Traveler145

Thank you.  Great information.

Thank you.

We are on the Viking Holland and Belgium cruise beginning April 22, 2024, in Amsterdam, and are waiting for excursions to be posted.  For anyone who has visited Keukenhof on a Viking excursion, can you tell me if Viking gives you much free time to explore the gardens on your own?  The description of the optional excursion on Viking’s website includes a statement about free time to explore the gardens, but the  description of the included excursion does not. There are reviews from a few years ago that seem to indicate that on the included excursions Viking gives you a choice of spending three hours at Keukenhof or staying five hours and taking a later bus back to the boat.

Thanks very much.

Hi, Peregrina. I used Tellus@viking.com and got a call back, so it does work.  

On 11/21/2023 at 8:14 AM, Traveler145 said:

We have arranged our own air, but are taking a Viking post extension before flying home the day the extension ends.  I requested transfers to the airport only for the departure day and Viking charged us $60 per person for the transfers.

Thank you to everyone who responded.  I emailed Tellus@viking.com and received a call back from them today.  Because we have a post-extension, our transfers to the airport on the last day of the extension are included and the money I paid will be refunded. The agent I initially spoke to was mistaken. Tellus@viking.com responded quickly.

We have arranged our own air, but are taking a Viking post extension before flying home the day the extension ends.  I requested transfers to the airport only for the departure day and Viking charged us $60 per person for the transfers.

Thanks.  I created a separate MVJ account in my husband’s name and was able to add the booking numbers and see our upcoming cruises. 

I’ve had the same problem since last night. It also won’t let me add back my booking numbers. Erasing cookies and memory and trying different browsers hasn’t helped. I have emailed Tellus@viking.com.

Viking makes getting a taxi easy. When our first Viking cruise ended in Bergen, we needed to go to the Bergen train station but were not part of the Viking post-cruise extension. The day before we disembarked, I asked at the Viking reference desk about how to call a taxi. I was told we should just go into the cruise port terminal as we left the ship, and the people there would get us a taxi.  As soon as we entered, we were met by a man who asked us to identify our luggage, which Viking had  transported to the terminal the night before. He told us to sit and another man then took our names and destination and called a taxi.  When the taxi arrived, the man came back to where we were sitting, took our luggage, and guided us out to the right taxi.

42 minutes ago, donaldsc said:

 

My thoughts on what you are planning to do is that if you follow your plan the cruise is not going to be much fun.  Why bother.

 

DON

We would still get to cruise fjords, kayak the Naeroyfjord,  hike in Skagen and Kristiansand, and learn something of Oslo and  small Norwegian towns.  In between ports, at the very least, we will enjoy the views from the ship. Even if we won’t experience everything a Viking cruise has to offer, we would regret not taking the trip. That’s why I appreciate all the previous posters’ advice about the precautions they take.

This has been a very useful thread for me.  We are scheduled for our first Viking cruise -- Viking Shores and Fjords -- which departs Amsterdam on September 30.  At the time we signed up, we felt very reassured by all of Viking's anti-Covid measures, including  pre-board testing, daily testing and requiring masks.  Given the reports of unmasked passengers and Covid spreading on board, we have to decide whether to cancel the cruise.

If we do not cancel, we intend to limit our contact with other passengers by avoiding bus excursions, only participating in excursions that take place outdoors and then mostly on our own, and avoiding the theatre and spa. We also had planned to avoid eating at the self-serve World Cafe, until I read the comments that washing your hands between obtaining your food and consuming it made the World Cafe a safer option, and that The Restaurant should be avoided.  Is that because of the greater opportunity for social distancing in the World Cafe and the possibility of eating outdoors?  If the concern is crowding in The Restaurant, does that also make Manfredi's and the Chef's Table unsafe options?  I was hoping that, once on board, we would be able to find out whether socially distant dining was possible in the specialty restaurants.

I also hope that, given the reports of Covid on board, Viking will reinstate some of their precautions, at the very least pre-board testing.  Thanks for this thread.

Our cruise on Viking Venus arrives in Stavanger on October 5, 2022.  Viking is offering Lysefjord cruises to Pulpit Rock at 8:30, 9:00, and 12:00. For those who have previously taken the Pulpit Rock cruise through Viking, do you know if selecting one of these times is likely to give us a better chance of sailing on the electric boat? (Our only opportunity for the Lysefjord cruise is to book through Viking, as the local providers are not offering independent bookings on October 5.) Thanks very much.

I just posted on another thread that, according to CNN, the CDC has told airlines the U.S. will accept people who have been fully vaccinated with any of the vaccines approved for emergency use by the WHO, not just the vaccines approved for use in the U.S.  This includes the AstraZeneca vaccine.

For Americans wanting to travel to Norway, the barrier still is that Americans' proof of vaccination is the paper card issued by the CDC, which is capable of being forged.   The U.S. has said there will be no government based national vaccine registry, leaving us without the kind of reliable evidence of vaccination available to residents of the E.U. and the U.K.  Unless Norway decides to accept the state records as proof, we will have to wait for private companies' vaccine "passports" to be deemed reliable, which hopefully will come soon.

According to CNN, the CDC has informed airlines that the U.S. will accept people who have been fully vaccinated with any of the vaccines approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization, not just the vaccines approved for use in the U.S.  This includes the AstraZeneca vaccine.