Mich3554

If anyone is ever on the ocean cruise with the historian Michael Fuller, I strongly recommend you go to his Bayeux tapestry tour on board. It is most entertaining (as are most of his lectures). He’s been on 2 cruises I have taken recently, and was sad to see him depart from the WC early.

Yes. We recently booked excursions on the the 2 legs of the extension of the world cruise, British Isles and Norway. The cruise was booked as a single, 29 day cruise. I booked all excursions at the same time when our window opened.

Not a problem. We brought almost a full case of wine onboard the South American cruise, that we had purchased in vineyards on the way to Valparaiso. When we were met by Viking at check in, all our luggage…..including the wine…..wound up in the room.

We had the same conundrum, so I do understand. We paid nearly $200 for Viking to take us from Valparaiso to Santiago a few years later. At the time, we chose a private transfer because we had $$ to kill in our OBC that we’d lose otherwise. Transit between these 2 cities is not easy to set up. Before Viking offered this option, we were having a horrible time getting transit set up as Covid had shut a lot of options down in 2021.

Santiago airport to Valparaiso is about a 3 hour drive. When we did it, we had a private tour through the vineyards (we were passing through) and it cost us about $200. So he likely saved himself about $150 by doing it this way.

I have seen a lot of tables playing cards on the WC. I can’t tell you if they brought the cards, or if they were provided. I know when I packed for this trip I threw a deck of cards into my bag. It’s easy enough to include in your bag. On the last cruise we took, we bought a deck of cards from the gift shop. I haven’t checked to see if there are any on this ship.

Usually the port talks are 1-2 days before going into ports. We are usually doing something, so watch them on TV the evening before. We just finished watching the port talk for Rhodes, where we dock tomorrow. Since we have had several, consecutive days of long excursions recently (9-13 hours), a group of port talks have been dropped onto the TV to watch at our leisure.

I have seen backgammon boards on the Neptune.

It works well. When you choose optional excursions on MVJ, OBC is first deducted from the balance and then you get a final balance that you can pay with either an ACH debit or credit card. If you start switching excursions around on board *I think* that the excursions put in your cart first are purchased with the OBC. This comes into play if you start changing excursions around while on board as to whether your excursion is non refundable OBC, or purchased afterwards on card/ACH and listed as refundable credit. We had $3000 of OBC for the WC, which we used up (and more) to pay for excursions. Several excursions we got refunded to our account earlier in the cruise were non refundable OBC. Now, any changes we make are refundable. In my experience, if you have an OBC credit balance, Viking will debit against the non refundable first and the refundable second. Last year, when we did 3 cruises back to back as a warm up for this, we got a LOT of OBC, for missed ports and future cruises we booked. We also had a small amount of OBC that we got from our Viking agent. It took me awhile to figure out what Viking was doing with the accounting, but at the end we had $xxxx in refundable OBC and $xxx in non refundable. I made sure I spent down most of the non refundable the last few days (I left $12 on the table). Both DH and I received a check for the refundable.

On the WC right now. Yes, you can use the OBC you are given to book excursions before the cruise, when you can book your excursions the OBC takes care of the first chunk. We used all given, plus some of our own. When we got onboard, we had SBC in our account, which we have used for various things, including other excursions, which we have switched around. It’s nice to have this $$ in our account, as we have used it for visits to the medical center x3, pedicures, a few items we forgot, etc. So you can use it for excursions while on board, not before. We used Luggage Forwarding and it worked well. The pros were that it will take the bulk of your clothes and shoes, but there is a long list of things that you cannot ship….which was the con. Make sure you pay attention to this list. Supposedly we can use SBC to send a case home, I’m going to look into this because we still have SBC and I don’t think I’ll need all the tropical clothing I brought for the 30 days after London (we fly home from Reykjavik).

In the British menu, the fish came directly from the fryer. They were frying each order on request. The fish wasn’t sitting around under a heat lamp. As I remember our menu, the next course was a beef pie with several other parts too.

