katlew

Time to finish last night & today… last night we are at Manfredi’s. We enjoyed it so much our cruise before Covid that we had regretted only having one reservation. This time we’ve made two. It was a lovely meal & all the steak eaters said it was as good as they remembered. I had the lamb chops, which were so good. My MIL wanted the pavlova dessert that was in the restaurant but not Manfredis & they had it brought to her. Today was Christmas and a sea day. Seas are calm & it is 70’s and sunny. We slept in and had breakfast at the World Cafe. I think everyone slept in and ate late, it was so busy. They had panettone & stollen available as Christmas treats. When we went back to our room later there was a panettone as a Christmas gift. There were lots of lectures today as well has holiday trivia, Christmas name that tune, & Christmas shows. We chose to just find our own quiet corner of the Wintergarden & play games. There are different Christmas cookies available as treats throughout the day. Once again the boat just feels like there is so much space to hang out. The pool was busy & the roof was open, but there were plenty of open lounge chairs. No chair hogging or reserving at all. We had lunch in the restaurant which was about 1/2 full. There was a chocolate buffet in the World Cafe tonight for Christmas & a lovely Christmas meal. It seemed a lot of people went to the restaurant early for dinner & then headed to the cafe for dessert. We had a late dinner in the restaurant & everyone in our group loved it from the caviar to the beef Wellington to the Christmas charm dessert. One of our group wasn’t feeling great & her husband wanted to bring her dessert. The restaurant had it delivered to her room. We have a better handle on the Silver Spirit package now & just ask for a wine menu right away. There hasn’t been any other issues finding what we want though they have been out of some beers. We’ve found it always pays to ask too. There were no Cabs by the glass on the list, but when we asked we found out a new one was just being adding & we could get it that night. Tomorrow we go to Wellington, our last NZ port before our unexpected 4 sea days. We’ll be interested to see what is planned. Well hopefully hear what excursions will be available for Adelaide soon too. I’m interested to see how they handle opening those, will it be a free for all? Btw, it seems there are more ships being caught with the snail problem. Seeing what some are getting to make up for it, we are happy with what Viking is giving us.

Thank you for all of that! I’m actually very excited to add Adelaide to the trip. We are there NYE at 6am & leave NYD at 6am from what I understand. The city bus/tram looks like an easy way to get around. Not sure where our port is yet.

Thank you for that. We have said from the beginning we will roll with the punches with this cruise. Nothing is back to normal yet, but we are not suffering for sure! The voucher will pay for another vacation too!

Ok, back to what we’ve done. We arrived in Tauranga and were off the boat by 9:10. We hired a driver from Tours By Locals to take 8 of us to Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland. It is a National park with mud pools & a lot of geothermal activity. They have walks throughout that take about 90 minutes. We were glad it was overcast, as it would have been very hot. We also visited the redwood forests & drove through the kiwi growing area & Rotorua. It was a very interesting day, that got us back just in time for 4pm boarding. Over drinks afterwards, we learned about the changes above. Today is Christmas Eve. The boat has trees & garland around, but not over the top. The atrium has a big gingerbread house display as well as a large menorah. There have been Hanukkah services every evening in Torshavn. Tonight there is a Christmas concert from Denmark streamed in the theater at 6pm. Then there is a Christmas concert by the musicians here followed by Christmas carols with the crew. They are also showing Its a Wonderful Life on the pool deck. A Christmas service will be late night in the theater. We are dressing now for our first dinner at Manfredis.

Well, I was going to tell you about holiday activities on board, but the cruise has taken a bit of a turn. New Zealand authorities found snails on our haul & say they have to be removed, but no one in the area can do it. So, we are at sea tomorrow, going to Wellington on the 26th, and then will have 4 days at sea missing Christchurch, Dunedin, and Hobart. We will instead sail to Adelaide, Australia, which wasn’t on the itinerary, and spend two days there. We are getting our tour money back and a voucher worth 50% of our cruise fare. We are rolling with the punches as I read one Princess cruise just went through the same thing & was told another one just got the same news! Yeah, we are bummed to miss done ports, but we aren’t in a blizzard, someone cleans my room everyday and brings me drinks.

