juliesaddiction

Im going to have a tough tough time on this cruise with food, so many fish dishes and shell fish....definately not anything I would eat.

We made our own flight arrangements and are not using Icelandic Air.

Finally someone who is going to be on this tour. We fly from LA CA to Iceland. I think we get in around 930 in the morning.

Is anyone here on the Iceland Pretour May 12 2015? My mom and I are on this tour and we took the spot of someone who cancelled so I know its full. Anyone?

this is the best Posting to be following!! My mom and I get on in Bergen on May 16 (after we take our pre cruise trip to Iceland). Its nice to know things are getting worked through and hopefully by the time we get on there will be few bumps in the road. We too booked several years ago and were able to pick up the Iceland pre tour when someone cancelled at Payment time. I am excited to see how Viking does Oceans, we have loved Viking River cruises. It will probably be our last with Viking though.....that prepayment so far in advance is killer, which is too bad, they are a great company.

just got off Regal on Sunday, in a suite the balcony is the same size as the balcony rooms, small, and narrow. An upgrade on the furniture but its so stiff and rusty dont try to adjust, cant walk around the table they put in there, we shoved it in a corner. Cannot sit straight, must angle the chair. NO lounges. All of the balconys are this way. If you are looking at a hump area its likly due to the skywalk that not only looks onto your balcony but into your room as well. Great ship otherwise but wont book that one on purpose again, balconys are important!

so...we are on the May 16, 2015 cruise in the Baltics and still have no flight info or information on the excursions. today I bit the bullet and booked our own air and cancelled Viking Air. Just too uncomfortable with the timing. The one excursion that I am most anxious about is St Petersburg so I took another step to ensure that we would get to see what we wanted without waiting to see what Viking has left after implementing the tier system for excursions. We booked with Alla, and we are doing the Comfort Tour, its a two day tour, will be a small group and is reasonably priced. If anyone is interested get in touch with Anna at Alla tours.

yes....same case, they list a topic for each excursion but no other info on the excursions, times or prices, and they will be offered via a tier system 90 - 60 days out. I almost always do private excursions in ports and know from those experiences that you can see more, get closer, and do things a giant bus cannot and for amuch less price with fewer people. Its the way to go normally. My only concern is that in our past trips with Viking there were some ins and out Viking had (private tours in some places, accessing certain areas that you normally cant go, and going in before or after hours). However a River cruise is totally different than a Ocean cruise so dont know how much difference that will make. I am pretty much ok with the other ports, but Russia I wont get back to and I want to make sure we see as much as we can. Thanks for the info on Alla :)

this is the information I got today about excursions:

Viking does offer priority for pre-booking excursions based on a tier level. It is as follows:

went ahead and booked our own air. Too uncomfortable waiting any longer. Now to wait for the refund from Viking.

how long did it take to get your refund for flights?

We just were told that for our May 15 trip they wouldnt be assigning flights until late January. And we heard it would be October, then December. I really dont feel comfortable with that so we are going to book our own.

I cant get them for what we already paid but I can get close and being able to control layovers and flight times its worth it.

Looking at booking our own air for May 16 2015 voyage...just not comfortable waiting much longer. I can come within $250 of what we already paid which I am thinking is worth being able to choose layover times and number of stops. I already have flights for a September 2015 cruise with Princess....and all of our excursions for that matter. Very fustrating. A river cruise is a whole different thing than an ocean cruise yet Viking is treating this one the same. Cant figure that out.

Very tempted to start booking private excursions so we have an assurance of seeing what we want to see, but still holding out a bit because I know that Viking has some ins and outs with excursions, especially in Russia and there will be some excursions you couldnt get with a private tour company, for instance getting into an area you normally couldnt and going to a place that is not open to the public. We had this happen in China several times and the survey hinted at something like that too. I know China is a different cruise, you are in a group that you stay with the entire time with the same leader.

