Viking Ocean - Combined Cruise Schedule

[Lilyskittymom]

Let me throw another wrench into this.  I'm looking at the latest brochure for 2025 Ocean Voyages  and they have a new cruise called the North Pacific Crossing.  It's a blip in the back of the brochure, so there's not a lot of information (page 22 if you have it) but it does include a map. It's 26 days (vs 23 on the North Pacific Passage), runs from Tokyo to Vancouver and includes Skagway and Glacier Bay.  It's sailing April 2025 but there's no mention of which ship. And, of course, it's not on the website.

 

Maria

[OneSixtyToOne]

5 hours ago, Lilyskittymom said:

Let me throw another wrench into this.  I'm looking at the latest brochure for 2025 Ocean Voyages  and they have a new cruise called the North Pacific Crossing.  It's a blip in the back of the brochure, so there's not a lot of information (page 22 if you have it) but it does include a map. It's 26 days (vs 23 on the North Pacific Passage), runs from Tokyo to Vancouver and includes Skagway and Glacier Bay.  It's sailing April 2025 but there's no mention of which ship. And, of course, it's not on the website.

 

Maria

Hmmm…

I just looked at the Venus Alaska sailing. It DEPARTS from Vancouver on May 11 and it’s the earliest sailing of the year. I’m thinking it’s too early in the season to offer a sailing on Venus from Tokyo to Alaska. I think they might just sail right to Vancouver without passengers.

[wolfie11]

11 hours ago, OneSixtyToOne said:

Hmmm…

I just looked at the Venus Alaska sailing. It DEPARTS from Vancouver on May 11 and it’s the earliest sailing of the year. I’m thinking it’s too early in the season to offer a sailing on Venus from Tokyo to Alaska. I think they might just sail right to Vancouver without passengers.

It never makes good financial sense to sail empty when they could have paying passengers.  I can see sailing the Suez empty, because, you know, bombs, but not the North Pacific.  I have done that transit in April before and it wasn’t bad at all.  I’ve done it in May with 20 foot seas.  NCL starts sailing Alaska in April and by May 11, there will be plenty of ships already there.

[Lilyskittymom]

2 hours ago, wolfie11 said:

It never makes good financial sense to sail empty when they could have paying passengers.  I can see sailing the Suez empty, because, you know, bombs, but not the North Pacific.  I have done that transit in April before and it wasn’t bad at all.  I’ve done it in May with 20 foot seas.  NCL starts sailing Alaska in April and by May 11, there will be plenty of ships already there.

We were on Orion for Far Eastern Horizons (Hong Kong to Tokyo) in April 2023.  This was the first time it had sailed into Japan since before the pandemic. A couple weeks before the start of the cruise, Orion went into Singapore (I think) for a couple weeks for some work and sailed to Hong Kong without any passengers.  They had been sailing a bunch of different routes because some countries were still closed to cruise ships.  Boarding time went from 11 am to 1 pm to 4 pm because of the port schedule. And all the passengers were boarding on the same day, not staggered when you have segments. Honestly, I think the government was trying to make things inconvenient for Viking and they even messed with the wifi, making it largely useless, causing all kinds of problems for the Orion staff and an inconvenience for the passengers.  Once we sailed out of the reach of the Hong Kong government, everything was fine.  And by the way, Hong Kong is a pretty wonderful place to visit.

 

Maria

Edited Sunday at 04:39 PM by Lilyskittymom

[CharTrav]

You folks are making me worry that I need to revisit the VO site specifically Venus' schedule in 2025 which is where the redeployment between the Sea and Venus really came into play.  One of the things I haven't checked for yet is whether the cruises needed to carry Venus from Vancouver to Tokyo in Sept '25 have been added yet but  I don't think so.  Not based on what I'm seeing today.  Did notice a new cruise added for the Star between Athens and Rome -- Mediterranean & Adriatic Odyssey--  in Nov '25 and Feb '26.  15 day cruise that visits some new ports in Italy & Greece.

[OneSixtyToOne]

1 hour ago, CharTrav said:

You folks are making me worry that I need to revisit the VO site specifically Venus' schedule in 2025 which is where the redeployment between the Sea and Venus really came into play.  One of the things I haven't checked for yet is whether the cruises needed to carry Venus from Vancouver to Tokyo in Sept '25 have been added yet but  I don't think so.  Not based on what I'm seeing today.  Did notice a new cruise added for the Star between Athens and Rome -- Mediterranean & Adriatic Odyssey--  in Nov '25 and Feb '26.  15 day cruise that visits some new ports in Italy & Greece.

It looks like a couple of new itineraries in the Mediterranean.

[CharTrav]

Just an FYI to everybody -- I got an email from Dropbox with a request to fully share the folder where I keep the combined cruise schedule plus a bunch of other stuff not related to any specific cruise. I wrote a note to that person informing her that I would not grant that request and why.  It's not necessary.  All that is needed is to click on the file you're interested in and click on the download button that appears. I double checked the link I give here by logging out of my DropBox account to see what you guys get.  And it is what I expected - it works as intended.