We should be grateful

[traveltwin]

I'm on the Star feeling wonderful on the Homelands trip. I'm struck in reading some of these threads how it's rather embarrassing to see how entitled so many people seem to be. There are a lot of rather well fed passengers who have an array of every type, amount of food and drink and STILL find things to complain about.

The world is in a bit of a mess. We're destroying our planet. The lovely staff who work on these ships must marvel at the wealthy folk who can do these trips.

All I'm saying is I'm incredibly grateful and fortunate to have such a wonderful trip.

Some of the thread titles are just downright offensive.... Whiny, entitled spoiled children. We can and should do better.

Just sayin'. End of speech from one very thankful passenger.

[CharTrav]

Amen!

[Jersey Cruisers]

I'm on the Star feeling wonderful on the Homelands trip. I'm struck in reading some of these threads how it's rather embarrassing to see how entitled so many people seem to be. There are a lot of rather well fed passengers who have an array of every type, amount of food and drink and STILL find things to complain about.

The world is in a bit of a mess. We're destroying our planet. The lovely staff who work on these ships must marvel at the wealthy folk who can do these trips.

All I'm saying is I'm incredibly grateful and fortunate to have such a wonderful trip.

Some of the thread titles are just downright offensive.... Whiny, entitled spoiled children. We can and should do better.

Just sayin'. End of speech from one very thankful passenger.

---------------------------

Just to add a different 2 cents to this, there's nothing more annoying to me than someone that feels THEY are entitled to characterize another person's complaint/opinion as showing a sense of entitlement. Surely, you have something in your life, be it cable, insurance, etc, that you've complained about. How would you feel about someone else who is quite happy with one of those services, smugly telling you that "We're destroying our planet..." (whatever in the world that has to do with it,) and that you are "whiny" and "spoiled" because you complained about the service the other person thought was wonderful.

 

Here's a novel idea: How about each person give their personal opinion about the ship/cruise/excursion, etc, (minus the editorializing about whininess) and have readers decide from the posts how to evaluate the opinions.

[paquebot]

Well said, Jersey Cruisers.

[azevedan]

Here's a novel idea: How about each person give their personal opinion about the ship/cruise/excursion, etc, (minus the editorializing about whininess) and have readers decide from the posts how to evaluate the opinions.

 

+1

 

I always read bad reviews, wherever they are, to see the things people complain about. Many don't matter to me; others are dealbreakers. Your list is likely different. Many are easily dismissed and I certainly know to take any review with a grain of salt. But please don't insult my intelligence by assuming i can't make my own assessments. Post your own experiences, and they'll be there for me to review as well.

When I read people attacking others in an attempt to 'defend' the company, you know what comes across? "Wow...people who cruise XX are certainly nasty." Something to consider.

Edited July 1, 2015 by azevedan

[Vineyard View]

I applaud the intended message from traveltwin.....feeling grateful.

This specific forum sure does make it difficult to post a positive thread, and keep it in that direction...

 

Let me add what a fellow cruiser shared with us over dinner. We were in the restaurant after observing some specific complaining behaviors while on the maiden voyage. His comment was: "such first world concerns being shown here".

 

Please let's allow gratefulness and happiness on this Viking forum without spinning it into a negative.....there are threads with unhappy passengers that can continue on that track for those who want to, there are threads where there are balanced reviews (which struggle to stay balanced without someone going all negative), and there should be threads that can be left alone to support the effort here.

Edited July 1, 2015 by Vineyard View

[paquebot]

I believe no one is bashing another CC poster for being grateful or happy. That seems a simplistic assessment of less than stellar comments made on this thread about aspects of the cruise experience. People are entitled to offer a five star review as much as others are allowed to voice their disappointment or frustration. What is unfortunate, in my opinion, and what some find offensive, are the churlish remarks by some on this thread, suggesting people they have never met are spoiled or unappreciative. Such personal attacks are patronizing and unproductive.

 

Those who have posted, such as id4Elizabeth, sitraveler, and Kathy9, were fellow CC buddies on the first leg of the maiden; and they, too, were grateful and happy, despite all the many glitches and lapses in service. They critiqued aspects of the cruise in hopes that Viking would remedy the problematic issues that arose for the benefit of future cruisers. For every misstep by Viking, they have also offered a positive. And all have expressed their hopes and confidence that future cruisers will sail on Viking, satisfied and content. I join them in wishing all currently on board or scheduled on a future sail a bon voyage.

 

Paquebot

Edited July 1, 2015 by paquebot

[Vineyard View]

We were on two of the legs of the maiden voyage and like all the others referenced, have offered up praise and critic - balanced reviews.

