Vantage Douro Cruise: Booking, Flight Arrangements, etc.

[FuelScience]

We’re leaving this Saturday, March 31, for a Douro cruise with Vantage. Hoping that rains haven’t caused the river to rise enough to prevent cruising! I’ll try to post while on the cruise. I usually start off pretty well, but then I start having too much fun to post every day. Also, I hear that internet access along the Douro is spotty. I thought that I’d start by summarizing our booking and pre-cruise experience with Vantage.

 

We’ve traveled with Viking (3 cruises), Avalon (twice), and Vantage (once). Of these three, Avalon is our current favorite, but they don’t sail the Douro, and Viking was pretty well booked up for spring of 2018. Also, Vantage had a few features we liked that some of the other lines didn’t have: 1) a 7-day one-way trip down the Douro from Barca de Alva to Porto rather than the 7-day Porto to Porto trip that most lines offer, 2) 2 nights in Madrid and 3 in Lisbon as part of their standard package, and 3) an optional 3-night post-cruise extension on the island of Madeira.

 

Vantage leases the Douro Serenity (2017 was first year in service) for approximately half of the season, and it sails for other operators for the balance of the year. Vantage typically books two consecutive weeks to allow for a Porto-to-Barca de Alba cruise followed by a cruise in the opposite direction.

 

Booking

We reserved our cruise on July 22 and made our deposit ($500 per person plus travel insurance) immediately. We took advantage of Vantage’s E-check payment option and got 10% off the cost of the trip by paying in full before August 15. We booked a Junior Suite (237 sq. ft. or 22 sq. m.) with balcony. We dealt directly with Vantage since they don’t use travel agents. By October, the web-site price had gone up by $1,000 per person. The cruise showed up as “Sold Out” on October 2.

 

In the months between booking and traveling, I read most of the Douro reviews on CruiseCritic to get an idea of what the trip would be like and what people liked and didn’t like about the Douro. Since there was only one Vantage review, I focused on excursions rather than on-ship experiences. We went ahead and booked the Toledo excursion since it’s early in the trip, and we will decide on the other optional excursions while on the trip.

 

Flight Arrangements

Vantage booked our flights on August 2. We requested American Airlines from Nashville through Dallas or Philadelphia when we made our initial reservation and were given American fights through Philadelphia. We were happy to get the routing we wanted without having to use the $100 per person Vantage FlightChoice service. We did make a change, requesting an earlier flight out of Nashville with a longer layover in Philadelphia. The Vantage rep made the change with no problems—still avoiding the FlightChoice charges. We paid in full on August 9, receiving our 10% discount, and Vantage Air agreed to go ahead and purchase our tickets so that we could choose the seats we wanted and request upgrades.

 

When I tried to upgrade on the American Airlines web site, I couldn’t bring up the trip. The site showed a reservation, but listed it as “Ticket Pending,” so that I couldn’t see the details or upgrade our seats. After a few calls back and forth with American and Vantage, we figured out the problem. Our Madeira tickets on Air Portugal (TAP) wouldn’t be issued until spring, so even the American agent couldn’t access the reservation. With instructions from American, I managed to get Vantage air to change something in the “ticketing field,” which allowed the American agent to access the reservation and upgrade us to Main Cabin Extra, with a request for a business class upgrade using miles and dollars. In a real surprise, the business class upgrade for the return Lisbon-Philadelphia leg of the trip cleared in late September! Unfortunately, business class for the trip from Philadelphia to Madrid filled up with paying passengers a few weeks before the trip.

 

Even after all this I couldn’t access the full reservation on American’s web site. Also, I had to call Vantage back so that they could reset the ticketing field. Otherwise our TAP Madeira tickets wouldn’t be purchased.

 

Vantage bought the TAP tickets in early February, opening up all of the flights on American’s site. We still couldn’t reserve seats for the TAP flights. Vantage informed us that it would cost $50 per seat per flight to reserve seats, so we passed on reserved seats for the 2-hour flight. Also a call to TAP revealed that we will have to pay €40 per bag for checked luggage or €160 for two bags on two flights. I feel that Vantage should have made this clear or included it in the extension price.

