zone8grandma

I'd like to hear from someone who has taken shore excursions in Santorini.

The included excursion is "Summits & Countryside". If you took it can you describe it?

If you took a paid excursion, can you describe it and tell me whether you thought it was worth it?

Thanks!

We are booked on the Empires of the Mediterrean next month. Our last day, in Athens, we have an afternoon flight. I'm trying to figure out what we can do between disembarking and going to the airport.

I'm told that the earliest disembark time is 5:30 am and 10:00 am is the latest. But what is the procedure? Can we just disembark whenever we want? We'll be travelling light and taking our luggage with us. I am thinking of using a co like George's Taxi to pick us up, take us somewhere for a while, then take us to the airport. But I have to give them a specific pickup time.

See Viking response to an email I sent to them last night about whether they would help with the change fees for air not booked through Viking.

 

Dear Mr. Hartley:

 

Thank you for contacting us.

 

I am in receipt of your email message below and am happy to assist with your inquiry.

 

In consideration of the recent notice, we are happy to cover airline change fees up to $350.00 per person for impacted guests, like yourself, who have booked their own air and are required to change the departure city from Istanbul to Athens.

 

Once your flights are adjusted by the airline, please send your receipt reflecting the change fees directly to me and I will be happy to assist with the reimbursement.

 

Mr. Hartley, thank you again for reaching out. Please do not hesitate to contact me directly should you have any additional questions.

 

Kind regards,

 

Valerie Kepler I Viking Cruises I Customer Engagement Specialist I (t) 877.668.4546, ext. 8828 I (f) 818.594.8463 I valerie.kepler@vikingcruises.com I vikingcruises.com

Thank you for posting this. I will ask Viking if they will cover the cost of our ticket to fly from Athens to Istanbul....

The travel warning advised against travel to southeastern Turkey.

Unless the warning changes, we plan to keep to our plans, flying from Athens to Istanbul.

I understand Viking's actions. Had they not changed the itinerary, they'd probably be facing cancellations from nervous Nellie types.

The rest of the warning was simply common sense.

We recently had an upsell to a Neptune suite. Now this is our first cruise, so there are plenty of unknowns already. But reading about the suite amenities it says:

"Cocktail party with ship's officers"

How do people dress for this? Is it in the afternoon or evening?

We've already decided to forgo formal dress night and either have room service or eat elsewhere. Is "smart casual" OK for this cocktail party?

What area of the deck is your cabin in? We were on the Statendam last Oct in a Neptune suite just aft of the Neptune Lounge (033 or 035 as I recall) and the engine vibration was very noticeable. Others in the area of our cabin (Starboard and Port) reported the same problem, but most of the Neptune passengers did not, so it was quite localized.

 

DaveOKC

Our cabin is SA014 - a bit forward of the Neptune lounge.

So we will be going on our first cruise next month (Alaska on the Statendam). I got an email last night offering to upgrade to a Neptune suite (from our Veranda suite) for $349 pp.

I called and got it, but all of the available cabins were on the port side. We will be sailing north. Will we lose out on the scenery? Did I make a mistake?

Is ice is readily available on the cruise ship and if so, is it filtered?

What about in the restaurants or hotels?

 

Did anyone fly on Air China LAX to Beijing and back for the main long-haul flight?? We took the basic air and I can't help but think it's going to be a looooong flight. Does China Air have seatback entertainment monitors?

 

I'm going to post these same questions on the "Gate 1" thread and attempt to get more Gate1-focused answers too.

As I recall, ice was available in the boat's dining room and we used it with no ill effects.

Ice was also available in the hotels and restaurants, but we did not take chances.

Thank you for sharing (beautiful pics)

We are leaving on the Statendam Aug 10 so I was very interested. We chose the Statendam because of its smaller size.

You got me really pumped!!!

Thank you all, very helpful.

Mostly I'll want to be able to take my beverage back to my cabin, so the soda bev card probably isn't for me.

Please help me understand the difference; I'm really confused

There is a $50 Non Alcoholic Beverage card and a

$50 Soda Fountain Beverage card that can be purchased for $25.

Can someone explain the difference to me? Why would I buy the first instead of the 2nd?

Kathy

I am sending you an email

Has anyone ever done this cruise? It will be me and my daughter. Any information or help anyone could give us would be fine and appreciated!! It's a 4 day cruise. Thank you!!

My husband and I did this cruise in 2010. We enjoyed it very much. We chose to stay on the boat and cruise all the way to Shanghai instead of disembarking after the Three Gorges.