My observation is that the 'critic' part has been beaten to death over the same complaints/specific occurrences that took place - over and over, and over, and over again. So I think that the'critic' parts of what occurred on the maiden voyage have been well covered. Multiple times. i don't know, maybe the OP was referring to this?

And my point was, let's allow current travelers on the Star to offer up their CURRENT experiences and move forward. Simplistic assessment or not. Clearly it appears that the critics from all of us on the maiden voyage were listened to and changes are being implemented - resulting in positive experiences......

[Logistigr8r]

Such personal attacks are patronizing and unproductive.

 

Paquebot

 

I think you hit the nail on the head, esp when you said "personal attacks". I think that may be causing a problem. Maybe we could try to steer away from those. Well said Paquebot.

[id4elizabeth]

I agree with Jersey Cruisers, azvedan, pacquebot, and logistigr8. I too have tried to be balanced, and I have been attacked as being whiney, boorish, nitpicky, negative, entitled etc. I'm ignoring that in hopes that my tips and facts will be useful to some folks. Such personal attacks however, do make it hard to not want to throw up my hands and say forget it - I'm never posting again. I do wish this forum would just get back to reviewing what happened on their cruise, whether positive or negative and stop questioning the judgement and personal qualities of the posters, be they positive posters or negative posters. We all have a different perspective and different things happen to each person on even the same cruise that affect their perceptions. Everyone's perspective is valid and everyone should have a voice and we should respect everyone's opinion.

[CTLeeA]

I'm on the Star feeling wonderful on the Homelands trip. I'm struck in reading some of these threads how it's rather embarrassing to see how entitled so many people seem to be. There are a lot of rather well fed passengers who have an array of every type, amount of food and drink and STILL find things to complain about.

The world is in a bit of a mess. We're destroying our planet. The lovely staff who work on these ships must marvel at the wealthy folk who can do these trips.

All I'm saying is I'm incredibly grateful and fortunate to have such a wonderful trip.

Some of the thread titles are just downright offensive.... Whiny, entitled spoiled children. We can and should do better.

Just sayin'. End of speech from one very thankful passenger.

 

YOU are the person we'd love to travel with.....and we did...at least by proxy...it's amazing we heard such positive comments from so many happy, "well fed", experienced travelers onboard and came back to terms including, 'humilated', 'angered', and 'frustrated' in respect to the cruise. I don't agree with your posting 100%, only a 1000%.

 

Sail on, happy cruisers..cruises are like life itself...imperfect but well worth the journey.

[CTLeeA]

I agree with Jersey Cruisers, azvedan, pacquebot, and logistigr8. I too have tried to be balanced, and I have been attacked as being whiney, boorish, nitpicky, negative, entitled etc. I'm ignoring that in hopes that my tips and facts will be useful to some folks. Such personal attacks however, do make it hard to not want to throw up my hands and say forget it - I'm never posting again. I do wish this forum would just get back to reviewing what happened on their cruise, whether positive or negative and stop questioning the judgement and personal qualities of the posters, be they positive posters or negative posters. We all have a different perspective and different things happen to each person on even the same cruise that affect their perceptions. Everyone's perspective is valid and everyone should have a voice and we should respect everyone's opinion.

 

I think your tips, and observations were extremely helpful and please don't think I considered any of your observations to be whiney, or entitled etc. But if you wrote this post thinking I was going to give you a $500 OBC, sadly, sadly, tragicly, mistaken...(J/K).

[id4elizabeth]

Oh shucks! And my onboard account is already paid thankfully - for which I'm grateful. Speaking of grateful. I'm personally grateful to be here everyday, being a stage 3 breast cancer survivor! And I'm grateful I had a chance to go on a 50-day voyage and meet a lot of fabulous folks, many from here on CruiseCritic, and see some fabulous places.

 

But I think I'll skip doing a Maiden voyage again, on ANY cruise line. And I also think I'll wait a year until Viking Oceans has done a particular itinerary before I sign up, since it's the ShoreEx part of the cruise that let me down the worst. After a year I figure they'll have the shore excursions vetted. Looking forward a couple years, we're interested in doing their departure out of NY up through New England and over to Greenland and Iceland. Haven't seen the details yet though. Already booked for the Eastern Europe river cruise. I know they've got those shore excursions down pat!