On the WC……where I wanted to change excursions after booking. I booked our excursions back in Sept. Decided we wanted to change a few weeks later, and it was sold out. However, forgetting to add myself for an included tour happened twice on the WC and once on SA cruise. Thinking back, I suspect it’s because DH doesn’t want to do an optional, and I do…..then decide I really don’t, but forget to check the box for me.

I have not found this. What I meant is some know their game, but have not been particularly good teachers. I have taken bridge lessons on 5 cruises with as many different instructors, and I don’t remember any just reading pp presentations. However, they have all been good bridge players. Being good at something doesn’t necessarily mean you can teach it. The WC has an excellent instructor, but we chose not to play bridge as it takes up time from a lot of the lectures we want to go to. We did several of her classes before we realized we didn’t want to make the time commitment on this cruise.

Even though it is half empty, I think the dishes are a lot more labor intensive so they can’t seat as many. The nights where it’s been the fullest (IME) have been the slowest nights. We have had it such that we could not add another couple to our reservation.

Different strokes….. I enjoy it, DH does not but he agrees to go with me.

One of the things I have seen on this cruise is that people arrive early and ask if they can be seated. The several I have seen, people have an 8 pm or later booking, but are seated between 7-7:30.

Our WC (the one we are on) had a 10% payment. It had a paid in full date 6 months from sailing, and we put down another third (a Covid cancellation voucher) about 18 months before we sailed. We paid the balance by ACH transfer, which was another 3.3% off.

Pretty much, and you do not have to have the package to get access to these wines, they just charge you per glass. We drink wines that are not always the house wines. When I have gone back and looked at our bar tab for what SSBP would cost us vs what we spend in alcohol, we are somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of what the package would cost in the 7 cruises we have taken. The river cruise was the lone exception as we really liked the house wines. I think our bar tab for that cruise was $80, or about 1/5 or so.

I second this. There were some nice hotels in downtown Auckland, near where Viking docks. If you are spending extra time here, I’d rather be near here (I believe it is Princess Wharf) than the airport. Viking docks in walking distance of all this activity.

Bridge instructors tend to be on ships with many sea days. So if you have a port intensive cruise, you won’t find this offered. We have found them on trans Atlantics, South America and the WC. Some have been better than others.

I am not talking about river cruises. I am talking ocean cruises and experienced this in the last month or so.

Twice, I have found that I have booked DH and not myself on an included excursions. As soon as I found the mistake (after we were on board and had received tickets), I went to guest services and was told they were sold out so I was waitlisted for the included tour. I got tickets BOTH times. This was my goof. When I went back to my final e document, my included excursion was not listed for me. In my defense, I was booking excursions for 138 days. I should have double checked before checking out, my fault. However,I went to guest service to get it rectified ASAP. Also, we booked Karnak plus the Valley of the Kings when we booked. Afterwards, we realized we wanted to do Karnak and the Kings and Queens. When I went back to MVJ to make changes, it was sold out. A few weeks after we got on board, I got us waitlisted for the Kings and Queens and a bit later we got notified that we got it, so dropped Kings.

Have you looked at your booking itinerary they sent you when you booked your cruise? I’m looking at one I recently booked a month ago, and on page 4 the ports and the times in port are listed. It’s probably not definite, but it’s pretty close.

We have had a few new menus on the WC. Favorites were those where Viking brought in a special chef. They did for both Indonesia and India. I think we have only gone 7 times, CT really isn’t DH’s favorite.

Yes, Delta is a preferred airline, but not all routes and seats. For instance, last year a group of us flew from SEA to AMS. DH and I were flying business class, Viking Air. At the time, the cabin we were in offered us a $1999 fare, which we took. Normally we fly direct, but that flight was not available for business class so we flew via MSP. However, the others we traveled with did get those seats on the direct flight in economy. When I questioned this, we were told we could get those flights, but it would be a $2000 pp surcharge on the flight. We passed, as we had no problem sitting in the lounge for a couple hours. I research options first and determine whether or not we will accept Viking’s offerings. We have only used it a few times, when it benefitted us financially.