pbnjrockette

This is interesting…

Vantage is not a member of the USTOA, so customers are not protected by the Association's $1 Million Travelers Assistance Program. Additionally, Vantage Deluxe World Travel encourages customers to bypass travel advisors and book direct, giving them no one to advocate on their behalf.

Vantage is not a member of the USTOA, so customers are not protected by the Association's $1 Million Travelers Assistance Program. Additionally, Vantage Deluxe World Travel encourages customers to bypass travel advisors and book direct, giving them no one to advocate on their behalf.

While we enjoyed our stay in Lisbon (2 days) we absolutely LOVED our post-cruise time in Porto (3 days) staying by the waterfront and sampling the wonderful restaurant, shops, museums. Porto was easily navigable by taxi for places not by the waterfront. We were there late September early October.

Today there was another incident with a truck plowing into a crowd in Berlin.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/19/lorry-ploughs-crowd-christmas-market-berlin/

We have traveled 13 times with Vantage and have NEVER had a problem with the office in Boston " We usually have a 'personal travel consultant ' number and extension to deal with specific trips. The only trip we had changed was our last one to Portugal when they offered us a good deal to change to an earlier date.

I'm surprised to read about all the recent problems. We have found that the quality of materials (luggage tags, name tags, written paperwork and "freebies") have gone down considerably but we have always been pleased with our journeys.

We have had to cancel one trip with Vantage due to my mom's illness and passing.... Received a prompt refund. Needed to be reimbursed by TripMate (Vantage insurance) for husband's illness in Zimbabwe and missed excursions, hotel costs , received prompt reimbursement. Recently we were switched to an earlier Rivercruise and offered some monetary compensation. The money was in our bank account 2 weeks before we left on the new itinerary. No complaints with how our refunds/reimbursements were handled.

We just returned Sept21-Oct 7. The weather was gorgeous! Blue skies every day--warm 70's at beginning... a bit cooler mid 60's day by the end. Really nice time to go since it is 'Harvest' time and all the grapes are being picked. No issues with river levels. Working on my trip report...

We just returned from Portugal and I would definitely recommend going to Belem to view the Monastery and church, enjoy some Pasteis de Belem at the bakery and perhaps one of the other museums (we toured the Carriage Museum). Be sure your day there is NOT on a Monday as everything is closed! There can be large crowds in Belem and you should plan for extra time there.

Hopefully the Monument of Discoveries will not be covered with scaffolding by next year.

I e-mailed Vantage to ask about tags and being met in Lyon. Here is their reply:

 

We will be mailing luggage tags prior to the tour. Name tags are not provided prior, only available on board. Please note you will be met for the transfer in your final destination after you have passed customs and the baggage claim area. You will see a representative who will have a Vantage sign, and your names will be on a list with them. You may have to wait up to an hour for other passengers flights’ to arrive before your transfer leaves.

 

This seems reasonable to me.

 

Stan

Good to know!! Several of us who have traveled with them numerous times (we have 13 trips) emailed them from Portugal about the name tags and luggage tags! Glad to see they are listening. I think the words we used in our emails were that the paper tags they had us email looked "cheap" and that if they were going "green" and not sending name tags, why were our mailboxes always full of their brochures!! LOL

Don't worry about being met at your final destination. We have never missed seeing the Vantage sign!

Happy travels!

Here is a video of Perogue... not from Vantage but will give you an idea of the town.

I have 2 questions...

 

Where did you find a video of the Perouges optional excursion? I looked at most of the videos, and did not see one re. Perouges.

 

Also, does Vantage send anything out by mail before we sail...like luggage tags, name tags, who will be meeting us, etc.?

 

Stan

You will need to download copies of your documents (I also recommend making hard copies in case your phone or iPad isn't working or charged --happened to someone on our trip) The luggage tag is a skimpy little piece of paper. We used old Vantage tags from previous trips. I have emailed them and told them that their tags make the company look "cheap"!! You may or may not get name tags when you get there. There was a large group of 20+ on our tour that were given name tags. The rest of us had only old ones or none. Several of us emailed Vantage from Portugal and lo and beyond the tour director was sent a box of name tags and had to print our names on them! They are useful when on the ship and at meals. Do not recommend them when walking around on tour.

Sorry but I need to vent about the completely incompetent Vantage survey. Maybe I'm just jet-lagged but I'm suffering no fools this morning! They sent us a survey to fill out about our trip BEFORE we even left. No way was I taking time during our trip (Portugal--Duoro River) to fill it out. Since my internal time clock is messed up I thought I'd look at it this morning.

The one they sent me and the one on the My Portfolio page lists different Tour Directors (of course they do!) one of the names I don't even recognize! Anyway I did the survey which consisted of about 4 questions---value, quality, what can we improve---no questions about tour director, hotels, excursions BUT several pages of where do I want to go next, what trips I want to go on, do I recommend Vantage... (do I want more crap in my mailbox??) finally the last page where I need to put in my name and password (which name & password?) and hit submit and of course it's invalid and does not submit. TOTAL WASTE OF TIME!

Vantage used to have a paper survey that was a pain to fill out on the trip but at least if you filled it out you were entered in a drawing and someone from the trip won $50!