Well - this is a case of you get what you pay for - Because Viking offered no information in advance on ship info I decided to take their airline package - NEVER again - I have not set foot on the ship and am already upset - so the Christmas cruise starts on Dec 7 from Nurenburg except the flights dont leave Newark until 10 PM on the 7th and with the transfers in Europe as well as transfers from the airport to ship you are lucky on Sunday to get back off the ship and out and about before 6 PM - you lose an entire day. NEVER AGAIN.:(

We had this happen last year...we arrived on our first day at 930pm and the ship sailed at 10pm. We knew beforehand that this was an issue and fought with them for months about it...they would not change it and believe me we threatened everything...they did not care. After flying all day with weird connecting flights we werent able to eat regular meals and we arrived starving. We had to rush to the dining room as they were getting ready to close, we had a limited choice due to the hour of arrival. We missed the whole first day. After we got back I happened to post something to their facebook page about our experience and I got a call almost immediately and they bent over backwards to make it right. But you cant get back time so its hard to make it right. In the end I agreed to a credit of one day of that cruise for each of us, which only worked out for us because we had already booked the Oceans cruise and it was credited against that cruise. The experience I have had is that the before hand part of the cruise, booking, flights, information ect Viking fails big time, they are rude and inconsistant and uncaring; the cruise itself is amazing (after you get over being so mad at them for the beforehand part).

I always learn something when I find these threads and posts lol! I am on the May 15 Viking Homelands cruise, with Iceland before as an extention. I hvent heard about the priority cabin scenerio, so that is interesting, something to research a little more I guess. I think we are a DV2 or something. I too am concerned about the excursions as we generally do private tours when we cruise and we usually have them planned a year out. The port times have to be nailed down by now, so I cant figure out why they wont share them. We are Princess cruisers and we often book more than a year out and even then you have port times. The ports are as someone else said very rigid as far as timing goes so there is a schedule out there somewhere. We still dont have flights for a May 2015 cruise, yet I have flights for a Princess Sept 2015 cruise. Not releasing the available excursions is most confusing especially for an ocean cruise and an audience of 800, and then not releasing port times on top of it (which limits planning private tours) is troubling. On the River cruises they do this also, you get to see what they are and how much thery are once you arrive and you have a very short time to decide. But with a bigger audience I dont see this will work out very well, especially for those that have previously ocean cruised. We had a major problem with our last River cruise with flights and missed our first whole day, and they knew it beforhand and would not change it.

And as others have said, it will work out, my experience with Viking says yes you are probably right but it would be nice to have some say. My experience with Viking is that the cruise itself is usually excellent, however the booking process ect, all that goes on before your actual cruise is the worst, its inconsistant from one person to the next, very ridgid and almost rude, not the white glove you get on the actual cruise. If you find a problem with the way something has been booked for you, it is impossible to get them to make it right, but if you put it out there on social media after the fact they jump to make it right, however at that point you cant get back the experience you lost via credit. Its almost like dealing with two different companys, the booking and beforehand and the cruise itself, one is really bad and one is really good.

We had a similar problem with Viking last year for a Christmas cruise. The flights were issued, we had a TA, we never had a choice and we arrived about a half hour before the ship departed (10pm) in Amsterdam. Dinner menu was limited because we were so late, barely even got the chance to have dinner. Last people to arrive. We fired the TA before we left and a new TA tried to help us but she wasnt allowed to intervene for us. I fought with Viking with it for quite some time before we left, nothing. Basically we missed the whole first day. After we got back I posted how disappointed I was with Viking on their Facebook page....low and behold I get a call and they bent over backwards to make it right, but it couldnt be made right because you cant get the day back and who knows that we will get back to Amsterdam one day. I did negotiate a good sized credit tho and we had already booked on the Viking Star so it was used there. Long story short....the cruise was excellent, as was our China cruise with them but the customer service on the front end, thru booking and flights and all that is the worst I have ever dealt with. We are currently trying to get our airfare for a May trip we have booked and are running into the same difficulty....we may end up booking the air ourselves at this point.

Totally getting mixed signals here :( We are on the May 16 cruise and have the Iceland extention before. As of a call just a few minutes ago....they are not booking the air yet for that cruise as it is "too early". They are not offering any deviations period. Since we are coming from LAX there is no way we can beat their airfare by booking on our own. I hate to be at their mercy until they decide to book the air, we had a very bad experience on our last Viking River Cruise that we tried to get them to take care of before we left and they refused, later after we returned home they were all over trying to make it right...and yes we got a big credit but that can never make up for what we missed.

