junglejane

OK let me see if I have this right about the cruise air. For now we pay the required deposit on the cruise portion and say we want the air promo. Then on 3/31/23 we make final payment, including $1299 pp for econ air and later (around 8/25/23) we follow the procedure described by @Peregrina651 above to look at upgrades and decide whether we want to keep Viking air or book our own air and eventually get our $1299 pp back? Having to make final payment on a cruise 15 months out is a big change from what we're used to but I can accept that Viking does it because they can. I'm less excited about the cruise air situation because as @mhb1757 said, $1299 for econ air doesn't seem like a great bargain. Seems like I have to lend Viking $2600 for the right to later pay the plus fee to look at their upgrade prices and options. What if, when final payment is due, we pass on the cruise air? Later, can we call or look somewhere online to check the current price on cruise air for our itinerary? I understand it wouldn't be at the promo price but the promo price doesn't seem that great anyway. OTOH Phoenix to Bergen seems a little hard to get to. Thank you everyone for your patience with all these newbie questions. I do have a good TA but her specialty is Princess cruises and I've found that these boards are a great source of knowledge.

You all have been super helpful and I'm reaching out to my TA on Monday. One more question: if we do the air promo add on, how exactly does that work? Do we have to commit now, do we pay now, and do we have to decide now on deviations, upgrades, etc? Or can that all wait until later? We never did cruise air until recently and we had very different experiences on Princess vs. NCL so it seems like every program is a little different. Our preference is probably to do our own air but we'd rather not have to commit just yet.

Thanks @OneSixtyToOne for directing me to the "fine print" on the terms and conditions. I see now that the current offer on our 2024 cruise does say final payment by 3/31/2023 (sigh, this is also when the caterer wants a 50% deposit for our daughter's wedding reception, lol). I also see that the T&C's say that a business class air upgrade is $3499 pp apparently on top of the $1299, so $4800 pp? @longterm I found this review of Viking travel insurance. Bottom line is that it's pretty good but expensive compared to what you could get elsewhere. https://www.aardy.com/blog/viking-cruises-travel-insurance/

Thanks for all this great feedback. I'll definitely study that "tips for new cruisers" thread. Can someone explain what the policy is for when final payment is due? I've seen some reports of 12 months in advance or more.

Thanks for all the tips so far. Right now they are offering Viking Air for $1299 pp. We would absolutely want to upgrade to business class if available. If we add Viking Air for now, do we have to pay for it in addition to our deposits? Or do we pay later? We recently had a good experience with Princess EZ Air and a bad experience with NCL air. Princess was great because you didn't pay until final payment was due, but prior to that you could select and "hold" a reservation. Thanks for the tip about Norway in a Nutshell. I've googled that and will study it.

We are looking at booking our first Viking cruise. We are looking at doing the "Into the Midnight Sun" itinerary on the Viking Venus in 2024. Any tips for first timers? We are leaning toward a Penthouse Veranda. Any tips on cabin selection? We're used to bigger cruise ships (e.g., Princess Grand Class) and typically aren't bothered by motion. Does it make a difference on these ships? I have a friend who has done several Viking cruises and swears by getting a cabin forward of the front stairs to minimize motion, but that seems inconsistent with my experiences on the big ships where I think there's more motion forward. Also do most of you take the Viking travel insurance or buy your own? We've always gone with the cruise insurance in the past. Any pros or cons about doing Viking Air? We might also be interested in a pre-cruise extension for Bergen. I'd appreciate any tips before reaching out to my TA.

Thanks @CCJack. We've previously been to London, Southampton, Greenwich, Edinburgh and Amsterdam. We've also done the British Isles twice and Baltic once, but never been to the Orkney Islands or Shetland Islands. So between the two Viking itineraries it's sort of a question whether we want to see Iceland or not. The Iceland itinerary also has Narvik, Norway as an additional port. Neither Celebrity nor Princess have their 2024 summer itineraries out yet.

@Capt_BJ We've never done Viking before but are ready to try it. If we do the one with Orkney and Shetland Islands (Into the Midnight Sun), we would have to do it on 5/31/2024. The other dates are all in June and don't work for us and they don't seem to offer it in July or August. Do you think 5/31 is too early or okay?

Thanks @Capt_BJ We were also looking at this one:

This sounds like good advice. Thank you.

Thank you for the helpful feedback. Since we plan to book a 2024 cruise, it's helpful to get specific recommendations on what ports to look for when the 2024 itineraries come out. I didn't realize until I started looking how many possible options there are.

Thank you for the wonderful, thoughtful review. We were on the 7/20 sailing and did some of the same private tours (Overlord in Le Havre and Odyssey in Belfast). Like you, we were disappointed by Sabatini's food this time around (not the service, which was fine). But overall we had a wonderful experience. So glad you had such a great time as well.

This is useful feedback. I see that there are itineraries that emphasize Iceland & Greenland and others that emphasize Norway.

We are also willing to consider other cruise lines. The majority of our cruises have been on Princess but we have in the past done several on Celebrity, and once each on Royal Caribbean, HAL and NCL.