The trip was wonderful. The wine divine. Vantage is going downhill. This particular tour is changing in 2017--glad we did it this year as it included more of Portugal. LOVED our tour director--she made it wonderful. Will be doing a trip report and publishing my blog with photos.

This may just reflect my ignorance, but I'm still trying to get my head around this concept of an Adventures By Disney adults-only package. Do they still have Mickey and Minnie costume characters? But do they now share a cabin? Enquiring minds want to know! :D

LOL :D or :eek:

It was great to hear about the two tours we signed up for. Thanks!!

 

To those following us - watch the optional tours on line. When I signed up for the Village of Perouges there were only 2 spots left on the tour - after us. It's the first time I've signed up ahead of time for an optional and was surprised to see how few spots were left.

Just reread my page from my blog and I was confusing Perouges with another tour. No cookies there! But eat some "galette" (it smells so good when you walk by you won't be able to help yourself!) It's a sweet cake pie that looks like cheese pizza!

Well, I've printed out our travel documents. Have discovered our cabin has been upgraded to a better position on the ship - too bad they didn't give us a suite but I'll take what I can get. We've signed up for two optionals - Pont du Gard and the Village of Perouges. Now all we have to do is pack! Glad we're traveling through Frankfurt. We've traveled through Frankfurt in the past. We have a 3 hour layover so better be fine. I should be able to post a few trip highlights as we go - as long as the free WIFI is up to speed!

 

Snonomo - have a safe trip. We'll try to leave the ship in good condition for you.

We did the Paris to Provence portion of this cruise in 2014. Both the Pont du Gard tour and the Village of Perouges were well worth it. Be sure to tour the museum at the Pont du Gard and eat the free cookie and candy samples at Perouges!!

We chose not to take the bus tour that included the goat farm and instead stayed in the small village that day and just walked around the small shops, bakeries, churches and sites on our own. Very relaxing. Enjoy your river cruise!! pat/pbnj

p.s. The wifi was great! I published my blog as I went along!!

Just curious to know how many companies are still using ID badges (name tags that may also include your state) while you are cruising or on tour. I'm currently on tour with Vantage and they have done away with the badges (for security reasons). We are finding it a bit annoying as we also enjoyed getting to know our fellow passengers and tour mates names quicker with the badges. We never wore them when we went out when we were not with the the tour group.

Our Vantage Douro River cruise was with them and it was wonderful.

We leave in a few hours! Looking forward to it! :)

We did not need to do laundry on this cruise since we were gone 15 days.

 

We have done laundry on other river cruises and find the prices per item are generally lower than what you would pay to have laundry done in a hotel.

That isn't saying much, since hotel prices are usually over the top.

 

We had laundry done on our Russian river cruise and it was not expensive, but that would not be a far comparison with Portugal.

 

I suggest asking your Program Manager by email about laundry when you get the email from her/him.

It's now Monday... we leave Wednesday... still no email from Program Manager....

and laundry??

Pat, I found your post on the Hong Kong inquiry.

We just retired from a great Canada/Alaska cruise/trip.

 

We had to pay the tips in cash instead of charging it to our credit card. You can pay in Euros or Dollars.

 

As for the tours on the Douro River cruise/tour, we took them all as well as the optional one to Sintra. I recommend taking all the tours, especially on the river.

 

You get to see the valley much better from some of the tours. Also, the tour of Salamanca was great.

 

Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Thank you!! A bit of a nuisance not to use a credit card! We'll plan on doing all the tours. Did you go on the pre-trip?

Is there laundry service on the ship or a laundry self-service? On regular Vantage ships we've had our laundry paid by Vantage but since this is not their ship I'm not expecting that.

Has Vantage cut back on anything else? The pre-trip mailings are no longer as well as luggage tags and name tags. Did you get a daily itinerary? A friend is going on another European cruise next month and they were told to bring iPads. No mention of that (or the names of the Cruise Director in our pre-trip info). to

Thanks for your help. Really looking forward to the Portuguese wine and food!!

also looking for 4774Papa with a question about Portugal posted a few days ago!

Thanks, Thom! I LOVE Port wines. I'm actually Portuguese although do not speak any. Grew up drinking lots of wonderful wines and have missed them! Looking forward to trying the white port!

Did you receive any paper documents? We have only received the electronic download, no mention of CD, concierge or city host names. Was planning on taking a bathing suit! thanks for the reminder!

Thank you! Appreciate your quick response. We'll load our atm travel account accordingly.

They still haven't assigned us a cabin yet. We're not too picky (since there is no balcony anyway!). Still working on what we will do on our own in Porto-- probably will not book any tour. Any restaurant recommendations?

We're expecting warm weather as Portugal has been having an unusually warm September..will pack for layers any way.

Are all the tours in the afternoon with river cruising in the morning?

Thanks!

If I felt that the compensation was inadequate or the substitution was not acceptable I would continue to call and write to Vantage. We've had friends who were on a Rhine cruise that could have turned into a "bus tour" but instead they received a full refund and returned when the river was at a better level.

When we were on our India trip there was a problem with illness and sanitation aboard our rivership. Many of us started emailing Vantage while still on the ship and steps were taken to remedy the situation (although not completely and not to our satisfaction) We remained in contact with them after returning home and eventually some compensation was offered.

Keep writing/calling but keep it polite and profession.