I know...the time change is awful to get over isnt it? We did a mediteranean cruise and went in a few days early for that reason and ended up sleeping the whole first day...but we were good for the rest of the trip :) With the Iceland pre extention we will get there very early morning and there isnt anything until late afternoon I think, so hopefully that will give us a little time to catch up on sleep ;)

Just talked to my TA about this as well, she called Viking and was told that they were currently working on the air for the May 16 2015 cruise, which we are on, and that the deviation fee is $50 a person. Viking would set the flights and you could deviate from those at $50 each. As we are going to Iceland first for the pre cruise extention there arent many choices and deviating would only lessen a layover on the way there. Coming home from Stockholm would probably be where we use the deviation in either getting a nonstop or controlling the connections, or changing a very unwanted early morning flight.

Booked April 2015 flight from LAX to IST on September 5, 2014. The deviation fee was $100 per person to arrive in Istanbul early for the April 11, 2015 sailing. Fee was settled to credit card during call while confirming the flights. Same departure airport as when the cruise was originally booked and no stop-overs. Transfer no longer provided by Viking from the airport on arrival or to the ship for embarkation due to early arrival in the city. All had been advised when the cruise was first booked May 2013.

Did you book through Viking already? We are on May 16 2015 cruise and looking at air trying to decide whether we should stay with Viking or book our own. My question is are you given choices of flights from Viking or do they just put you on flights no questions asked. We had a problem with a river cruise where we didnt get a choice but were told that the TA did have a chance to chose and didnt pass the information on (we no longer have that TA). I can find the flights for slightly less than we paid with Viking but am wondering if its worth it to change.

I wouldnt complain to much about the person who had problems with Viking Corp too much....we too had a problem with a christmas cruise last year....many many phone calls before we left and the issue was not taken care of...many after and no action. It wasnt until we made it an issue on Facebook before they took it seriously and actually contacted us and made amends for their error. Unfortunately sometimes thats what it takes, social media, for a company to deal with an issue. I do see that Viking is watching these threads so hopefully they will take action.

When we booked our cruise they were not offering air deviation on the oceans part, our TA looked into it, as it gets closer maybe we will get better information.

My mom and I are on the May 16 2015 cruise and have the Iceland extention before. We also have a listing of the tours available at each port...which I cant find at the moment. No costs are listed for the additional excursions available other than the free one. We have cruised the rivers with Viking in the past and the extra extentions were never given a cost till we were on board, it would seem strange to do an ocean cruise with 900 passengers and and have that happen.

We tried to get the extention to Iceland as well and it was all full...so we did the next best thing, had our TA create a trip to Iceland all on its own (not connected to the cruise time wise). We want to see the Northern Lights :)

Thanks for the information

 

We are definitely going to book Beijing to Shanghai -- recommended by friends who have taken the trip -- because that puts the most exhausting part of the trip first. LOL

 

We will go in May -- supposedly best weather -- and stay a few days pre and post cruise to cover things that Viking does not cover.

 

I am now thinking that I do not need more than a cabin on the middle deck. A suite for 6 days is not worth it to me -- especially since you are never in the cabin.

 

I called Viking -- 2015 itineraries will be out in November.

We went Shanghai to Beijing and you are right, the more exhausting part of the trip is at the end and at first we thought we should have done that but it ended up ok for us because we were able to relax before that part :) I have heard that you dont see the Giant Pandas on that route tho? do you maybe see them in Beijing instead? We saw them in Chongqing. Also in talking to the guide October is very pretty there as well. I have a book from the Great Wall which shows seasons and Autumn is pretty :)

While I certainly am hoping for beautiful fall weather, I am even more hopeful that the AQI (air quality index) for Beijing settles down before we get there, the past 48 hours have been very, very bad. Glad we are bringing masks, lots and lots of masks. <sigh>

The air quality will not be good. Even a little is too much. It was bad when we were there this month. I had masks but did not use them and really did not see many at all being used. I didnt feel like I needed to use one. If its rainy or misty it helps. We had misty mixed in with the polluton in Beijing. I felt like Beijing was the worst of them all however there is polluition the whole trip. Thats the unfortunate thing about China, the air qualtiy.