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Yeah, I know. Same with the included Silver Spirit package, generous OBC and included gratuities.

Yep. I have had to pay a lot of attention to flights Viking offers. It’s enough of a hassle in that it needs to be a really good price break (like free business class for the WC) for me to consider it, and deal with the hassles of making changes.

We are booked on this cruise this coming Jan, going Bergen to London. We have been in Bergen several times, London not so much. While I’ve scheduled us to fly in a few days early, I scheduled much more time in London. I’d rather get the more complicated flights over early. our flight home was direct, but the airline now has us connecting in MSP. Not so happy with that as that gives us a 4 pm arrival in SEA, which means we are going to have to deal with traffic. Our original flight had us landing at noon. Our cabin is on the starboard side.

My kryptonite is the Living Room Bar’s almond croissants. DH also felt like the plain croissants were better there than in WC.

This is probably a smart move. We used Airalo on our world cruise this year. DH chose the global plan (which unfortunately did not include voice or text). I decided to buy plans by the country. First purchase was New Zealand. Worked beautifully, and I had an idea of how much data I’d be using. Next stop, Australia. We fought for half the time we were in Australia to get m6 plan going. After that, I decided to go with the global plan. Apparently, if you have more than one eSIM plan in function…..even if you are no longer in the country but still hav3 time on it….it jacks everything up. Once I finally got the global plan working in Indonesia, everything worked great and it was very easy to top off.

Viking booked us Seattle to NYC in coach, NYC to AMS in business class. The direct flight would have cost us $1500 pp more, I compromised and got us business class seats across the US for *only* $500 more than our quoted business class fare (it turned out not to be a deal). This was for a river cruise we took 7 months before getting onto the WC. Interestingly enough, when I booked our flights for the WC, I didn’t have near the battle getting business class seats all the way. These are the only times we have flown Viking air. When I booked those fares, I was warned that the direct flights I wanted would come with a surcharge. When I mentioned it was for the WC, there was some backpedaling.

I have a set of Leki poles which I bought at REI. I had another set, but they did not collapse short enough to fit into my carry on bag. What I did was put them in my backpack, with the handles sticking out. This worked ok for several trips, until they got confiscated by TSA (I knew it was a risk). Luckily, they were not an expensive set, but I liked them.

You do not have to buy the SS package to get something other than the house wine to drink at dinner. If you don’t like it, you can buy a glass (very reasonably priced) of whatever you want. We do this all the time. Usually we will find a wine from the wine menu, and drink it at dinner instead of the free offerings.

We took about $300 in cash, a lot of smaller bills. The rest of the time, we just hit an ATM when we got into port. In every country we hit (that we were staying more than a day), either DH or I took out the equivalent of about $100. We split the cash, between us. Every ATM we used, there were no huge conversion costs or foreign fees. If an ATM charged us, it got refunded. The costs were very comparable to what the current exchange rate was. The last stop in that country, we tried to use up cash and we’re only left with coins at the end. As DH went scuba diving a lot of places, that did a good job of getting rid of cash.

The last time I paid for our cruise, DH told me the money was in his account so I could pay it. I did that day. 3 days later, the money was still in his account so I went online to see what was going on. The cruise was marked paid in full and I had no balance due. I still had a week left to make the final payment, so decided it give it a few days. A day or so later, DH’s account was finally debited. I got a float from Viking I wasn’t expecting.

That, I can’t tell you. I brought my own hair coloring and trimmed my own bangs. On a previous cruise, I forgot scissors and went to the salon. It cost me $15 for a bang trim. You do get a generous chunk of OBC to use for things like this. I used it for pedicures. Those ran me about $80 for a gel.

Istanbul’s new international airport is quite a distance from the port, and most of the attractions in Istanbul. If you are staying at a hotel, they’ll call you a taxi to take you to the airport, they always have for us. About hotels, you might want to check the likely hotel where Viking schedules extensions. Once you know that, I assume that its a central location and look for other places nearby. Ships dock at Galataport, which is a very nice, new facility with a huge shopping and restaurant area adjacent. I do not remember seeing a taxi queue in front when we departed, but TBH I wasn’t looking for a taxi when we left the facility as we were walking to a place to meet up with Turkish friends. Also, it’s a very long walk to get out of Galataport.

Since we reuse our bath towels a few times, we use the hooks on the back of the door to hang the towels to dry. For the world cruise, we brought about 8 magnetic hooks and used them to hang clothes that we had laundered and needed to air dry. We put the hooks on the ceiling in the corner, and hung the clothes on hangers and they dried faster than our previous methods. 8 hooks were not enough. We needed another 8.

