WanderingBrit

On 8/29/2024 at 5:38 PM, Heidi13 said:

 - Portsmouth - Stonehenge/Amesbury, Salisbury, New Forest (great pubs), Winchester, Hamble, North Downs, South Downs, Isle of Wight

 

Southampton would be better for all the locations listed than Portsmouth, and it's already a major cruise ship port. Mind you, as a Soton lad I'd argue that it's better than Pompey for everything 😉

The Viking airfare quoted to American customers is the same no matter where in the country you're flying from - and so by necessity it is averaging out prices that otherwise have quite a lot of variation.

Viking only contracts with a subset of carriers, and so on any specific routing their generic pricing might be higher or lower than you can get for yourself.

I'm not sure why it really matters all that much? If you can buy better independently then do so - price/value comparison ought to be at least a part of any financial transaction.

1 hour ago, Jim Avery said:

 Think all lines are like this?  Not Regent.  Not even Cunard.  And dare I say better theaters and access even on Carnival itself.  And this was on a Viking WC.

Not to mention Virgin, which has outstanding entertainment

We've accepted that production shows just aren't Viking's strongest area, and don't bother even looking to see what is being offered. We enjoy the musicians around the ship in the evenings, and turn in early in any event 🙂

1. Per passenger, but it is optional

2. There is a bottle of Champagne included, but not replaced without cost. Beers are included and replaced daily, Spirits will be Gin, Scotch, Bourbon, and Vodka - that's all they have in the mini bottles. You can ask to have any mix of those 4 that you like, but there's nothing else available.

3. Two glasses of the Champagne included on the drinks package is more than the daily cost - but there's also beer and wine with meals and they're very generous. If your itinerary gives you sea days, or longer evenings to enjoy aboard, we've found the Silver Spirits package to be good value and liberating - as we can try a cocktail to see if we like it without worrying about the cost. On the other hand, onboard bar prices are very reasonable.

Lots of information for first timers here, and most questions have been asked and answered several times before - so feel free to read up 🙂

Just now, OneSixtyToOne said:

Don’t see the Venus out our window, so it docked somewhere else.

 

I didn't want to rain on your parade, but the larger ships don't dock "downtown". Venus will almost certainly be at the more industrial port area just a little way along the waterfront - the Skarfabakki Harbour area.

On 7/21/2024 at 10:38 AM, longterm said:

... Folks on here and elsewhere have said many times that more reservations are easy to get once on-board; in the past we were able to do that somewhat, so I as optimistic that we'd be able to do so on this cruise, which was sold out.

The only reservation available was for 7:30pm, on a 6-top; that's too late for us, so we declined.

...

This was our experience last summer also - that there simply were not seats available once onboard, unless one wished to dine on a large table or at 8:30pm. Changes in reality don't appear to have stopped the advice from being endlessly repeated.

You won't be able to learn until boarding, and even then they often have conflicting information.

Once on board you can book to visit Chef's Table as often as they have availability, there are no limits.

Great to hear of your positive experience - my last renewal took 18 days expedited.

When I recently renewed my UK passport it was back in Illinois in 11 days! 

11 hours ago, OneSixtyToOne said:

My iPad is 12 years old and it can barely load modern websites and is becoming more useless by the day.

Consumer computing devices are indeed obsolete at 12 years of age. That's simply the reality of advances in hardware that require changes in software to exploit them - at some point it isn't viable to make everything backwards compatible.

Our experience with VV sold excursions was terrible, where the actual excursion simply did not match the description in key factual areas.

In several dining venues the menus are so limited that you've basically tried everything with one visit - Pink Agave for example.

The Galley got so busy we couldn't find anywhere to sit and lines at every serving station were so bad we just grabbed to-go boxes and ate in our cabin.

In several areas service was just so-so. We sat a long time at The Dock and eventually had to flag a server down to place an order. Service at Richard's Rooftop was really a case oof going to the bar and ordering, as the servers seldom seemed to check in on us.

Generally Virgin does what they do well, but what they do just wasn't for us. We're more about the destinations and less about the onboard party.

2 hours ago, CDNPolar said:

 We are so used to $25pp now that we have four future cruises booked.  Not sure we would have four future cruises booked if we were paying deposits of $500pp or 25% of the cruise cost.

 

 

Precisely this is why the "early" payment in full date is irrelevant. We have bookings in 2025 and 2026, and I'll throw the dice and book something for 2028 once they're offered just to have a placeholder - at $50 for the two of us, why not?

