dublin from the ship like a shuttle that travels back and forth from the port if we wish to explore on our own. 

We did the jazz canal cruise in Copenhagen. We picked the last departure and it was near sunset so the lighting was amazing. Great time.