We're taking our first Viking ocean cruise in 3 weeks, so last night I was browsing the posts on this board. A post commented about included excursions being SOLD OUT and how you needed to RESERVE an included excursion. I assumed the included excursions worked the same way they did on the river cruises: you're told what time to disembark and there are several buses waiting to take you on your included excursion. I had no idea I actually needed to reserve an included excursion. Nowhere on the Viking website nor in their email announcements do they tell you this!
I immediately went to the website and clicked on the "Learn More" tab for the included excursions. And once again I read the details of the excursion, but this time I notice an indication for making a reservation, just because I was looking for it. Guess what . . . one excursion is indeed "sold out" and the others have several time options, most of them already showing as "sold out" for the times we would have preferred. At this late date, we are now stuck taking afternoon excursions instead of the morning ones we would have chosen. And I suppose these excursions don't include the excellent "Whispers" provided to everyone on a river cruise either.
Yesterday I was worked up that I couldn't make specialty restaurant reservations until I was on board - makes me feel like a second class citizen, just because I didn't book a suite. Now this snafu.
I have to say that Viking is NOT impressing me much at this point in time. We have taken over 40 cruises, and nowhere have I encountered a situation where I pay a premium for an "upscale" experience which doesn't feel very upscale at all. If I hadn't been browsing this message board last night, we would have boarded the ship without knowing about these advance reservations for Included Excursions and probably would have found that several of them would be entirely sold out. Viking is going to really have to provide us with a spectacular cruise for me to even consider booking them again.