longterm

The in-room Nespresso machine makes excellent espressos.

Andy, a mankini is NOT suitable wear.

And I wonder why I often think about leaving this forum.

Not true; if you do a pre or post extension, transfer IS included. If you’re going from hotel to ship and you didn’t do a pre extension, they will of course not provide a transfer.

Whatever you booked will remain; you should of course confirm that with the TA, but when I transfer bookings to a TA, anything I've already arranged with Viking still remains after the transfer to the TA.

Viking doesn't sell hotel transfers separately; they're included in the price of the cruise, so long as you're arriving or departing on the day of the cruise. For example, if you're arriving in the port city a few days early, Viking won't give you a free transfer from airport to ship, but if you *are* arriving the day of the cruise, they provide it with the cost of your cruise.

If for no other reason, transfer your cruise booking to a TA so that you can get some free on-board credits. It won't cost you anything, won't change anything at all about your booking, but you'll get some money you can use while on the ship. I always book directly with Viking, then transfer my booking to a TA. Should I ever have a serious issue, I suppose I could get assistance from my TA, but so far haven't had to do so.

I can say never with lots of confidence about never joining a country club--definitely not a golfing fan. When I was in college, I played for private parties at country clubs more times than I care to count... it was a great day when I realized I no longer had to do that kind of work. I'll never forget the country club in Nashville that has a sign at the front door: "Deliveries and band people: use back door."

Next thing you know, they'll outlaw my red sleeveless fishnet shirt and backwards baseball cap. On a serious note; I don't (and never will) belong to a country club, nor will I ever pack a tux or dress jacket for a cruise. I know it's just our personal choice, but when we travel, we go for comfort rather than posturing; the day I'm wearing a tux in a restaurant is the day I'm waiting tables.

You could always try the water slides, the 40 bars, the line dancing, the zip line, or the karaoke bar. But not on Viking! If casinos and glitzy (aka cheesy) shows are your thing, you probably won't like Viking.

Just took a look at an Alaska cruise, picked June 2024 as departure date, balcony stateroom: Duration (including embarkation & debarkation days): Viking - 11; Oceania - 12; Seabourn - 11; Lowest-priced balcony (not incl. taxes): Viking: $6000; Oceania: $6600; Seabourn: $7500; Suite size: Viking - 270 sq. ft.; Oceania-219 sq. ft.; Seabourn - 300 sq. ft.; Free wi-fi: Viking & Oceania Excursions: Viking; I think Oceania offers an excursion credit, but it wasn't quickly apparent whether the $800 credit went for the price I quoted above. My perusal was done rather quickly, but it's in line with what I thought; looking at the Alaska cruise as an example, I couldn't see the advantages for O or SB, other than having a casino (as I said, I consider that a minus rather than a plus), children (same here); alcohol (not important to us).

Very interesting thread; we've looked at both Oceania and Seabourn, but haven't tried them yet. In my opinion, more value should be given to the following: Included excursions: while there are many who don't bother with them, we usually go on the walkabouts and then remain in town to expand on what we've just seen. For example, on our upcoming 2nd Grand European river cruise, we'll take some of the short walking tours and then wander off on our own to have lunch or look deeper into the towns. So for that reason, I think included excursions do add a value that O and SB don't; while some of the included excursions are not very creative, we've been on some that we really enjoyed. Casinos: personally, as someone who played casinos in Las Vegas, Lake Tahoe, Reno, and Atlantic City dozens of times in my career, I loathe casinos, so not having one on-board is a plus to me; No children: we love our kids and grandchildren, but we don't want to travel with them, nor do we relish the idea of children on a cruise ship. Wi-fi: If I pay $350 for shipboard wi-fi, it had better be decent, as opposed to the last couple of Viking cruises we took where wi-fi was abysmal. Routes: This is where I think Viking lacks; there are some great routes on SB and O that we've considered, and it may be time for Viking to freshen up their route offerings. All that having been said, this thread is prompting me to wander over to the O and SB sites and take more looks.

They have some really interesting itineraries; I priced one the other day, but when we looked at flight times, we decided to stay more local for our beach vacations. As I mentioned earlier, we go to Cancun every winter to an all-inclusive, are trying a different one this December, hoping we'll find the perfect spot for us.

