Poulsbo Cruisers

At the end of September we have a cruise that spends three days in Venice. If these same restrictions apply we will be spending a lot of time just staring at the city from our balcony. Maybe Viking will sell more drink packages. 

On 5/21/2021 at 12:23 PM, Dukefan said:

I will give a shout-out for SPB Tours that we last used in 2019 on the Viking Homelands Cruise.  They were able to get our group of six into the Hermitage Museum on Monday when it is closed.  We have been to the Hermitage on other trips to St. Petersburg and every time it was overly crowded.  On this trip we were often times the only folks in a room. It was wonderful and the highlight of every other trip to the Baltic.   I gave our guide a list of the art we wanted to see and she was able to get us to each piece where we could study it as long as we chose without having to hurry on and fight through the crowd to see the next piece of art on outr list. Our guide was as excited as we were because she seldom gets to see the art without a major crowd.  She had college degrees in both art and history and was extremely knowledgeable and able to answer all of our questions both on the art and the museum itself.

Another shout out for SPB. We saw so much in the two days. And getting through customs couldn’t have been easier. 

19 minutes ago, Cienfuegos said:

I'm sorry that your cruise was canceled. The optics do not reflect well on Viking, that's for sure.

 

But, I wondered how they could pull off that cruise. The port of Venice is closed to cruise ships, and no clear alternative has been selected. At least as far as I know. I agree VOC seems to have waited far longer than they should have.

However, we rebooked another cruise for September 22 that spends two nights in Venice. 

We had our September Empires of the Mediterranean cruise canceled a little more than four months prior to the cruise even though this cruise was just about sold out. The only reason for the cancellation was that Viking wanted to run a different itinerary out of Malta. It was very disappointing, but we did get the 125% credit. Since a change like this doesn’t happen overnight, it appears that Viking waited until they received everyone’s final payment before canceling. 

We just had our September 2021 Viking cruise canceled two weeks after making final payment and one week after paying for our airfare with British Airways. We immediately rebooked a different Viking cruise. BA was very accommodating. We were able to change our flights with no issue. I believe many airlines are waiving change fees at this time. 

21 hours ago, Heidi13 said:

 

A great decision. If landing at T5, the Sofitel is right across from the terminal. Comfortable and convenient, but pricy. We used it a few times until BA moved our flight to T3.

That’s the one we booked. 

We decided to alleviate any stress and booked a later flight even though it means overnighting in a Heathrow hotel. Thanks again for all the timely and helpful responses. 

Thanks for all of the responses. When we had this same flight for the Empires cruise, we weren’t concerned as the ship was overnighting in Athens. We are now considering changing our flights to the next day and staying in a hotel in Athens to alleviate the stress. I guess since I saw disembarkation shown as 7:00 AM, I assumed the ship would be in port and clear customs much earlier than that. The ship leaves Katakolon at 2:00 PM the prior day. 

We just learned today that our September Empires of the Mediterranean cruise was canceled. We rebooked a different cruise. Since we had already paid for our airfare on British Airways, we are stuck sticking with BA. Our cruise ends in Athens. The itinerary shows disembarkation at 7:00 AM. Viking says not to schedule any flights before noon. We had few choices. If we didn’t book the 10:00 flight, we’d have to wait until 6:00 PM and have a 14 hour layover in London. This is our first Viking cruise although we are experienced cruisers. I know other cruise lines always get into port early and start getting people off as soon as possible. What has been your experience with Viking? If we can get off the ship by 7:00 AM, we should be fine. Is that possible?

We recently booked a Viking Sea cruise from Venice to Athens. We have not sailed on Viking before, but are really looking forward to it. I expected to pay more for the cruise, but was really shocked at how expensive business class airfare was with Viking. We are used to paying anywhere from $2300 to $2800 on Princess, Celebrity and HAL from Seattle to Europe on a multi-city itinerary. Viking is asking $4900. We will probably take a chance and book our own airfare. The only thing I can figure is that the bigger cruise lines must get deeper discounts. 

48 minutes ago, TeeRick said:

We have a 9 night Silhouette (UK-Norway-UK) cruise booked on Aug 26.  No update from Celebrity yet but final payment will be in May.  A lot of this is dependent on the vaccination progress for the population in the UK and Norway.  And my dw and I still need to be vaccinated too.

Princess just canceled all of their cruises out of Southampton until September 21. They have substituted shorter round trip cruises out of Southampton for UK residents only. It’s still not looking good for European cruises this summer. We have a Celebrity cruise booked out of Amsterdam on September 4. We are not holding out much hope. 

I understand why they are doing this, but it would definitely keep us from cruising. We primarily cruise in Europe.  We love the freedom of exploring on our own, stopping where and when we want to people watch and have a beer, and using private tour operators to see more for less. Hopefully, this will not be needed by next September or we will be canceling our cruise. 

