Squillo

No discount for cash?

Thank you all for posting this about the ability to pay by ACH being cutoff at a certain point. I just prepaid my optional service charge so I could save the CC processing fees. (Am I correct in inferring that I will not be able to pay my final bill onboard using ACH and save fees at that time? If not, well, no big deal, I would have paid at least the recommended amount anyway, I'm sure, and now it's done.)

Thank you! This is very helpful.

We were planning on taking the 7:30 am included "tour" (actually they just take you to one of 3 spots in Rome and then it's 'on your own'), and then ditching the 'tour' and taking our own tour that starts at 9:15 am. I am thinking now that 1:45 might not be enough time to make it to our meeting place? Do you think we should plan on arranging our own transportation to Rome earlier? This will be on October 20th, a Sunday.

I am wondering if somehow Hawaii messes them up (maybe because we don't do DST?), because the same thing happened to me today (I posted about it below). Just interesting that we're both in Hawaii.

OK, I'm a little cheesed about this (just a little). I know pre-board dining reservations aren't a big deal, and we can probably get into the specialty restaurants once we are on board, but we will be boarding later on the embarkation day (ship is overnight in port) so I won't be able to be 'first in line' to make reservations upon boarding, so I really wanted to at least nail down our one-per-restaurant ASAP after reservations opened up today (we're DV, so I expected some prime slots would be gone). However, when logged in just a minute or two after "noon Pacific time" (9 am here in Hawaii), the reservations were still not available. The pink banner was still up, and the table options greyed-out. I even had a notification in my account stating that reservations were open, but no dice. So, after trying a few times, refreshing the screen and logging out and back in, I got onto the online chat and asked for help. Was advised to refresh, tried that again and got kicked out of the chat. Logged in again, went through their introductory nonsense, yes I'll take your survey at the end (if we get that far), explained the whole problem AGAIN. Was advised to clear cache and cookies, so I did that. Reservations still closed. She asked if she could see my screen but at that point I was 15 minutes late for a client appointment so had to get off. Got back on again an hour and a half later, reservations were magically open (thank heavens) but ALL reservations for our sea day were gone, ALL 2-top reservations were gone on several days and the rest had only 9:00 pm (we don't mind 8, but 9 is a little late if we have to be out early the next day). I ended up booking two reservations (1 for each restaurant) for a shared table, and am hoping we can get something better once on board or at least that the CT menu is good and the people are reasonable for what we did get. Never did end up finding out what was causing the problem, but it was obviously on their end since I did nothing and it magically got fixed. (Grrrrr....)

I hope we are not involuntarily "upgraded" for our upcoming (October) Mediterranean cruise (first with Viking!), since I specifically selected a cabin lower down and midships (4053, IIRC), because I sometimes have issues with seasickness. Should be fine unless there is really terrible weather, but still, I would be very uncomfortable being moved up to deck 7 all the way at one end! However, it sounds like that is not all that likely, so I won't stress about it until it happens.

Is there at least an option for fragrance-free soap? I hope so!

Never mind! It worked on my computer, just not on my phone. Is there any way to delete a post?

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I can't open this. Any ideas? It says something about restricted content. I have the CC app, tried a browser, Adobe acrobat, everything.

So how do you know which direction the bed will face (before you get there)? Is it always one way for port side and the other for starboard? or???

Just wondering, what do you all mean when you say, "forward facing" stateroom? Seems to me that they all face to the sides except a few at the front and rear of the ship. I've never been on one of these ships before (first Viking cruise coming up in October), so I don't understand.

Thank you! That is very helpful information. I did find one that guarantees return to the ship in time, but it's a large group, and I was hoping for a smaller one. I figured if we leave by 8:30, an 8-hour tour would get us back by 4:30. But looks like that would be too late. There is one 7-hour tour that looks good, but it doesn't start until 9:20, so still too long. Interestingly, the one that guarantees return (geared for cruisers) leaves earlier, at 8 or so I think. So that's how they do it. Will keep looking!

Hi. We are looking at a tour of Pompeii and Herculaneum also, for our cruise stop in Naples, and your post has me wondering - what time DO we typically have to be back on board? This will be my first Viking cruise so I realized that I really don't know, I'd been assuming that there would be time for a 7 or 8 hour tour since many of the Viking tours are that long. But maybe that's not correct? Is there any way to know details like this about specific ports before embarkation?