I looked at it yesterday; it looks really nice, but I'm not excited about 23-25 hours flying each way. Many of the beaches in the Caribbean are really beautiful; it's hard to justify the expense and travel time to the Pacific, when we can get to Cancun in about 3 hours from Dallas; we go every winter and like it a lot. I'd love to see the Polynesian islands, but so far we've resisted the extreme flights--although we're going back to Africa in 2025, and it takes a good while to get there (3-4 hours to Washington, then 16 to Johannesburg).

Hadn't seen that one--a lot of sea days but a nice route. We'll have to look at it. I'm not too crazy about 18 sea days though.

I'd love to see a cruise through the Polynesian islands.

Jumping in here... we did the Italy, Adriatic & Greece cruise in May 2022, and loved it; easily the best cruise we've done so far. Part of what made it nice was that we were in Italy when it was just opening back up, so there weren't huge crowds. I stood in St. Mark's Square one morning at about 9am, and there were perhaps 20 people there, if that many. Hard to believe that's possible these days! We were in the Sistine Chapel when there were about 40 people total in the chapel, stayed as long as we wanted. My only regret was that we didn't get to stay in Venice long enough, but that's a trip for the future, definitely in the off season when crowds are smaller. We really enjoyed the post-excursion in Greece too; Delphi and Mycenae were 2 of my favorite stops on the entire cruise.

... which can be said of almost all cruises. Our thinking is that we do a cruise, and if we see a place compelling enough to want to see more, we return and do a self-guided trip (Venice comes to mind).

Only time I hear a beep is when I'm backing up.

Things happen, and as we get older we get, we find trip insurance to be essential. My brother and his wife were in Italy, riding bicycles around a walled town; having never been on a bike with hand brakes (go figure), my brother hit the front brake hard, was thrown in the air over the handlebars, and he landed on top of his wife. His wife suffered a broken knee and multiple fractures, and spent the next 3 weeks in a hospital there in Italy before she was even able to get on a plane to go home. I don't know whether they had trip insurance, but I do know that their trip was cut short and they lost thousands of dollars. Another of my brothers was on a Rick Steves tour of Tuscany with us last month, when he twisted his ankle a week into the tour and had tremendous pain in his leg for the remainder of the trip; he was lucky he could still walk, but it wouldn't have taken much for him to have needed to cancel the trip altogether. Now that we're in our late-late-late-late-late-30s, we take nothing for granted and factor the cost of trip insurance into our travel plans.

Insurance policies are by their nature very complicated; most people don't read them--I've never read my car insurance policy, but have had car insurance since I was 15 years old. Is insurance weighted towards the insurer? Of course; it's essentially just a form of gambling, where insurers use statistics to determine an acceptable risk. Is it immoral? I would argue that it's not, since nobody forced us to buy insurance. Is it predatory? Again, I would argue not, since nobody vigorously encouraged me to buy trip insurance when I signed up for any of our Viking cruises. Are insurance policies complicated? Absolutely. We're a litigious society.

Your story is unfortunate, and I've certainly signed agreements without reading all the fine print. Having read this thread, I went back and looked through the trip insurance I just bought for an expensive trip we're taking in 2 years to central Africa. This is where a good hands-on travel agent would have made a big difference; the TA we're using for the Africa trip, for example, explained some things to me about the trip insurance I was about to buy, and possibly saved me from making a critical error. Lots of folks on this forum, like me, are huge Viking fans, which is my only excuse for a snarky post; I don't think your situation was the fault of Viking doing something underhanded or improper, but merely following protocol with trip insurance, which is fairly complex and little-understood by most travelers who buy it. As people who enjoy going on Viking cruises, we have a vested interest in their remaining popular and solvent, so I tend to jump to their defense when they're (in my personal opinion) wrongly accused of impropriety. Two lessons might be taken away from all of this: use a reputable and reliable travel agent, and always understand the caveats of trip insurance policies.

I'm glad to hear you say that; after watching a couple of videos about Nile river cruising, we definitely were left with the opinion that, between the crowds and risk of illness, we were better off not doing one of those river cruises. Your post makes me rethink it--I'd love to see the Egyptian sites.

It's called "Stay out of Egypt." Combined with the crushing crowds, we've decided a Nile cruise is off our bucket list.

Any suggestions on seat selection?