We were seated with six Chinese for dinner. They spoke very good English and had a great sense of humor (the tables seat 8). The activities director was European with a heavy accent and our dinner companions had to translate her "English" for us...

There was entertainment each evening. I didn't attend it all the time. We enjoyed sitting on the top deck with a bottle of wine.

Hardly any motion at all - that should not be an issue. Do be aware of the air polution problem. The air in Chongqing is really bad. Because we stayed on the boat all the way to Shanghai, we were able to visit Huangshan or “Yellow Mountain”- that was a highlight. We also had a day in Nanking which we enjoyed.

We did have TV in our rooms and CNN (in English) was on every evening. Internet access was available, but it was expensive, slow and unreliable, so we used it sparingly.

The night we went through the locks (about 4 or 5 of them) it was very noisy and we did not sleep well. But we slept great the rest of the time.

Overall, we enjoyed the trip very much and would recommend it.

Any other questions I can answer?

We just got off the Noordam yesterday. Our chain smoking neighbor made our aft wraparound balcony useless. While the cruise was otherwise good, we will not sail HAL again until smoking is prohibited on the balconies. The balcony is an important part of our cruise experience, and adjacent smoking ruined it for us. I respect HAL's right to make any business decision which is in their best interest, but we are not dealing with that stench again. HAL has been our line of choice and we are 3 star Mariners, but the balcony smoking is deal breaker for us.

I do hope you let HAL know of your decision. And I hope you wrote a cruise review as well.

There you go

 

http://www.smokers-united.com/

Useful link for smokers and non-smokers alike. To try it out, I put in Seattle, WA. Result was 6 hotels with smoking rooms and 101 that were 100% non smoking.... :p

Cunard does not permit smoking on balconies. It does allow smoking in cabins.

Not everyone disagrees with you. My wife and I book on HAL because it has a more lenient smoking policy and we know many others that do the same and who. like us, would move to another line if things changed.

Since HAL has the most lenient smoking policy, I am curious as to where you would go if/when they change their policy?

Sprinkles---Very well said and very true. We've been Princess cruisers for years and have over 30 cruises with them. We are trying HAL (cruised them a couple of times before) and if we like it, we'll be switching because we can smoke on the balconies with HAL.

 

We have encountered similar rude non-smokers and hope we do not encounter them on HAL. We generally ignore them, but the "in your face" stuff deserves sarcastic comments in return.

 

We just want to be able to smoke on our balcony, enjoy a coffee or other drink in peace and we hope that we can find that with HAL.

I do hope that HAL executives are reading this - and realizing that they are headed towards becomeingt he cruise of choice of smokers. And thus alienating the 75% of whom are non smokers.

As for me, I want to be able to have my coffee or drink of choice on a balcony enjoying the fresh air.

Called HAL yesterday. They credited us $260/pp so that's a savings of $520. :)

Thanks to this thread, I just checked and the price for our cabin had dropped $260 pp. I booked directly with HAL. I emailed HAL (through the personal cruise consultant) and asked for a credit. That'd save the two of us over $500.

Agree with nitemare, it varies. I'd suggest using a site like Kayak and plugging in the dates with both airports to compare prices.

Also, Vancouver isn't that far from Seattle. It is possible to get to Vancouver from Seattle by rail (if your arrival time works with the Amtrak schedule). Some people fly into Seattle and rent a car and drive to Vancouver (about a 3 hr drive not counting possible delays at the border).

We are planning a cruise out of Vancouver next summer. We live a short drive from Seattle. Our plan is to take the train from Edmonds (north of Seattle) to Vancouver to board.

jtl515

Thanks - that is helpful info.

Another question - at what point will we know when the formal evenings are? Pre-cruise? Or upon boarding?

Are formal evening always on "At Sea" days?

To piggyback on the original question, we will be on the Statendam Aug 10-Aug 17. "At Sea" days are Aug 11 and Aug 16. Might they be formal evenings?

(DH also does not want to pack a jacket, so I thought we could try the Italian restaurant one evening and either the Lido or room service the other)

OVgirl,

That is VERY good to know.

Some grest information. Thank you.

Yes, I noticed the discount on the soda beverage card. I enjoy tonic water; can I use the card to get that?

Yeah, I can see the advantage of simplicity. Since we usually have a pre-dinner drink and wine with dinner, the individual tabs could amount to a lot of paper. (I assume there is a paper receipt)