Depending on where you're flying in to, and from, and how far the Port is from the airport, you might not have all that much time to kill.

There are lots of Youtube videos that will show you what it's like onboard.

What do you value when cruising? If it's casinos, Broadway quality shows, and a photographer capturing you and the family on a waterslide, then Viking won't be for you 🙂

We had good internet connectivity on that cruise last year - as long as I used my VPN 🙂

8 hours ago, DrKoob said:

 

AAAGGGHHHH!!!!

 

 

 

Last year when sailing to The Faroe Islands, Jitter dropped from 60ms to 10ms, and Ping from 128ms to 60ms just by enabling my Internet VPN. I couldn't upload photos to Cruise Critic AT ALL unless my Internet VPN was engaged - timeouts, failed to post, etc.

The issue isn't bandwidth so much as it's poor traffic management within Starlink's infrastructure before it gets to the Internet - at least that's my hypothesis!

9 minutes ago, deec said:

how about cost between crystal and viking

Head to their respective websites and price comparable itineraries?

This is a question that is asked with some regularity, and I'd summarize the answers as: no one can predict whether you will be too warm, or too chilly, on any specific day, in any specific venue, of any specific ship.

There is no across-the-board generalization such as "all areas of all Viking ships are cold" or "all areas of all Viking ships are stuffy".

2 hours ago, DrKoob said:

.... We consider the three best to be the verandah stateroom we had on Celebrity's Flora yacht in the Galapagos, the Neptune Suite we got upgraded into on Holland America's Nieuw Statendam and this Penthouse Verandah stateroom on Viking Ocean. This stateroom is larger than your standard verandah stateroom, and we love the extra room.

...

 

We absolutely love the PV Stateroom, and actually enjoyed it more than an ES2 which seemed to have space where we didn't especially value it.

4 minutes ago, DrKoob said:

That sounds like a great idea. Do you have a VPN you recommend?

I think they're somewhat commoditized, so look for a good deal perhaps? I use Private Internet Access (PIA), but lots of Youtubers have offers for SurfShark

6 hours ago, DrKoob said:

Day 3-Edinburgh

 

 

....

Enough about me. Let's talk about Edinburgh. This is the fourth time that Kathleen and I have been there. It is one of our favorite cities; some of my favorite travel memories come from there. We first visited on a whirlwind tour of Scotland back in 2003. The last time we were here was in 2019 when we rented an AirBnB right on the Royal Mile for a week. I think that was my favorite visit because it was in May, and the city was fairly empty. Not as much yesterday.

....

That covers yesterday. Thankfully. I say that because it seems the further north we go, the worse the internet connection gets. We were fairly speedy in London, a little slower in Edinburgh, and now we are crawling. I certainly hope this improves.

...

Edinburgh is our favorite city - we were married at the Royal Botanic Gardens. We too stayed in an AirBNB (back when that was easier in Edinburgh) on the Royal Mile - during Fringe! It was a wonderful type of functional chaos, and our VIP seats at The Tattoo were a milestone experience.

I was surprised how busy Edinburgh was when we were just there at the end of May, perhaps that's thew new normal.

On our Iceland/Norway cruise last year - significantly further North - I found Starlink worked fine when I had my Internet VPN service active, but was terrible otherwise. The problem wasn't so much bandwidth as it was packet latency, something to do with the way that Starlink handles IP address abstraction I suspect. CC was unusable until I flipped on my VPN, and then immediately everything was perfectly normal. I could upload many photographs on a post without any issue at all.

The advice to insist on a genuine licensed London Taxi also applies to Edinburgh, where The Knowledge is if anything even more demanding. You'll have acres of space in a purpose built taxi, driven by a licensed driver who is deeply knowledgeable about the area, generally for the same price as some rando in an Uber, and all managed and paid for through their app - that was our experience with City Cabs Edinburgh.

Bergen is a wonderfully easy and chill airport to navigate, and the Viking transfer service feels "white glove" all the way. They have buses leaving very early in the morning for flights earlier than yours.

We flew Bergen - Copenhagen - Reykjavik - Chicago O'Hare last year and it was all easy, until we got to O'Hare|

It does not show on MVJ, but it will be on your Guest Statement/Invoice

We've booked Empires of The Mediterranean for 2025 in part because so many of the ports are "right in town"