Viking Homelands 2020 / Questions

[Dark Avenger]

We did Viking Mediterranean Odyssey two years ago as a very last minute decision and loved it, one of our best vacations.   Did a pre-cruise Venice and post cruise Barcelona add-on independent of Viking.   Booked everything myself, which I really enjoy.  Thinking about doing the Baltic next summer (Homelands) to go visit "my people" since I am about 50% Swedish and much of the balance German.  What better cruise line for a Viking than Viking?  Few questions for whomever would like to advise us:

• Best month/week of the year for this part of the world?  Optimum weather the key I guess, with a second variable being fewest crowds.  I've read that this part of the world is much less crowed than Italy / France, etc. 
• Best route - east / west, or visa versa?  Pros / cons? 
• How little can I put down and what is the least I can pay  for the balance as close to sail as possible?  - just for trip risk management purposes, struggling with elderly parents, etc.  We will have trip insurance for that very reason.  
• Best add on before/after cruise stay  Scandinavian city(s) - does not have to be on the route, but close via train, etc.  Berlin maybe?  Some city where one, or two days is not enough and connections are good.   Coming from Denver and like the direct flights that Luftansia has to Franfurt and Munich.  Would like to avoid Heathrow.  Would consider Icelandic Air. 
• Flight / Airline advice for this part of Northern Europe?  Never been north of Amsterdam 
• Best independent non/Viking excursion provider companies, want to explore those options more than on our first cruise.  Alla, etc. 

• Travel agent - yes/no  If it can save us money, I like the hands on control of doing it myself, but if a experienced TA can save us money, I'd like to research that option
• Just generally stuff you all have learned on the planning side of a trip like this.  This cruise, or other Viking, or even non-Viking cruises
• Happy to correspond offline, if I can figure out how to do that

 

Any helpful advice will be most appreciated - this is a great board.   Sorry for the volume - just thought I would get it all out there at once and before I commit to Viking. 

[Peregrina651]

There is no private messaging on these boards; the feature has been disabled. The only way to converse privately is if someone supplies an e-mail address in their signature file. (Don't write me because I haven't taken this cruise with Viking).

 

Check out the roll calls for this itinerary and ask questions on the roll calls that seem to have their act together. This is Viking's signature itinerary so there are plenty of roll calls. Not everybody who participates in the roll calls comes to this forum, so asking questions in the roll calls is just a way  of expanding your audience (and the bigger your audience...)

 

As for payments, the best you can hope for, unless you book on board (which you can't), is pay in full 12 month prior to sailing.  Some people are reporting PIF 18 months in advance. A good TA should be able to get you 12 months, if they are willing to push a little.   Payment at booking has been Viking's policy for a long time. For a short while, they had gone to 6 months, if you asked nicely, and now they have returned to their older policies.

 

So yes, try to work with a TA, if nothing else, you might get an OBC out of the transaction. CC rules forbid us from naming names.

Edited March 15, 2019 by Peregrina651

[Clay Clayton]

Agree (as usual!) with Peregrina. We have been pleased with a TA who provides the max OBC that Viking allows. It is usually enough to cover the daily service charges with some left over to cover the bar bill. 

 

While we weren’t on Viking for our Baltic cruise last September, we did seem to follow them around in most ports.  I would suggest that you prepare yourself mentally for large crowds at the typical tourist spots-Catherine’s Palace, etc.  There seemed to be Rome size hoards everywhere we went even though we thought we had improved our chances of a more sedate experience by booking in mid September. 

 

You might want to look at TAP Portuguese Airlines especially if you are paying to fly business class. They are bringing on the new Airbus 330neo with full lie flatbseats from a number of new USA cities. I know San Francisco is on the list so depending on how flights between Denver and there are it might work for you. They usually have a fare much less than other airlines and allow for an up to five day stopover in either Lisbon or Porto (both are great places to visit). They have nice flights to/from Copenhagen-not sure where else in the Baltics they fly. 

 

We were here very pleased with Hey Russia! for our two days in St Petersburg. We booked this along with 10 others we met on the rollcall for our cruise. That really is the best place to get great info to plan your trip. Everywhere else we did it completely independently using local transportation. 

 

Feel free to email me at BigNCBear@aol.com if you have any questions. 

[CCWineLover]

6 hours ago, Clay Clayton said:

Agree (as usual!) with Peregrina. We have been pleased with a TA who provides the max OBC that Viking allows. It is usually enough to cover the daily service charges with some left over to cover the bar bill. 

 

While we weren’t on Viking for our Baltic cruise last September, we did seem to follow them around in most ports.  I would suggest that you prepare yourself mentally for large crowds at the typical tourist spots-Catherine’s Palace, etc.  There seemed to be Rome size hoards everywhere we went even though we thought we had improved our chances of a more sedate experience by booking in mid September. 

 

You might want to look at TAP Portuguese Airlines especially if you are paying to fly business class. They are bringing on the new Airbus 330neo with full lie flatbseats from a number of new USA cities. I know San Francisco is on the list so depending on how flights between Denver and there are it might work for you. They usually have a fare much less than other airlines and allow for an up to five day stopover in either Lisbon or Porto (both are great places to visit). They have nice flights to/from Copenhagen-not sure where else in the Baltics they fly. 

