kctwinmommy

@FetaCheese - Oh, so just the bookings on the first 2 days are locked in. That's a different thing.

This will definitely be interesting to see if anyone else can confirm. I just can't imagine this being the policy. I know it closes 7 days out, and then people say you can make changes on board after that. Maybe the Viking rep just got confused with that policy.

Right? There's a lot of info missing here.

I will add, getting dinner reservations wasn't as easy. We just wanted to try Manfredi's once or twice, and we did get 2 slots, but the early times were all gone for the most part. We managed to snag one night for 6 p.m. in a shared table, which isn't a big deal for us. And then another night we took an 8 p.m. slot for just the 2 of us. I know people have said that a lot of times there's openings once we're onboard. We'll be fine with these 2 nights I think. But we'll see if anything changes.

Oh that's good! And you can always look on Viator's website. They offer a ton of excursions, most similar to what Viking seems to offer, and a lot more.

Oh no! I'm sorry! I hope they can get things fixed for you. Were any excursions you wanted sold out already?

Were you able to get your excursions booked? Did you log into 2 devices? Or not needed? Hope it worked out for you. We did our dinning last week and didn't get totally what we wanted, but we'll take what we got.

Well, we did end up getting out insurance through their company. But, be aware, it's not actually them. It's a company that they partner with. I read reviews on several companies, but also weighing the costs and what we want/need. So we're giving them a shot, even though some come in higher rated. Hopefully, it won't matter and we won't even use it.

Oh yes, of course it won't take more than a few seconds. We certainly would have preferred to use our C.C. as well, but it wasn't working for us, and I didn't want to waste time entering it every time. I just know that it doesn't work for everyone. I've read several people comment in the past that they had to physically enter all the CC info each time, and it slowed them down. We were lucky, our excursions have barely sold out. But I know others have said that they can already see several excursions sold out for whatever cruise they're taking, so their options are limited.

And I'm guessing the amount of people who are cruising those lines are even less than Viking, so a much smaller voting pool. Which might affect how many reviews they get.

Yes, I have that as well, but it didn't work on my laptop. Others have said the same thing, that they had to enter it every time. With the ACH, it was there in the drop-down menu when we had to select our payment, and it went through super easy.

I would recommend paying for each one as you go. Many people have said if they put them all in the cart then checked out, things were gone by the time they checked out. And like @CDR2001 said, I would highly recommend you log in on 2 devices, or have someone (your spouse?) doing theirs at the same time as yours.

Ours would not auto-fill on their form. I have it for all of the sites I use, but it didn't work on Viking.

Yep, you have to enter the CC info every time, which will slow you down. We typically put everything on our card, but knowing this issue, we opted for the ACH transfer instead. It was so much easier. We booked all our optional and included ones in about 15-20 minutes, and that was about 18 excursions we had to book. I did write up some tips on how we did it...

I know, we have very few in our roll call for our cruise in 2 months.

I just tagged you in my post about this from earlier this week. I gave some tips, that I got from many others...

@GardenYogi I just did ours this week, the first time doing it, and I wrote this up to help other newbies, like me, with the best way we got them all done, and the ones that we wanted. It might help with booking what you want. 😃

I suppose, but I typically look in the various boards for each port for that information. I do try to leave reviews and information though, and be as detailed as possible, to help others decide.

Here's the list... They're #1 in medium ocean, river, and expedition. Their 3 markets... https://www.cntraveller.com/gallery/best-cruise-lines-in-the-world-2023

Right!? I also learned that while we've done the sale of $25 for a booking deposit on a cruise, residents of the UK have to do 25% to secure their deposit. Just so strange some of the differences between countries.

I'm sure it's because you're in Australia... And now I see my comment about this didn't post, it's being "reviewed" probably because I mentioned a certain other site in its backwards name. Oh well... On another site I learned, after also giving them that same screenshot, that Australian's don't have this option. So it doesn't even matter what card you're trying to use, it won't show up.

Oh that's possible too.

I will say, there were a few times when he was trying to pay and I was trying to add, and it said payment denied. So it can get a little clumsy. LOL!

We're taking our first Viking cruise and our excursion booking window opened today. We had our list, in order of importance, for booking our optional ones. Then pretty much would pick the best option for the included ones. We had 7 optional ones we wanted to add. But, thanks to researching and getting good information, we knew the best way to get them all. One, we had our list and started with the most important ones. We based this on the ability to not find 3rd party companies that offered the same, or if it was something really unique to Viking. Two, we had our bank account info in there. Three, we both logged in on 2 computers - you log into the same, one MVJ account and you can both book at the same time. Four, having the ACH info there means we didn't have to enter anything at checkout. If you use credit card, you have to enter it every time, nothing saves or autofill. Five, we put in the cart and then checked out for each excursion instead of adding them all and waiting to do it all at once. Six, went back and then just went in order of the remaining ports to pick the included time slots we wanted. Remember, you must pick a time slot to be on an included excursion. Between different places, this all helped and we got it all done in 20 minutes! Everything showed up about 20 minutes later on my calendar, so I can see everything is booked!!

I recently learned, that option isn't available for Australian customers. Someone asked about it on the book of faces page in a group, I included a similar screenshot, and after a few more comments, someone posted/realized that it doesn't work for customers in Australia. And I say that because I see you have NSW in your info. And like @OneSixtyToOne said, using the ACH for excursions is WAY easier! We didn't have to enter anything.