Today was our first morning waking up on the boat, though we are still in Auckland. We were woken this morning at 7 by the biohazard announcement out in the halls. I know they were doing it for those with morning tours, but we’d hope to sleep in a little more. We had breakfast in a relatively quiet World Cafe before our 9:45 City of Sails Panorama Tour. The tour was a good overview of the area, but we were glad we had had 4 days before to explore much more. We left the tour just before it ended because the photo stop was near the viaduct area where we planned to have lunch. We ate at Sixteen Tun which was more bar than restaurant, but features all local beers & ciders. The food was really good too, especially the shared items like the kumara fries and salt & pepper squid. (All the restaurants here are crazy busy leading up to the holidays & most by the water had no reservations available for lunch even.) After lunch, we went to the Maritime Museum. It’s a nice museum for those interested in some of the history of the area & also the America’s Cup. We needed to be back on board by 5 for our 6pm sailing. Oddly, once we got back on the boat a few of us were called to cone down to the Chef’s Table for immigration. They asked my husband to come down but not me. I went with him just incase. They said it was because we had embarked after immigration had left the day before. Something was obviously wrong because we came together & if he hadn’t gone through, I wouldn’t have either. I’m the end the list was wrong & he had gone through, so we’d been called down for no reason. It happened to half of all three couples in our group. anyway, that taken care of, we enjoyed a drink in the sun near the infinity pool as we sailed out Auckland. We have the Silver Spirits package, but it’s been a little tricky to figure out what wines we can order by the glass except at the restaurant where we were given a menu right away. It seems they aren’t all available at every bar. it was the seafood buffet in the World Cafe tonight, so we had dinner there. Typically, we prefer a sit down meal to a buffet. They had the New Zealand mussels as well as all the other favorites like crab legs, soft shell crab, & do on. We keep mentioning how the boat feels like it isn’t full, even at the meals & buffet. We have been wearing masks on the elevators, bus, and in lines, but sitting down we are able to socially distance easily. All the staff are still masked & it seems like about 10 percent of the pax are. It’ll be interesting to see how we fare once we test to enter Australia in about a week.

I tried yesterday evening, but too many people in blue!

Oh, I totally forgot to mention that we did a small group tour to Hobbiton & the Glow Worm caves during the extension. We used Auckland Scenic tours & went with two other couple from the ship. It was a long day 6:30am - 6:00pm with lots of driving. But our driver was interesting & we enjoyed both stops. Hobbiton is very sweet with beautiful gardens. It wouldn’t have been very interesting if we hadn’t been fans of the movies I think. The glow worm cave tour was much quicker than we expected, less than an hour, but it was cool to see. We did the tour now because we wanted to do a geothermal tour in Rotorua. It would have been much less driving time from there.

