Excursion pricing and quality of buses.

[MrRandal]

My wife and I are taking our first Viking Ocean Cruise in Oct 2020, the 13 day Mediterranean Odyssey. We are presently researching shore excursions for our entire cruise, quite a daunting task. We realize all of the tours on the website may not be available, and we can't see the pricing or book them yet. We are curious about many things, but the 2 things I'm most curious about at the present time are (1) How expensive is a major excursion through Viking, say the Sistine Chapel and Vatican City excursion from Civitavecchia, and (2) many of these tours include some extensive bus rides, how comfortable/new are the buses that Viking contracts with in their ports. Thanks for your help, I'm sure I'll have additional questions later.

[philw1776]

Busses are excellent.  Typically Mercedes.

[MrRandal]

1 minute ago, philw1776 said:

Busses are excellent.  Typically Mercedes.

 

Thank you, any insight on excursion pricing?

[AuntieWerewolf10]

Check out the Viking Sea Roll call for May 6, 2020. 

CharTrav has a Dropbox detailed listing of excursions and prices.

 

[Jim Avery]

We recently disembarked Viking Sun after our second Viking World Cruise so have some experience with the busses.. As I have mentioned a time or two I am not a fan of bus rides.  In many ports there is no viable option.  Bus quality varies dramatically from the above mentioned Mercedes luxury coaches to clapped out school busses in some of the remote ports.  European ports have the best options with good public transport and taxis and will have better quality busses.  Legroom from one bus to the next can vary dramatically.  As with airplanes it all comes down to how many seats are crammed in.  Usually, but not always, Viking will not fill them to total capacity.  Which is nice but still a group of 40+.  That will never be as nice as a small group tour or private tour but again, many want the security of not missing the ship if delays happen.  As to pricing, almost always pricing it yourself and taking the delay risk will be cheaper.  In Egypt a private car with Egyptologist and driver and with a police escort was cheaper than the Viking offered tours on the busses.  Viking are in the business of making money of course.  So I guess there is no one simple answer but hope this info helps a bit.  

Edited January 15, 2020 by Jim Avery

[MrRandal]

2 hours ago, AuntieWerewolf10 said:

Check out the Viking Sea Roll call for May 6, 2020. 

CharTrav has a Dropbox detailed listing of excursions and prices.

 

 

Thank you Auntie, not the same itinerary, but many of the same ports, this is exactly what we were looking for. Having printed it out, many of the excursions listed on the website pre booking, don't quite line up with what is actually being offered. But at least we have a very good idea of the price range for many excursions. 

 

1 hour ago, Jim Avery said:

 Bus quality varies dramatically from the above mentioned Mercedes luxury coaches to clapped out school busses in some of the remote ports.  European ports have the best options with good public transport and taxis and will have better quality busses.  Legroom from one bus to the next can vary dramatically.  

 

And thank you Jim, I'm not a fan of sitting on busses either, however our itinerary is all modern Mediterranean ports, hopefully they will have acceptable transportation. As far as taking a private tour while on our cruise, we're not really inclined to search them out, we believe in better safe than sorry as far as missing getting back to the ship, and we like being under Viking's umbrella as far as responsibility and liability. That's not to say if someone on our roll call were to come up with a great private tour we were interested in, had good timing, and were looking for additional bodies, we might give it a go. But our roll call is pretty much dead, I think 3 posts for a cruise 9 months away, maybe it will get more active as we get closer. At any rate, we're going to be in Europe for 2 weeks pre and post cruise, I have plenty of tours to research and schedule during that period.

[cathome]

We are seasoned Viking passengers (17 last count). Generally there is no charge for included tours in all ports. Of course there are extras as you mention, these do cost more than we would be happy to pay so rarely take them. Suggest you take the included tour to Vatican City, free entry to St Peters but walk around the corner to buy entry to the Vatican which exits through The Cistine Chapel. A bonus is the excellent Ice Cream shop outside the Vatican  entrance. Buses/Coaches tend to be excellent quality, often Viking branded. Certainly Mediterranean trips comfortable. The buses in the Caribbean last year showed age! 

[MrRandal]

Thank you, cathome, we are studying the included tours as well as those that are an extra cost. My wife and I are honing in on what we want see and do in each of our ports. While we have been to Barcelona, we have not been to any of the other cities on this cruise, so we want to make the best use of our time and get to see everything we can, without exhausting ourselves. We notice that many tours are 8 hours, some as long as 10-10.5 hours. 