 

We were here very pleased with Hey Russia! for our two days in St Petersburg. We booked this along with 10 others we met on the rollcall for our cruise. That really is the best place to get great info to plan your trip. Everywhere else we did it completely independently using local transportation. 

 

Feel free to email me at BigNCBear@aol.com if you have any questions. 

 

Another agreement with Peregrina's advice.   We did the Homelands cruise the last 2 weeks of May in 2018 and thoroughly enjoyed it.   We specifically chose to go the Stockholm to Bergen route.  We wanted to spend time on the front end of the trip in Stockholm (several days) and felt we'd be ready to get home when we finished the cruise.  However, in retrospect, given our fantastic weather, we wish we'd done a post cruise on the train to Oslo and seen that.  Check out some of the other Homelands and Into the Midnight Sun Roll Call discussions about that.

There were some crowds that we expected (in St. Petersburg).   In Tallinn it was crowded in the AM with all the cruise passengers, but we spent the whole afternoon walking about the city without many people at all, since they'd all gone back to their ships. 

We did not do Viking Air as we flew from San Francisco to Stockholm on KLM via Amsterdam (much better pricing and we didn't have to pay that $100 pp fee for not going direct to the cruise ship).  We love KLM and also Schiphol Airport.  Interesting notes, Clay, however, on TAP.  We may have to try them next time when we do a cruise out of Lisbon and Rome.  I had heard their new planes are quite nice - especially in business class.

Stockholm, however, was our favorite city of all.   As stated we only regretted not spending more time in Norway, Bergen, and seeing Oslo - so we are considering doing the Into the Midnight Sun cruise!

[Clay Clayton]

We flew Tap a good bit last year. Their intra Europe routes were great. We even were served ice cream (albeit on a stick) on the short 45 min flight between Porto and Lisbon.  On the flight from Lisbon to Copenhagen, we got a choice of a hot meal (this was in economy) which while airplane food wasn’t bad.  On a short hop from Lisbon to Rome we got a nice cold sandwich.  The flight attendants were all friendly (and beautiful/handsome)!

 

Our long haul on them was fine but we were on an old Singapore Airlines (angled lie flat seats in biz) so while not the best experience, it only cost us $1,300 round trip...so really couldn’t complain!

[jiminyC_fan]

We took the Homelands cruise and loved it.  We flew out of Denver but did not have a direct flight (we had Viking Air Plus).  We had a connection in NJ.  We did fly nonstop from Frankfurt to Denver on our return.  We were in Stockholm for 4 days and saw so much.  Really happy that we added it on.   I was disappointed in the post stay for Bergen.  Everything was great but we sure wish we had more time in Oslo. With the limited time we were still able to see some great sites but I felt let down that we didn't have enough time to explore on our own.   It sounds like you plan to do it on your own so you will be much better off.

 

I see you mentioned Alla and we were extremely pleased with them.  We were sorry that we didn't use them in any other city than St Petersburg.  They kept us in front of the crowds at all sites.  If you are interested in Pulpit Rock in Stavanger you can do it cheaper than Viking by using Norled or Rodne.  They are just a very short walk from the ship.  You can buy your tickets ahead of time online.

 

Surprisingly, our favorite port was Eidfjord.  They don't always stop there so your itinerary may not.  We didn't do the included tour or an optional tour.  We actually spent the day on a beautiful hike on our own.   Fresh air and no hustle and bustle of a tour.  It was wonderful.

 

We used a TA and saved 2500.00 BUT the TA's can no longer give you discounts.  They can only offer onboard credit.  We usually book things on our own but would definitely use our TA again.

[Respbj]

We did Homelands beginning of May 2017 and flew to London for a week then flew out of City Airport London to Bergen and stayed in same hotel that Viking uses but on our own, the bus from airport drops off outside hotel as last stop, you can then walk on to the ship from there, no taxi needed.  We had 5 wonderful days in Bergen with sunshine in the high 60's which is unusual for Bergen. Lots to see and do there. We used TJ's Tours for our 2 day St. Petersburg small bus tour, and for Berlin (but that is a long day so be warned) but also with TJ's on a small bus.  On the Roll Call we got our group of 16 together for the TJ's tours and they gave us all really good discounts. We did Table Rock cruise with a company than was half as much as booking with Viking and as it turned out Viking used the same company.  At the last minute we booked the Jazz evening cruise in Coopenhagen with Viking and it was fun.  I guess because we were early in the season we never saw big crowds except for Katherine's Palace but TJ's got us to see so much in 2 days including lunches and they don't make you pay till the end of the last day, really happy with them as they zipped us from site to site including going down into a Metro station.

We did all the other included Viking tours and stayed in most towns like Stockholm where there were shuttle buses also they had temps in the 80's very unseasonable for that time of year, people were out sunbathing.  

We had Viking arrange a taxi to pick us up as we flew out of the small Stockholm airport into Brussels on Brussels Air, where we then continued our European adventure. Have Fun!