Mich3554

Not instead….in addition to.

Not as good as it used to be. We added a cruise onto our WC while on board through the cruise consultant and the perks are not near what they were in 2021.

There are far more social activities on a world cruise, but TBH it doesn’t sound like you like sea days. There are a lot of sea days, I think the longest chunk of sea days we had was 6 sea days. Viking doesn’t have many social activities set up for the cruise we were on the last 2 weeks because I believe that there was only one scheduled sea day in that cruise. So it makes no sense to bring on a bridge instructor and the ilk for one sea day.

This being said, NY officials did not release the ship to disembark for nearly 75 minutes after we were scheduled to disembark, and once the ship was released, there were only 3 agents to process people in NYC, and 4 other agents just hanging around not processing passengers. This also happened at the beginning of the WC, when the port agents in FL would not allow boarding to start until long after boarding. I think that the ship was not released until 2 pm, when boarding was supposed to start at 11 am. Not only that, when we landed in LA to pick up passengers, EVERYONE had to disembark and we got to wait to talk to immigrations. Facial recognition software is minor when it takes US officials much longer than normal to release the ship. So this wasn’t Viking, but US immigration who mucked up your schedule. The 178 days we were on the Neptune for the World Cruise, going through face to face immigration in the US was the worst….even worse than Saudi.

I ate about 1/3 my meals from that back station on the WC. They had the best chicken noodle soup back there, and stir fries. Dim sum for breakfast…..miss it already!

I was told at the explorers desk it was one or the other. I believe one excursion was set up because of those who could not hike. We tried to book 2 different included excursions, it bounced back on the tv. That’s why I asked.

There were a few ports where Viking had 2 different included excursions. We did the ATV excursion, and it really wasn’t very good. Drove down a road a bit and drove back. The ATV excursion we did in Isafjordur was much better. Our second trip there, we hired the same guy for a private tour for twice as long, which turned out less $$ for more time.

The Intercontinental hotel is on the highway to Piraeus. It’s pretty close to the port too. However, I imagine that the reason why these hotels are used isn’t proximity, but the ability to get a bus to the hotel. I know the few places we have stayed at in Athens, places closer to the Plaka were on very small streets that bringing a bus there would be……interesting.

In Athens, the cruise ship terminal is in Piraeus. We just asked the taxi to take us there and followed the signs for Viking. Galataport, in Istanbul. Here’s the address, but it’s such a huge complex that I’m sure everyone knows where it is. Kılıçali Paşa Mah. Meclis-i Mebusan Cad. No: 8 İç Kapı No: 102, 34433 Beyoğlu/İstanbul, Türkiye

I know. I assumed it was norovirus too. The news had the numbers wrong though. Case counts were announced daily, and they were no where near 100 passengers. Most was about 2% of the passengers. I have no doubt my info is correct. I was talking to the captain, and he said that he has a policy to never lie to passengers. Since the numbers affected were announced daily, I tend to believe him over a news report.

We stayed here and would stay here again. Fabulous staff and close to everything.

Everyone on the Neptune was VERY careful not to call it norovirus, but a gastrointestinal illness. It did make the last week or so on the ship difficult. The poor waitstaff had to do everything, and they were run off their feet. We ordered room service this morning before disembarking. According to another world cruiser who was behind me in line in immigrations this morning, she said it was crazy on steroids up there. We made a good decision.

No table tennis available on the Neptune.

Looking at an LG on the TV now.

Thanks, this is good to know.

The TVs do have Bluetooth capability, and Viking will modify the TV position for a few circumstances. One of them is a passenger had a Bluetooth amplifier for his hearing aid that he needed in order to be able to hear the TV. I guess the amplifier needed to be plugged into the HDMI port. BTW….the Neptune has closed captioning. According the the Explorer Desk manager, this has been a 3 year fight with LA to get it.

Then I wonder why Viking didn’t offer it for the WC which was there Mar/April of 2023? This kinda pisses me off because I called the WC desk asking about it……as did so many other people I talked to. We were essentially told by Viking that they couldn’t put something together like this because of Covid. I knew it was a BS answer at the time, this just verifies it. There were a lot of unhappy people about this, and a lot of people scrambling to make arrangements off of others when they found this was possible (with a crappier than usual Wi-Fi). This was a bucket list destination which many, including us assumed would be offered, but wasn’t.

You probably won’t. The last WC didn’t make it to India in 2020. Before then, you are talking 2019 WC since Viking didn’t have cruises to India (other than on WC) until recently. Nothing like this was available for the 2022-23 WC, so your extension is going to be the first to India in 6 years.

Ours have had only 2 menus loaded at a time. Wonder why different? On this last segment, I checked at the beginning and only saw the 2 menus and passed on them. I haven’t looked the second week though. It was this way on the WC too.

You don’t. They don’t release the entire journey at one time either. I think they only released 2 menus at a time.

The WC didn’t go to Bangkok, this is a stand alone cruise. We did our on thing going to Agra and Delhi for 2 days, 3 nights from the WC. First class flights, 5* hotel, private tour guides for 2 full days and transport to/from ship to airport, airport to hotel cost us under $2000 for 2 of us. We had very good tour guides through Viator on both days. Viking makes it easy, but you pay for it. It took me quite a bit of time to make the arrangements, but no tour to Taj Mahal was offered to us. I imagine adding the extra days on would not cost more than an additional $600 or so. A big chunk of our cost ($1400) was our flights from Cochin and to Mumbai.

Last time I was on the Jupiter, there were 2 recumbent bikes, 2 upright bikes, 2 rowing machines, 4 elliptical and maybe 6 treadmills. All sorts of free weights, and other machines.

Wi-Fi was brutal during the world cruise on the Neptune until after India. Then a switch flipped and it got much better. It was this way until we just recently, where I have had problems doing searches, or getting pages to load. Not as bad as early on the Neptune, but worse than it was. DH thinks that it started slowing down after London. It was so bad that when we were in port, I used my eSIM data plan to link my iPad for service.

$59 on the WC. I haven’t taken on since London. We didn’t have any scheduled when we got on this last leg (Reykjavik to NYC) but losing Greenland, there are 3 scheduled classes available. Still $59.

On the Neptune going in the opposite direction and there was an announcement while we were waiting for our tour (did you know you can hear these announcements outside the ship for at least 50 yards?) that Greenland was a no go for us too today. We get an extra day in Isafjordur and 4 sea days, and pick up Louisburg in Nova Scotia.