Pappri

Not hard. We got everything we wanted, You have to do your research, rank the excursions you want the most and sign up for them first. Sign up as soon as the booking period opens (down to the minute it opens). After getting the ones you want the most, book the rest of your optional excursions, then you can go back and sign up for any included tours you want. If you start from day one and go sequentially through the days you’ll find that some of the optional excursions will be sold out. A spread sheet like @Penspack created for this WC made the ranking a breeze.

They’re the 8th and 9th, and we’re the 5th and 6th. My fingers and toes calculated the original 3 days apart. Plus I have a “our bus broke down in Dakar story”

Brooke.williams@viking.com. The Viking “system” doesn’t work well with longer cruises like the WC. In the “system”, the pre-cruise non-refundable credits get applied to the most expensive excursions first. Every time you schedule a new excursion, the “system” re-shuffles the credits to the most expensive first. So when we cancel the most expensive excursion (in our case the Indian Overland) the “system” returns non-refundable credit. She says it just takes someone knowledgeable to manually work it out. It took us nearly 4 weeks until we found Brooke and her knowledge working through all the other unhelpful, condescending, unknowledgeable knuckle heads until we finally got to her desk. She understands that the WC’ers are in a special circumstance that requires special manipulation of the “system”. Now it does require trust because she can’t balance out until post cruise - which got me hollering BS. After she calmed me down, she sent an email that committed her and Viking to refunding our non-refundable credit for the excursion in full provided we didn’t spend it on other things. Ie. we still have to have $4998 in non-refundable credit at the end of the cruise. We still have the extra $2K that we received when we got onboard that we are using for our new excursions that came up during the new itinerary. I think accepting a Viking future credit is easier for her to approve and give without anyone else being involved then it is if you are wanting your credit card or bank account sent real cash. The credit was acceptable to us because we have future cruises already booked and this will pay for them. Like Denise, we were all set to cancel the 4 cruises we have if this hadn’t worked out for us. I know another passenger on our ship wasn’t about to settle for a voucher, and they were able to work out a cash refund (post cruise with the email promise). hope this helps other folks. Brooke is super to work with and very pleasant- most of all - knowledgeable. If you have been assigned someone else and they aren’t helping, then hang up the phone and send Brooke an email. She’s able to call your state room directly from LA - usually around 8am her time, 5pm our time.

Denise, were you able to use your credits and everything is good? If not, I can tell you what our resolution with LA was and who to speak to.

Just curious, did they pay originally and were refunded, or were they able to cancel prior to payment? Non-refundable or refundable credit issued? None of your business is also acceptable.

That is sad, I loved the sing-a-longs

Just the IPhone, I was amazed it turned out

Oh, and I HIGHLY recommend the “Scenic South Tour”, and it looks like it’s not sold out. We visited those places listed in the excursion with a guide yesterday (and a few more places with included lunch) and it was awesome. 8 hours tour around. Especially the Seven colored earths park was outstanding.

FYI, Cyclone Gamane is in Madagascar and headed for Mauritius. It’s minimal, 40mph winds, mostly a rain event. Looks like it should be far enough away for the Sky to dock on the 30th and make Reunion on the 31st. *knocking wood table and head*. Heads up Neptune. i did take this night pic of the near full moon over our room in Mauritius. First time I’ve gotten a night pic to come out true to the eye. here’s the Cyclone’s projected path: the locals aren’t worried about it in least.

Amen!!

Thank you!!

That’s the one

Sure thing

BTW - we decided in Cochin that we needed a break to clear our heads. So while the boat travels to Mauritius, we decided to fly to Mauritius and stay at the Shang ri La resort for 6 days, and pick you guys back up when you get to Port Louis on the 30th. See you then! got the whole beach to myself…

Absolutely no need to apologize, I feel the exact same way. Love the crew, the WC, and everything we’ve experienced. I will not let the LA folks ruin that, but it will ruin us for future travel. We booked 3 additional cruises on board earlier this trip (had one already booked prior) for a total of 4 at $150,000. We canceled 1 already and will probably keep canceling one at a time the longer this remains unresolved. Seems like a bad business practice for Viking corporate. DW was so frustrated one night while I was venting here, she wrote an email to Torstien’s office and cc’ed Stephanie Maldonado, head of Vikings Financial or Hotel ops (can’t remember). We just received and email from a customer service rep who said he is responding to the email (handed down from Mr. Hagen’s office). We’ll see where it goes from here. When we respond to his email, We will mention this thread to him (give him a link) so he can see the frustration and discontent they are fostering.