Every cruise I have been on we could have gotten a ride to the airport via Viking had we wanted to go. At the end of the cruise, you’ll be sent a sheet where you can opt to choose Viking transit and pay $49 pp. We usually choose to either Uber (FL), Bolt (Prague) or taxi (Bergen, Barcelona, etc). As I remember it, the taxi from the airport to our hotel in Bergen was about the equivalent of $50. We were staying within walking distance of the port, near the Raddison Blu where Viking frequently books extensions. So far, the only issue we have ever had was in Santiago, where the flights go and enter through there, but the port is Valparaiso. This is about 2+ hours away. First cruise, we had our hotel set us up with a vineyard tour that dropped us off in Valparaiso. That worked very well, but we could have booked something ourselves like this through Viator. Next cruise, we were getting off the ship in Valparaiso. That cruise, we had a ton of non refundable OBC, courtesy of Covid closures. Viator was useless so we got private transport set up by Viking to our hotel. This was one of the few times we have ever done this (and it killed our OBC balance after a couple shopping trips).

Exactly. Since we fly from Seattle, with the business class fare we received from Viking our routing was SEA to NYC in coach and NYC to AMS in business. There was a direct flight from SEA to AMS I wanted, but it would have cost me $1500 pp more than Viking’s rate. Instead, we connected through MSP to AMS, with both seats in business. It cost us $500 pp more. These days, I always add business airfare to the bill and start looking for flights about 7-8 months out. By the time I need to pay the balance, I have usually already booked on my own, and just cancel the flight part. Viking is my Plan C.

Because Viking only has so many that they contract for. We fly business and I pretty much book all of our flights myself. The 2 times I did not, I needed to pay extra and seats on a direct flight were not available to Viking so we wound up needing to connect. The second time, it was part of the WC and they paid for our seats. TBH, I just booked flights for our Northern Lights cruise last month. I canceled Viking’s air as I got excellent connections and seats, and saved $1500 for 2 seats…..and that’s not including adding on Air Plus and deviation charges. This savings will more than cover private transport in Bergen and London, and I’ve built flexibility into our schedule as we are deviating on both ends anyway.

The light is coming in from the edges of the 2 curtains, not them not being fully pulled together. Unfortunately, the hanger trick won’t work.

I think my only gripe about having the door and window combo was at the end of the WC we were in the Arctic where we had 24 hours of light. Having light peek through the cracks in 2 sets of drapes was just a little annoying at 1 am in the morning. Your brain sees ‘light, no more sleep!’ And your body says ‘nope, only been asleep 2 hours, that’s not gonna do it’.

When we were booked for a back to back under one booking number, we could book all the cruises under that booking number when we became eligible to book for the first cruise at that time. Same with dining.

We were in a PV1 on the Neptune on our world cruise (5084) and had a door and window. For us, it really didn’t matter. What DID matter is that our door and our neighbors squeaked when opening. They had room service breakfast every morning at 6 am and the door would squeak a dozen times while they set themselves up outside to eat there. It took about 3 tries to get someone in to desqueak the door.

I started off our world cruise with the intent of blogging it. We got on in FL and I lasted as far as Cartagena. So much for good intentions! So I have tremendous respect for those that do this. I really wish I had been more persistent because we did so much, so fast that it all seems like a blur now.

In my experience, I referred people and all was good (2 couples we went on a river cruise with which was booked during Covid). All of us got appropriate credits. At the end of last year, I referred another person. The process had changed. She had to call Viking and tell them she had been referred and give my customer number. Everything went through ok, but I had no idea what my customer number was and had to call and ask so I could give it to her. Viking did not tell her, *I* asked my agent about her reservation and whether she got the credit (and whether I got it too) and he told me the process. I had to contact her and explain it. I will say though that while we were on the world cruise this past year, I heard a lot of under the breath grumbling about problems that the LA office was causing wrt administrative dealings at the Explorer’s desk. I have also had to ask in a specific way to the Viking agent I use about making sure my bookings have a 6 month out pay in full date. In addition, I noticed that he reminds me on each call that our conversations are recorded. So apparently there is a lot of stuff going on in the administrative side of things that have gotten a lot of people frustrated.

There is not one in the Neptune.

Yes, on an ocean butterfly I would have been able to add the SS package. It was recommended to me during our B2B2B where we lost a good chunk of the ports on the second cruise so had tons of non refundable OBC and a very picked over gift shop. Only problem was that our experience does not make the SS package valuable for us, we only drink less than half of what it would cost.

Yep, this is one of the reasons why I have been avoiding these cruises, despite never having been to Venice. If we do Venice now, it won’t be associated with a cruise ship…..any cruise ship.