What time of day do the shore excursions open for purchase?

[philw1776]

Did a Viking chat FWIW about my late summer cruise. Said that they were back to the cabin priority system & that bookings open at noon PT on the date cited in your documents. 

[Peregrina651]

15 hours ago, WNcruiser said:

Unless its within a week or two of departure, this is not fair to those who have booked higher categories for priority reservations. They should at least allow 3 days between the categories or remove that "perk" from the cabin descriptions. 

 

Yes,  it is unfair but it is only temporary. Still, it is the current reality and a fact that we have to accept if we wish to travel right now: things are not back to the old normal even if they are letting us back on the ships. 

 

As for changing the booking system, my feeling is that it is a software problem and that if the software could be changed to allow different cruises to be on different booking schedules that it would have been done already. Viking has been dealing with this for over a year now.

 

 

[mauimacho]

7 hours ago, philw1776 said:

Did a Viking chat FWIW about my late summer cruise. Said that they were back to the cabin priority system & that bookings open at noon PT on the date cited in your documents. 

I picked excursions for our upcoming cruise last week and it started at midnight PT.

[formernuke]

I think it is also useful to point out that if your desired excursion shows as "sold out" when you book your excursions, you should book an alternate but keep checking back over the following days/weeks. Often people cancel their cruise or specific excursions which then show as open. You can then cancel the alternate excursion you booked and schedule the one you want (the system won't let you book two on top of one another). This worked for me for my Med cruise in October. Initially 3 different excursions showed as 'sold out' they day they opened for me, but I was eventually able to schedule them at later dates.

[CCWineLover]

On 5/19/2022 at 1:13 PM, LindaS272 said:

And during Covid times, I’ve never waited to noon Pacific time. Always checked in the am—around 6:30 on a day they said they would be posted and they were available. I live in the Pacific time zone. And they usually told me they would open at 8 pm. So you just have to be diligent around the day they are supposed to post.

Linda - agree.  For us, excursions opened up a week ago Monday around 6:00 or 6:30 AM Pacific time on the date they were supposed to be available.  Some prime excursions were already sold out.  We have DV so not unexpected.  Next time I'll look at 12 midnight Eastern Time (9 PM Pacific the previous day).

Of course - most of the cruises don't have excursions set up per the official schedule, so they could be just anytime, any day. .   Have to keep checking.

[Peregrina651]

11 hours ago, mauimacho said:

I picked excursions for our upcoming cruise last week and it started at midnight PT.

 

That's 3 am here on the east coast. I thought we had finally talked them out of that bit of insanity before the pandemic hit because they had finally switched to a Noon Pacific Time start. You can bet I am really disappointed that they have gone back to the 3am nonsense.