Gotcha. I mistakenly thought you were talking about the 1 striper guy (forgot his name already). Sam is the 2 striper who’s helping us work with the LA customer service folks. So when that eventually fails we’ll go to the 4 striper

Had several bar folks suggest the same thing, and I guess that will be our next step. Sad that this is putting a bad taste on an otherwise awesome cruise.

Yep, no help at all. Also talked with his boss, Sam, who is very supportive. She doesn’t understand why the “shore” won’t help the boat fix these issues with the passengers. Apparently we aren’t the only ones going through this.

I sure wish #3 was how you state Andy - not on board the Viking Sky right now. DW and I are SOOO frustrated and upset with Viking LA that we are now talking about getting off the ship. ANY SUGGESTIONS on how or who we should talk to will be greatly appreciated. We got the $3K pp pre-cruise credits and used those up when excursions were open for booking, even went over $700pp which we put on the CC. Then the India overland became available a week later, which @Jim Avery recommended, so we purchased that for $2.5K pp on the CC. When we diverted to Africa, we decided to cancel the India Overland and get a refund. There were multiple pages of people on the waiting list, so it was easy to fill our slot and they paid Viking $5K cash to take our place. Then our refund showed up on the TV as $5K non-refundable credit. We paid the full amount via CC pre cruise. We went down stairs to customer service, and they agreed that should’ve been refunded to the credit card or as refundable credit to the account. After a week of constantly checking with them on the status (and having to re-explain the entire situation every time) they finally said they were unable to change it onboard and that they referred it back to LA. We called LA last night at 9pm (8:30am pacific time) and the condescending lady could not explain how refunds are handled. She changed the rules several times during the conversation when her arguments contradicted what Viking had already done. We did receive some refundable credits onboard for excursions that were canceled that were purchased pre cruise with non-refundable credits. We also received a direct payment to the CC a couple of weeks ago after Viking canceled the Europe excursions. Those payments were $1Kpp so it didn’t account for the $6K total we put on the CC. We even said that we would accept partial payment to the CC (to cover our actual CC expenditures and taking into account the refunds they sent) and the rest non-refundable - which is the most fair for each party. NOT A CHANCE was their answer. So we now have $7100 in non-refundable credit and 2 months left with nothing left for us to spend it on. Viking not only keeps our $5K (actually effectively half that with the other refunds) but also got an extra $5K from the folks who took our place. Anyone else on board getting ripped off? Andy, I can see why you went hardline against the LA folks and every minute we think about this grow the same way. We have 4 other cruises scheduled with Viking (including the longitudinal WC) totaling over $150K that we are now about cancel and go with another cruise line because of this and especially the condescending way we were talked to by the LA office. Is the WC help desk still open and could they help or are we stuck working with LA? Oh, and when I asked who do we escalate this to, like her supervisor, she said that they were all equal and didn’t have anyone higher to escalate to. PLEASE HELP! Poor Chris, our Explorers lounge bar keep, for having to listen to this and having to restock the Makers Mark.

Here’s the platform attached to the ship

This is awesome advice and process. I’ve always done it myself direct with cruises, but now will try this route. Thank you again for being so thorough in your explanation! One question - if there is an issue with a flight on the day of travel, do you contact Air plus directly or do you have to go through the TA?

Looks like we’re delayed an hour getting in, so the captain decided to take a spin around the island

red circle is the cruise dock, arrow shows our path, and yellow circle is our current position heading east

Anyone know why we’re not stopping at the Langkawi port? We blew past it an hour ago and the Captain hasn’t made any announcement.

@Heidi13 I was hoping you were still lurking on here to answer that question. Which 8 or so ports would you think Viking would choose? I guess we could hit more if we did some drive by 8-12 hour stops instead of staying overnight.