[Lennylover]

So how about Stop whining and provide a fellow CC with the reviews of the excursions you promised me this week

[CTLeeA]

Oh shucks! And my onboard account is already paid thankfully - for which I'm grateful. Speaking of grateful. I'm personally grateful to be here everyday, being a stage 3 breast cancer survivor! And I'm grateful I had a chance to go on a 50-day voyage and meet a lot of fabulous folks, many from here on CruiseCritic, and see some fabulous places.

 

But I think I'll skip doing a Maiden voyage again, on ANY cruise line. And I also think I'll wait a year until Viking Oceans has done a particular itinerary before I sign up, since it's the ShoreEx part of the cruise that let me down the worst. After a year I figure they'll have the shore excursions vetted. Looking forward a couple years, we're interested in doing their departure out of NY up through New England and over to Greenland and Iceland. Haven't seen the details yet though. Already booked for the Eastern Europe river cruise. I know they've got those shore excursions down pat!

 

I think a useful point, previously made concerning Viking's ShoreEx is that the activity level part of the description seems to be based upon the distance which needs to be covered and does not consider the hills and other problems the less than fully mobile among us need to deal with. In other words, the description, 'easy' possibly applies to a 40-something in good health versus a 60+ passenger with bad knees. Lots of guides are about 20 and lose half of their group who can't keep up with them. Since Viking is positioning itself in the premium plus category, it might do what some other lines have done: offer tours which are comparatively easier than their core tours. The NY cruise is something I didn't know about and sounds great..being a smaller ship, it's probably more likely that they'd leave from Manhattan than Brooklyn....and best of all, you seem like a wonderful person and we're happiest about you beating cancer.

[CharTrav]

CTLeeA: Re ShoreXs. What you're suggesting is in fact what they do on VR. Our cruise director created subgroups based in how strenuous a tour the participants could handle or wanted. Thus, if our ship's number was 19, we might have groups (lollipops) 19A through 19F. Hopefully VO will borrow that page from VR's 'how to run excursions' book.

[traveltwin]

Well just wrote a long post but wifi lagged and lost it. Main points. Today Tallinn. Terrific guide Marju on the included walking tour. Lots of cobblestones. Lots of ships in port. Lots of tourists. Weather gods smiling. Wonderful blue skies, sunny weather. I of course packed for colder climes. Came back to ship, soaked in hot pool, sauna, steam room. Doesn't get much better than this!

[roothy123]

CTLeeA: Re ShoreXs. What you're suggesting is in fact what they do on VR. Our cruise director created subgroups based in how strenuous a tour the participants could handle or wanted. Thus, if our ship's number was 19, we might have groups (lollipops) 19A through 19F. Hopefully VO will borrow that page from VR's 'how to run excursions' book.

 

Good to hear that might be possible for Oceans, although with free excursions for 900 people in a typical 9 hour cruise day, it may not be possible. For that matter, finding enough 20 somethings to lead tours might be difficult. As for the descriptions of excursions, those things are usually written by the vendors, and in the case of European vendors, Europeans generally seem to walk more and be more mobile than Americans, which means their idea of moderate exertion may be different from many American's ideas of exertion! I've also noticed that some cruise lines ask people to carefully evaluate their level of ability when it comes to signing up for an excursion, and a few people don't want to be left out always seem to overestimate their ability and sign up anyway. What's a cruise line to do? Hopefully with more visits to a particular city, and more experience with the tour guides available there, Viking Oceans will provide very specific descriptions of what's likely to be involved, and hopefully people will take this to heart. It's a tough situation. I'm grateful that most slower people DO read descriptions and warnings and plan accordingly.

 

Wow, a cruise that includes New England AND Iceland - that sounds wonderful, although probably too long for us.

[theremin]

I'm still pretty new to this and was a bit taken aback by the sudden eruption of (what appeared to be) shooting the messenger. It seems a little "kissing and making up" has transpired recently.;) As a mostly disinterested 3rd party, I offer the following . . .

 

To all who have posted about Viking Ocean Cruises: I thank you for taking the time to share your experiences, observations, exaltations, and frustrations. This is one of the great values of these forums . . . 20 real people taking the same cruise(s) and experiencing sometimes markedly different circumstances. Through questions & answers, we can sort out what may apply to us and plan or adjust our trips accordingly.

 

Keep it coming . . . the good, the bad, the ugly (yes, even the coyote ugly :eek:). I value your insights and judgment. I look forward to your future comments on cruises and reviews, but "reviewing the reviewers" - not so much.

 

My soapbox is hereby relinquished :D

Edited July 2, 2015 by theremin

[CTLeeA]

CTLeeA: Re ShoreXs. What you're suggesting is in fact what they do on VR. Our cruise director created subgroups based in how strenuous a tour the participants could handle or wanted. Thus, if our ship's number was 19, we might have groups (lollipops) 19A through 19F. Hopefully VO will borrow that page from VR's 'how to run excursions' book.