9 hours ago, mom says said:

I think you'd have to look at booking a multicity ticket. But for London to A'dam,  you really might want to consider taking the train ( provided you aren't loaded down with a lot of luggage) The Eurostar train goes city center to city center in about 4 hours. Flights are slightly shorter, but you have to get to and from the Airports at either end, plus have the hassle of getting to the airport hours early (especially at Heathrow) and dealing with security. And unless you're flying first class,  the Eurostar is many times more comfortable. 

Thanks for responding. The cruise is already multi city since it starts and ends in different ports. I’m used to the Princess website that allows one to do another stop in-route as long as it’s at least one day prior. I’m looking for any Celebrity cruiser who may have done this.

We will have too much luggage for the train, but it is a good suggestion. 

Excuse me if this has been discussed before. We haven’t sailed with Celebrity for many years and have never booked flights through their website. Next September we are planning to cruise from Amsterdam to Rome. Our plans are to spend a few days in London prior to the cruise. We have done this type of thing with Princess and there is an option when booking the flight to add a layover. I can’t find that option on the Celebrity site. Am I just missing something or does this option not exist? Thanks. 

6 minutes ago, fluffybunny22 said:

They want me to give them 9k to hold in exchange for $300? No thanks.

It’s more than $100 OBC pp. It’s also a 10% reduction in the cruise fare. We only have a seven day Caribbean cruise scheduled for May. For my wife and me, we would save $335 in cruise fare plus $200 OBC. At least for us, it’s worth considering. 

I also received this. It doesn’t state how much OBC. I tried to find it on the Princess website, but didn’t see anything. My first thought is that Princess is strapped for cash and is doing this to help see them through the shutdown. That led me to wonder how safe it would be to handover my money to Princess at this time. I’m not worried about tying up my cash as the 10% savings on the cruise would far exceed any interest earned on savings. 

It’s nice that Celebrity offers a choice. We have always preferred the sofa near the veranda, but can see how some would rather have the bed in that location. 

On 4/27/2020 at 12:01 PM, NantahalaCruiser said:

There are two different large balcony sizes for the 1A cabins on the slant of the hump (the 1A cabins on the straight portion of the hump have standard sized balconies.) The smaller of the slant balconies only adds a triangular shaped area and is thus only about 50% larger than a standard balcony. However, the larger adds both the triangular shape area and a rectangular shaped area about the same size as a regular balcony; hence it is about 2.5 times the size of a regular balcony.

 

My wife and I were in 8283 on Reflection last September and the balcony was furnished with 2 chase lounges, a table and 2 additional chairs. See attached pic.

 

 

Thank you. This was one of the cabins we were considering. 

Did the airline make any changes between the time you booked and canceled? The reason I ask is this issue just came up for us. We had a Princess cruise booked for the end of May. We booked our own airfare with Alaska. When the cruise was canceled, we had to cancel our airfare. These were non refundable tickets. At first Alaska was only going to give us a voucher for future travel. Then the agent noticed that Alaska had changed the scheduled flight. We had been informed of this and it wasn’t a big deal as it was only five minutes. But, since Alaska had changed our flight from what we booked, we were entitled to a refund not just a credit. Something to check. 

My wife and I are thinking of booking a Celebrity cruise on the Reflection in 2021. It’s been many years since sailing on Celebrity and do not know the ships. We want a veranda cabin (concierge class okay), but we are picky on the layout. We want the couch near the balcony. Looking at many different YouTube videos and pictures, we have noticed some of the cabins have the couch near the balcony and some have the bed in that location. Is there anyway to know when booking which cabin has which layout?

This article describes how airlines, cruise companies, hotels, etc. are delaying refunds as much as possible to keep from bleeding cash. Let’s face it, it takes no time to process the refunds. The only reason to delay is to spread out the pain. 
 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/travel/confusing-coronavirus-refund-policies-frustrate-travelers/2020/04/02/d68a146a-7073-11ea-aa80-c2470c6b2034_story.html

The article ends by saying once the Coronavirus emergency ends, customer friendly policies will return. 

Did you request a refund? Our May 23 cruise was just canceled yesterday. We have until May 31 to request a refund. Otherwise, it turns into a FCC. 

My Princess Cruise planner did tell me on Saturday that the announcement would be made on Tuesday afternoon. The issue that seems strange to me is that you can still find May and June cruises on the Princess website even though everyone realizes that there will be no cruising until July at the earliest. 

Our OBC showed up almost immediately for our late May cruise. Since we already have free WiFi, gratuities and the beverage package we decided to book an excursion to use some of this new OBC. For some reason we are unable to do so. 🤔 I thought maybe it was because this is a non refundable OBC, but we were able to use our FCC OBC, which is also non refundable. 

My wife and I are both 70. We have a Caribbean cruise scheduled at the end of May on Princess and a Mediterranean cruise scheduled in September on HAL. We are not canceling either cruise. I feel this is a serious situation and I understand why some chose to cancel. We’ll enjoy having a ship that’s not so crowded.