 

Documents

Vantage doesn’t mail documents; you’d think that a company that does so much direct mail advertising wouldn’t scrimp on mailing documents. Instead, Vantage makes final documents available for download 3 weeks before departure. Documents actually appeared on the web site 30 days before departure, and they were something of a disappointment. Almost everything in the “documents” was already available on the web site. The only new information was the phone number for the ship. Around 3 weeks before we left we received a nice email from our cruise director, Eleuterio, with additional details along with his contact information.

 

So we’re 5 day away and excited about our upcoming cruise! More posts to come…

[Babcia7]

Have a great trip. I'll be looking forward to your posts. We will be sailing on the Douro in July with Uniworld, with 3 nights in Madrid pre-cruise and 2 nights in Lisbon post cruise. The itinerary sounds wonderful!

[EAGLESLOVER]

Have a wonderful cruise. We are also cruising the Douro with 3 days in Madrid precruise and 3 in Lisbon post cruise so we are very interested in your posts and review of the Douro and ports visited. We will be cruising for the third time with AMA.

 

 

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[TravelerThom]

We’re leaving this Saturday, March 31, for a Douro cruise w Vantage

Wishing you a safe and pleasant (okay as much as possible) and wonderful trip. I hope I helped a little. I have been reticent about sharing this on CC but Lyn the love of my life and travel companion for 43 years died very suddenly of a stroke recently. For 2018 I will just be watching others enjoy while I struggle with Probate etc. We had wonderful memories of 7 continents (river boats on only 4 ;)) and I don’t regret a minute of it. If you love someone make sure they know it, tomorrow may be too late.

 

Thom

[gnome12]

Wishing you a safe and pleasant (okay as much as possible) and wonderful trip. I hope I helped a little. I have been reticent about sharing this on CC but Lyn the love of my life and travel companion for 43 years died very suddenly of a stroke recently. For 2018 I will just be watching others enjoy while I struggle with Probate etc. We had wonderful memories of 7 continents (river boats on only 4 ;)) and I don’t regret a minute of it. If you love someone make sure they know it, tomorrow may be too late.

 

Thom

I'm so sorry for your loss.

 

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[FuelScience]

Wishing you a safe and pleasant (okay as much as possible) and wonderful trip. I hope I helped a little. I have been reticent about sharing this on CC but Lyn the love of my life and travel companion for 43 years died very suddenly of a stroke recently. For 2018 I will just be watching others enjoy while I struggle with Probate etc. We had wonderful memories of 7 continents (river boats on only 4 ;)) and I don’t regret a minute of it. If you love someone make sure they know it, tomorrow may be too late.

 

Thom

Thom,

I'm so sorry for your loss. My wife lost her first husband at age 40, and I know from her grief how much it can hurt. I thank you for your help in planning my trip and wish you well as you recover.

[DaveinCharlotte]

Will be following this thread closely, as I'm currently in the throes of arranging air for a Vantage trip in Europe late this year. We picked a cabin level that provided free air, and requested our "home" airline (American Airlines) for the transatlantic legs. Vantage gave us those flights, all right, but as codeshare flights on a British Airways booking (there is one short BA flight in Europe). Called Vantage; they did rebook us on AA, but with no seat assignments for the BA codeshare leg, and said they would not be paying the tickets until 45 days before the start of the trip. I thought since this was free air, maybe that was just something I had to live with, but given your experience, maybe I will give them another call. Have a great cruise!

[FuelScience]

Will be following this thread closely, as I'm currently in the throes of arranging air for a Vantage trip in Europe late this year. We picked a cabin level that provided free air, and requested our "home" airline (American Airlines) for the transatlantic legs. Vantage gave us those flights, all right, but as codeshare flights on a British Airways booking (there is one short BA flight in Europe). Called Vantage; they did rebook us on AA, but with no seat assignments for the BA codeshare leg, and said they would not be paying the tickets until 45 days before the start of the trip. I thought since this was free air, maybe that was just something I had to live with, but given your experience, maybe I will give them another call. Have a great cruise!

Ours wasn't free air, so they may handle it differently. We did get a reasonable price for the tickets. By leaving on the last day of March, our tickets were about $200 per person less than April departures. June and July departures are $500 dollars more!