 

That sounds perfect, or as a second choice indicate fast paced. Our Rome tour on a Celebrity tour was lead by a young woman who was part greyhound and regularly lost about a third of us. I understand now that to see both the Vatican and the Collesiem, one needs to move very good quickly but a longer tour at more money would have worked as would seeing one or the other but not both.

Did your VR tour run longer according to a slower walking speed?

[CharTrav]

That sounds perfect, or as a second choice indicate fast paced. Our Rome tour on a Celebrity tour was lead by a young woman who was part greyhound and regularly lost about a third of us. I understand now that to see both the Vatican and the Collesiem, one needs to move very good quickly but a longer tour at more money would have worked as would seeing one or the other but not both.

 

Did your VR tour run longer according to a slower walking speed?

 

 

In answer to your last question I can't say cuz I wasn't ever part of that group but they did seem to be of variable end times. We didn't seem to have any cases where folks got left behimd by the pace of the tour. There was one casw in Koblenyz where the place we were going to was simply not suitable for some. And they were encouraged to remain on board and no go at all.

[rjscott]

In answer to your last question I can't say cuz I wasn't ever part of that group but they did seem to be of variable end times. We didn't seem to have any cases where folks got left behimd by the pace of the tour. There was one casw in Koblenyz where the place we were going to was simply not suitable for some. And they were encouraged to remain on board and no go at all.

 

Yes, on our VR cruises, we've had some 'leisure groups' where they had either 'drive-by' tours, where the areas were hilly, or certain sites were eliminated from their walking tours due to the strenuous nature of seeing those excluded sites.

 

Becki

[Staying Afloat]

That sounds perfect, or as a second choice indicate fast paced. Our Rome tour on a Celebrity tour was lead by a young woman who was part greyhound and regularly lost about a third of us. I understand now that to see both the Vatican and the Collesiem, one needs to move very good quickly but a longer tour at more money would have worked as would seeing one or the other but not both.

Did your VR tour run longer according to a slower walking speed?

I've done 3 or 4 VR cruises. The excursions, in my opinion, are generally divided into tortoise, hare and roadrunner. With emphysema and other issues, I lean big time towards the tortoise group.:p That group does not generally go as far as the faster groups and so you miss some things, but they're not so physically challenging. Many times, you can afterwards go on your own without a guide and take a taxi back to the ship. I don't have a comfortable feeling yet from reading the posts that VO is offering the same. I read the blog of a fellow CC member who mentioned that there were 2 excursions, for instance, listed for Santorini as "easy" while, in his opinion, they were both more moderate to difficult. This leads me to consider a private excursion as suggested at sagetraveling.com. The included tour in Istanbul seems way too strenuous for me, so I have already booked a private tour that is easier for me. I still get the joy and fun of being with everyone on board this beautiful ship and maybe some of the other excursions, so I don't feel like I'll be missing anything. Sail on everyone! :)

[sitraveler]

On my Viking Oceans cruise there was NO easy, moderate or difficult separation of tours. The descriptions were accurate, but you have to read and assimilate the descriptions. Their "easy" included significant walking over inclines and hills, it was too much for some of the passengers.

The maiden Istanbul tour was very easy. A bus from the ship, a short drive to the mosque, a very short walk to the tour boat and then the spice market. We were then driven back to the ship. I don't know if they changed the included Istanbul tour afterwards.

Edited July 5, 2015 by sitraveler
.,m.

[CTLeeA]

On my Viking Oceans cruise there was NO easy, moderate or difficult separation of tours. The descriptions were accurate, but you have to read and assimilate the descriptions. Their "easy" included significant walking over inclines and hills, it was too much for some of the passengers.

The maiden Istanbul tour was very easy. A bus from the ship, a short drive to the mosque, a very short walk to the tour boat and then the spice market. We were then driven back to the ship. I don't know if they changed the included Istanbul tour afterwards.

 

i looked at VO shore tour page and it seems that they have reclassified at least a few formally easy ratings to moderate. Wehn we put together a private tour, we stress that we're not interested in seeing as much real estate as we can...we'd rather go at a slower pace and see less but absorb more.

 

Using your Istanbul tour for an example...compared to the tour we took from Celebrity..you missed a lot...just the Grand Bazaar took several hours, but it seemed that for you, it was worth the sacrifice..years ago I wanted to see as much as I could, but these days, I agree with your idea of an appropriate tour.