 

We live on the West Coast and have always vacationed in Hawaii, many trips over the years, we've stayed on every island numerous times, although we recently discovered French Polynesia, and have cruised there each of the past 2 years on the Paul Gauguin and love it, we're returning again in 2021. The Viking Med cruise is like nothing we have ever done, so we want to make sure we do it right. Hopefully we will fall in love with Viking.

[Mich3554]

We recently had an example of getting back to the ship after we were supposed to have left the port.  The bus got into a small accident (not the driver’s fault, the bus got clipped by a trailer turning short and it took off the side mirror).  We got in about 10 min after the ship was supposed to have left port.  10 min after our bus emptied out, we were pulling out of the dock.  
 

I am not sure if we had been on a private tour if they’d have waited on us.   It did make me very aware of how tight the schedule is though.

[MrRandal]

Thanks Mich3554, this is precisely why we are inclined to stick with Viking tours, whether they are the included or extra cost variety. Stuff happens, anywhere and everywhere. 

[Dauntless]

I did this cruise 2 years ago this April and have been talking to someone that is making the trip in March so I have some insight to current situation.  Unless things have changed, there was n  'included tour' to the Vatican.  There was a paid excursion.   The 'included' ones are usually overviews.  If you want more depth, it will probably be a paid excursion from Viking or someone else or DIY.  On this cruise we did 4 included.  2aithrough VikingIn 4 of the ports we went with Italytours.eu, either because their tours included more of what we wanted or we could not book the Viking tour as it was sold out.  Went to Barcelona on our own 3 days early.  Booked our hotel and 6 adventures privately.  We did a private in Split and stayed in Venice 3 more nights on our own and had 5 more adventures before we headed for Switzerland.  The buses for the Viking tours have mostly been fine.  We had a smaller cramped bus on an excursions in Dubrovnick.  This excursion was scheduled but sold out.  However when they added another time we were able to make that one and that may have been the reason for the smaller bus, though this was all set up before we left home so it wasn't hastily arranged.  My friend is interested in Amafi Coast and  Pompeii in Naples.  In checking with Viking and another source the tours were priced exactly the same.  They're going with Viking here to insure they are not left behind ans the next port is Corfu and it as easy as some to get to.  We went with the other company.  Our choice was based on size of group.  The excursions  that are 8-10 hours are usually not in the port city.  As Florence and Rome are on this cruise.  While they might have an 'included' that goes there but the tours were about 4-5 hours and with travel time  that leaves very little time to see the city except as a panorama excursion.  The nature of the beast.  On Homelands, the include to Berlin was 12 hours, 6 hours of transport, 1.5 bus tour and the rest on your own.  Hope that helps.

[Socky Sunshine]

We were on a Viking excursion that was an hour late getting back to the ship.  Viking had set up a table by the door to enter the ship (outside) and had champagne sitting on it for everyone and many of the crew were there handing it out and cheering.  It was fun and we were sure glad it was a Viking excursion.  The ship left right after the bus emptied.

[Mich3554]

1 hour ago, Socky Sunshine said:

We were on a Viking excursion that was an hour late getting back to the ship.  Viking had set up a table by the door to enter the ship (outside) and had champagne sitting on it for everyone and many of the crew were there handing it out and cheering.  It was fun and we were sure glad it was a Viking excursion.  The ship left right after the bus emptied.

They did this for us too.....ABBA was blaring on the speakers, and some of the staff was outside dancing.  

[dcl999]

We took this tour several years ago. We had recently been to both Florence and Rome so booked different Viking tours. The buses to Pisa had little knee room. Most of the buses were fairly full. We booked an alternate tour instead of Rome that was canceled and refunded a few days before we arrived in port. We didn’t get to stop in Monaco because it was extremely windy. Viking added an extra Night and tour in Livorno. 
We stayed extra days in Barcelona. Getting a cab when we disembarked was no problem. 

[Peregrina651]

On 1/15/2020 at 2:27 PM, MrRandal said:

The Viking Med cruise is like nothing we have ever done, so we want to make sure we do it right.

 

I've done the Western Med with Viking a couple of times now in various configurations and each time I come back saying that we should have done this or that differently.  There is so much to do and so many different ways of doing it that at some point you just have to make a decision and enjoy your choices.

 

My only bit of advice is not to over-schedule yourselves. Not only will you need a vacation to recover from your vacation but you also leave no room for chance encounters, for exploring some little alley way, for sitting in a cafe just watching the world go by.