Yes, here are some of the sample 2023 itineraries which I assume will be similar to 2024. These are all 14 day cruises: Iceland & Norway: 5/13/2023 Sky Princess 7 Ports Southampton (London), England | Skjolden/Sognefjord, Norway | Olden, Norway | Alesund, Norway | Akureyri, Iceland | Isafjordur, Iceland | Grundarfjordur, Iceland | Reykjavik, Iceland | Southampton (London), England OR 6/3/2023 Sky Princess 8 Ports Southampton (London), England | Bergen, Norway | Flaam, Norway | Olden, Norway | Alesund, Norway | Akureyri, Iceland | Isafjordur, Iceland | Grundarfjordur, Iceland | Reykjavik, Iceland | Southampton (London), England Land of the Midnight Sun: 6/17/2023 Sky Princess 8 Ports Southampton (London), England | Bergen, Norway | Molde, Norway | Trondheim, Norway | Honningsvag (for North Cape), Norway | Tromso, Norway | Lofoten Islands (Gravdal), Norway | Alesund, Norway | Olden, Norway | Southampton (London), England OR 7/26/2023 Island Princess 6 Ports Southampton (London), England | Haugesund, Norway | Andalsnes, Norway | Trondheim, Norway | Longyearbyen (Spitsbergen), Norway | Honningsvag (for North Cape), Norway | Tromso, Norway | Southampton (London), England OR 8/19/2023 Island Princess 8 Ports Southampton (London), England | Bergen, Norway | Flaam, Norway | Olden, Norway | Trondheim, Norway | Honningsvag (for North Cape), Norway | Tromso, Norway | Lofoten Islands (Gravdal), Norway | Skjolden/Sognefjord, Norway | Southampton (London), England

We are looking at a cruise to Norway for 2024. We usually cruise on Princess but would consider other options. We've looked at Princess's 2023 itineraries as examples, and are looking at the "Iceland & Norway" versus "Land of the Midnight Sun." Any feedback on which is better? Other options we should consider for a Norway cruise?

Thanks for that quick feedback! Is it okay to order more than one appetizer? On Princess I often think they're the best part of the menu.

We're going on our first NCL cruise next week, on the Pearl. We have two specialty dinner reservations already (Le Bistro and Teppanyaki -- my SIL made those reservations). I have 3 questions: Looking at the website, I see that the complimentary options include two that are listed as MDR: Indigo and Summer Palace. Are the menus identical in those? I also see a compllimentary restaurant called Lotus Garden. Does that restaurant need reservations or do you just show up? Do the specialty restaurants always need a reservation, or can you walk up and see if there's availability? Thanks for helping out a newbie.

We paid $59 pp for the Princess transfer from Southampton to Heathrow,

They certainly leverage their location because, as I said, the rooms themselves are very basic. We have Hilton status so were able to use a free night certificate to stay overnight while connecting at LHR (non-cruise related trip).

Just FYI for anyone looking for a hotel at Healthrow. I've stayed at the Hilton Garden Inn at Heathrow. It's by T2/T3. The rooms are nothing special but the location is very convenient. Also has a rooftop bar with wonderful views of planes taking off and landing.

We were on the Emerald Princess 7/20-8/1. Staff were all masked in places like bars, restaurants, dining rooms, front desk etc, but not for performances or interactions at a distance. For example, the entertainment staff didn't usually have masks on. At embarkation we were handed a letter saying that due to cases on recent sailings, masks were required unless actively eating or drinking or in your own stateroom. Having said that, there was NO enforcement. As you can imagine, no one is wearing masks in the dining rooms or bars and lounges because everyone is actively eating and drinking. People were pretty good about wearing them on elevators and tenders. In shows and on buses it was much more sporadic and declined as the cruise progressed.

Thanks @caribill. What about the situations where your disembarkation day flight no longer works, whether it's due to the ship arriving late or some other disruption such as the rare cases where the ship ends up disembarking at a different port? In that case does it matter whether you requested early ticketing or not, and will EZAir take care of rebooking you regardless? I've been reading about all the people disrupted by the recent cancellations of cruises, especially Diamond Princess, and thinking about how much better off you would be in that situation to have used EZAir versus your own air.

Question for those knowledgeable about EZAir: what are the pros (if any) and cons of requesting early ticketing? Background: Our only experience with EZAir was on our 7/20 British Isles cruise, and we were happy with our experience. However, we requested early ticketing for two reasons, and in retrospect I'm not sure either reason was actually valid. The first reason was that we were worried the price would go up if they weren't ticketed, and the price on the airline website had doubled. The second was that we wanted to pick seats for our BA business class seats, and we didn't realize that BA doesn't offer free seat selection in business class. Are there circumstances when you think requesting early ticketing is a good idea?

I didn't see anything about either a Chef's Table or Winemaker's dinner, although I wasn't looking for them either so I could've missed it. I just went back and looked at my Patters and didn't see anything there. I'm glad you enjoyed your dinner at Sabatini's because we were disappointed in ours, although the service was excellent.