Welcome to our family holiday trip to NZ & Aus. We did the Viking extension is Auckland beforehand. The hotel, MSocial, was ver convenient to the boat, just across the street. It was an ok hotel, but very busy with Viking guests especially at arrival tins & breakfast. The city is VERY busy with people getting ready for the holidays & it was hard for folks to get into restaurants without a reservation. Luckily, we had planned ahead since we are a group of 6. Another group of 8 said the couldn’t find a restaurant that could seat them anywhere close. Viking did offer a 4 hour tour during the extension once we arrived at the hotel, but we had booked our own tours. We did an Aucky Walky city tour which was a lovely 3 hour introduction by a 4th generation Aucklander. Yesterday was embarkation. If you left your luggage outside your room by 7:30am, Viking would take it to the boat for you. They had a bus at 11 for those who didn’t want to walk across the street. We booked a private wine tasting tour in Waiheke Island, so after breakfast at the hotel, we caught a ferry to the island. It was a wonderful sunny day on a gorgeous place! We tasted wine and olive oils & ate a gourmet lunch at Passage Rock winery. We caught the 4:30 ferry back & finally embarked on the ship around 5:00pm. We mainly breezed right through as we were the only ones there! No lines! We had to have our temperature taken, but no Covid tests. We had one issue as we had to show our Australian visas & one person in our group could not get it to load on their phone. They still let him board & he was able to make it work with guest services later. Things felt a bit chaotic on the boat with people finding their way around. I heard a few people who were missing luggage or had issues with room keys, that type of thing. Our luggage & room were ready & waiting for us. We settled in the Explorers Lounge for a pre-dinner drink & headed for a late dinner in the main restaurant around 8pm. I had heard of many stories on CC about the restaurant service not bring as good as before Covid, but we found our orders & food were all done in a timely manner. Dinner was very good! We were all exhausted from a day of sun & wine so it was off to bed! We are in Auckland one more day before leaving in the evening. We’ll take the included panoramic tour & then explore on our own.

I think we will do our crackers tonight in port instead of worrying about taking them onboard. Thanks all

Ah good point!

We are already in NZ & bought them here, so planes aren’t an issue. If Viking says no, not a big deal.

They aren’t listed on the prohibited items list, but I guess could be considered firearms. We bought cheap ones & will see. I guess we could take the cap out. https://docs.vikingcruises.com/pdf/20190826-Prohibited-Item-List.pdf

For the boat or plane? Weather is stunning in Auckland today!

We’re leaving on a Christmas cruise next week & wanted to bring crackers for Christmas dinner. I’m worried they won’t be allowed because of the cap in them. Has anyone ever brought crackers on board?

Yes, it’s easy. One couple makes the reservation in MVJ & clicks invite other passengers. You’ll need the name & booking number for the people you are inviting. It’ll use one of their guaranteed reservations as well. Also you can’t invite someone in a stateroom class that isn’t open for reservations yet. So, a PV can’t invite a DV until DV reservations are open.

The post was deleted as it was apparently posted from Facebook without permission & I can’t delete my post.

There is another thread about this which includes a post from Facebook from someone who was in one of the rooms that was effected.

In Bergen, Norway, we had no issues with going out and exploring the city after embarkation. It's no different than if you are at any other port and coming & going from the ship. We did not have to stand in the same line to get back on as we weren't "checking in," but we did have to do any of the normal ship security. We have plans to do the same in Auckland, NZ next month.

Yes, they are super cautious in Australia with cruiser. Luckily, other than that one ship, all the other ships coming in are no higher than tier one, <30 per thousand people.

Ours is Dec 22nd. Australia has set some stricter testing rules for cruise ships. They also just had a Princess Ship there with 800 Covid cases on it. None were seriously ill thankfully. If you are sailing to Australia, I can post the links to the rules & also where they track the cases on boats coming in.

We are doing NZ to Aus and have been told via email & on the MVJ travel requirements that there may be frequent testing on the ship. If you are booked on a cruise, you can see the special travel requirements for different countries.

You also get free alcohol in your mini fridge that is restocked daily, a bottle of champagne, free pressing of clothing & shoe shine. We took the upgrade & loved it. Now it’s hard to book a smaller room. 6010 looks like a great location & just a quick flight of stairs to the Explorers Lounge!

There are no set dining times for the main dining room. At the specialty restaurants, if one of you makes a reservation for all 6 of you before the cruise, it counts as everyone’s on guaranteed reservation. The person doing the booking will need all the booking numbers to book the whole group. Once you are board you can reserve as much as you want. Yes, both people in a cabin need to purchase SS.

I think this is way beyond just behavior on Viking. You hear about it everywhere, people acting up on flights, treating those in the service industry poorly, etc... We seem to have forgotten how to act in public, how to be patient, and how not to think only of ourselves.