kctwinmommy

Yeah, that doesn't really give me any private tours for it. It does have their website, which can't be translated according to my browser. So not much help either. I'm going to just cross my fingers that we can get it booked through the cruise. Thank you though.

And ours was due 10 months before sailing, which is strange based on everything else I read.

On a side note, thank you for the replies! Too many times people say "oh, just search it" or "here, read this thing." But to keep things straight in my own head, it's good to have replies to my questions.

Oh yes! I'm not going to freak out if something is sold out. LOL! I'll also be honest, as of right now, I think there's only like 2 things that we really want to do. This is such a big trip for us, a long one, that there's so much to do and see to begin with. We can't do it all... 😃

Awesome! Thanks for the info! And yes, sounds like we're on the same things. And I was going to look at any chances we had to double up, when we wanted to. And no OBC's for us.

Oh yes, I saw that. I was just saying that we did a $25 deposit sail. I didn't realize that you guys had to do 25%, or that it was different even. LOL!

Thank you! I'm laughing at the Christmas sale comments! And yes, I have heard that as long as your logged in, as the "same person" you can use 2 computers. But, my husband is somewhat slower than me on these kinds of things. He'll be like "Wait, what am I doing, which am I picking, how many people, what time..." LOL! So his question will take longer than me just doing it most likely.

Yes, I actually created a PDF of all the excursions myself. So I have had the time to print it out and read it with my husband. And thanks for the tip on ACH! We normally use our credit card for everything, but we can do the ACH for this if it makes it faster. Thanks so much!

Ohh... this is what I'm looking for! Have you used them before? I'd love to hear some reviews. I actually just looked up reviews and they're really good according to Trip Advisor. Thanks for sharing this. I just sent them an email for some more info on that tour for the day we're in Rome.

I've read about booking excursions before, and now our time is getting close. As this is our first Viking cruise, I want to make sure I've got my ducks in a row before we do it. Since we're getting on the cruise at leg 2 of 4, I'm realizing that we'll be fighting for slots with people that get on at leg 1, even if they're in a cabin level below ours. We're in a DV, which leaves only the V cabins (they book 60 days, we do 67 days out, which basically puts us on the same schedule - if all that makes sense! LOL!). Anyway, I know we need to pick time slots for our included ones, in addition to booking/paying for optional ones. And from what I've read, it's best to select, book, then pay for each excursion, as some can sell out if you wait to do them all at the end. I'm assuming that booking each one is best, then going back and booking our included ones. Also, will it only show available times, or will it show sold out times as well? I'm just thinking in advance, in case we can't get a slot we want, but may be able to once we get on board, it'll be nice to know what other time slots are available. I already have a PDF of al the available excursions, I've been reading through it, as is my husband, so that we can pick the ones we want at the top of our list. Right now, we're looking at a lot of the included ones, so I'm hoping we will only need to actually pay for a few excursions. Because our cruise is so port heavy, I don't want to over schedule us either. Thanks for any tips or advice.

Considering they're still expanding, with multiple ships coming to the fleet in the next few years, I'd say their business model is working just fine for them. Like others have been saying, if it really didn't work, they would change things. And @KBs mum that's interesting the way things work for you guys. I didn't realize there would be such a difference. We did the $25 deposit last year. But, not sure how they calculate it, we had to make our payment in June of '23 for our upcoming cruise (so 10 months ahead). Of course, we only booked it 15 months before sailing. So I guess they gave us 6 months to make final payment then.

I haven't found a private tour of the falconry center yet! No, I haven't spent hours searching, but in my normal searches, I didn't see anything yet. It's on our list for our cruise, but not sure if it will sell out before we can book.

Exactly! Well said!

Yep, that's what my though/comment was too.

Exactly like @LindaS272 said. I read several posts here and did quite a bit of researching before booking our first Viking cruise. And while our payment wasn't quite as far in advance, we knew the terms. We booked our April '24 cruise in Jan. '23 and had to pay it by June '23 (so 10 months ahead of time). Either way, we knew what their terms were when we booked it. We booked early so we could pick the cabin and cruise we wanted. Like others have also said, it's a business model that obviously hasn't hampered their bottom line.

That's one we're considering. I'm guessing it's because of the altitude and potential rocky areas on the mountain.

We've left Carnival for now as well. Just not enjoying the current product they offer. I'm sure we'll sail them again in the future, because of some good deal or another, but not anytime soon. Enjoy your European cruise! We used RC for our European cruise 7 years ago and loved it!

Wow! This whole thing is crazy, and good to know for others. I wonder if he had fraudulent credit cards that he used too. Just sounds like something a scammer like this would do. I hope you can at least clear your name in this and get your deposit back. If you haven't yet, I would also check your credit history and make sure there's nothing else in it.

We booked ours a year ago, our first one, and it's only gone up. Not an expedition, just an ocean. I'm sure like anything else, as it gets closer, they offer deals to sell the remaining cabins, but I truly don't know. We looked around at the options when we were ready to book, took a few days, and then booked it. I don't usually spend much time looking at the prices after it's been done. Either way, it sold out within a few months of our booking, and then it wouldn't matter what the prices were. That's the reason we book when we do, to get the cruise and cabin we want. I know there was also some weird things with the website this week, and many cruises were coming up thousands of dollars more. Ours was now showing our cabin to be a little over $20K/person! We paid $12K. However, after like 2 days, things were back down to more normal, with a small increase since last year.

So that's totally bizarre!! It did drop back down today and now it's only $1500 more per person. That's just crazy that it was showing $8000 more yesterday. Wow! And there's actually ONE Explorer's Suite open now. Wish I could afford that! LOL!

Someone posted this on another site, but said they went back later this evening and found prices had gone back down. Thinking it might have been some glitches in the system. Having said that, I did look at ours. We booked almost exactly a year ago, had a $1500/person discount offer at the time. Our DV4 cabin if we could book it now (as it's sold out), it would cost us $18,000 more total!! So almost $42,000 for our trip. And that's the price for this cruise through October of this year. I think 2 or 3 of the sailings still have a few open cabins, but most are sold out.

I can't answer your questions, but I can say I'll see how we feel after our Med cruise this spring. We have port days pretty much every day of our 22 days. LOL! We have 2 nights in Venice and 1 night in Florence, but otherwise we're in a different port every other day. The one good thing is our cruise has long days in each port, like 9-13 hours. So we can go into town, walk around (which is what we plan on doing in several stops), and go back to the ship to relax if we want, and then go back out again. Of course, we will have a few stops where we plan on doing long, full day tours. But we will definitely pace ourselves as we go along. We did a RC European cruise, not the same though, as it wasn't as long. But you definitely do more stuff on these cruises than a typical Caribbean one, at least for us. On Caribbean ones, we tend to do more low-key, relaxing type activities. European ones typically involve a lot of walking. LOL!

I know it was something they got rid of, but looks like they brought it back, for the most part. I've never done it, so had to look myself... https://www.cruisehive.com/carnival-cruise-line-reverses-unpopular-pre-cruise-decision/89219

Thanks! Yeah, we'll be there in late April, so I wouldn't be in the water for sure. LOL! I just read some things about the speedboats too, that it's a bit of a rough ride for some people. But thanks for sharing! I'll keep looking and reading so we can decide what to do. My husband wants to try some fishing somewhere too. LOL!

Yes, that's why I said we'll have to wait and see what comes up and what changes for us. Not a big deal, we'll go with the flow. But it would be fun if we got to see some of the events going on.