CCWineLover

3 hours ago, FoggyEthan said:

The beverage package does include one champagne. Are you saying that it is also too sweet? Or that it isn't available?

Fyi One “sparkling” is part on the included wines but not advertised.

we dislike sweet sparkling but like the include / not too sweet not too dry.

27 minutes ago, OneSixtyToOne said:

If he was FaceTiming, you would have hit the Trifecta. 

Sadly we’ve seen some trifectas on our recent cruise.

5 hours ago, CDNPolar said:

 

Love this reason.  We have never experienced a time on Viking personally where we could not get a chair at the pool, or on deck.  Now we may not get a chair looking out the side windows at the pool, but there is always a chair.

 

The only time on Viking that can be a challenge getting a chair is in the Winter Garden for Tea at 4:00pm if you are not early enough.

You are right!  Always get a chair somewhere.

The chairs/lounges by the windows however, on our past cruises, were "booked" really early (like before breakfast), by a newer crowd that "reserves" them by putting towels and personal items on them, and then don't show up til much later if at all.  Like placeholders just in case they want to come by.   I see this behavior increasing over the past years since COVID.

2 hours ago, FetaCheese said:

Again, a wonderful cruise experience on Viking.  Met many interesting, well traveled and friendly pax.  Enjoyed many of the 4 lecturers' presentations, especially the CIA agent, Don Wyman. 

 

Meals were very nice.  Always many choices available in both Restaurant, WC and Manfredi's.  (Didn't dine in CT).  Yes, a few misses, but nothing about which to complain.  Included Wines were satisfactory to very fine.  A different red or white was always available when asked.

 

Crew and staff were uniformly friendly, hard working, and always eager to accommodate any wishes. Our Cabin Stewards were very efficient and friendly, and maintained our cabin in excellent condition every day. ( Cabin had a couple maintenance issues, and once reported, were quicky addressed to our satisfaction.)

 

Was pleased with entire entertainment team, especially cast of 4 vocalists, and John, guitarist/singer, and Simina, pianist.  CD Damian was always visible, and took time to chat with us, and many other pax.  One of the finest CDs we've encountered in over 40 years of  around 50 cruises.

Yes thanks for your wonderful reports and taking all that time to inform us of your wonderful adventures!  We do appreciate it.   And glad you got to meet Dobie as well.

Where and when's the next big adventure?

We've used tripinsured.com before but over the past 4 years, we've gone with Steve Dassios at TheTripInsuranceStore.  Linda posted the details a couple posts ahead of me (#4).

5 hours ago, island lady said:

 

Aww...I still have sample glasses from Freemark Abby and Grgich Hills!  Beautiful wineries!  

 

I worked as a wine distributor for northern California wines to restaurants in my county here in Florida.  Wonderful career...great samples to enjoy.  😉 

 

And I still love my wine....I don't drink other alcoholic drinks except wine.  Such a wino I am.  🍷😄 

Here here!  Love my wines (witness my CruiseCritic handle, where by the way, CC stands for "Central Coast", not CruiseCritic).   

I envy your job!  Great samples would be a plus!

Would be fun to get a group of wine lovers together who also enjoy traveling like we all do.

2 minutes ago, SantaFe1 said:

Unlike others here, mine adds the credit upon making final payment 6 months out.  That way I can use it toward shore ex.

I just asked our TA and they said that OBC's can be put on the account from a TA whenever the TA requests it.  Many agencies apparently have a policy of automatically getting that on right away when final payment is handled, and others handle it on an individual case.  So yes, it all depends on your agent and your agency.

We like them on early and DO see them on the Viking invoice (around page 3 or 4 I believe), where it summarizes vouchers, SBC's, and OBC's and what's available and what's used.  We also see it on MyVikingJourney under payment.   When on early, if you buy excursions, it will take it from the credits (if allowable) unless you override that.

21 hours ago, mwike said:

We also prefer the World Cafe to the Restaurant.  On our last two cruises (14 days each) we ate at the Restaurant once each cruise.  Manfredi's and Chef's Table are way quieter while we find the World Cafe to be marginally quieter.  We really hate the closeness of the two-top tables in the Restaurant and feel that adds to the loudness for us. 

mwike - we totally agree.  We also prefer the World Cafe (which is the quietest of the 4 restaurants to have dinner, other than room service 🙂)

And those 2 tops right close together seems to be the style these days.  With that tiny gap in between barely enough to squeeze yourself through, it definitely promotes interaction.  And if you happen to get seated in the middle seat of the 737 configuration at The Restaurant, watch out then!

I hope this is just a trial, but a friend on the Jupiter posted a picture that they just changed the World Cafe seating by separating the 4 some tables into two tables with that tiny gap in between.  Apparently there have been complaints of too many twosomes taking up a foursome table (so as to have a more private dinner - guilty as charged).  Not a good sign if they don't offer alternatives.

6 hours ago, WanderingBrit said:

That mirrors our experience, to add to which it seems many people get offended if you don't welcome their uninvited participation in your meal.

 

We've had that exact experience.  Whether World Cafe or Manfredi's or The Restaurant, most people seem to want to join your dinner conversation.  Even if they are well meaning, not everyone wishes that.

5 hours ago, mwike said:

We've done one river cruise and enjoyed it more than we anticipated.  Really liked not having to drive, take train, hire taxi, etc. to get from town to town.  The mobile hotel concept has merit. 

 

But we did not enjoy the common dinners.  Reminded me of old school Carnival meals.  We ate off-ship if possible, with the departure time being the limiting factor.

We also enjoyed our one river cruise - except we agree with several people.  It will be one and done for us.  We now have 15 Ocean Cruises from Viking under our belt and will continue.  Main reason:  Dining.  At least on Ocean you can find a quiet place for a more private dinner.  On River it basically does not exist.  And it did remind me of those cruise dinners you were forced to do back in the 80's and 90's.  Each night at 7:00 reminded us of a big wedding dinner reception.  And for some that's great, but for some it isn't.  At least Ocean gives a choice.

1 hour ago, hutch1994 said:

Don't know how they transported the luggage today from the ship, but my purple Travelpro looks like it was dragged front side down on the ground for some distance.  Took a beating.  Very disappointed in the handling of luggage.

Yeah - hard to hire good help these days, even in foreign countries!!

1 hour ago, JORN2023 said:

am confused, the attached spreadsheet in post #10 shows PV5091 , but people are saying it has a door/ window combo? 🤔

5091 has a slider.  We stayed in 5089 and I personally mapped the Doors and Sliders visually for the end of deck 5 for PV's.

1 hour ago, rbslos18 said:

Our Grand Hawaii/French Polynesia cruise arrives in San Pedro at 7:00AM. What is the earliest safe flight-departure time from LAX?

It depends:

1.  Are you doing Viking transfers?  or on your own?

2.  Is it a weekday or a weekend?

You'll likely be off ship at 8:00 at latest then, which means if a weekday you are looking at IMHO a 12 noon earliest departure given heavy traffic to the airport.  If weekend, possibly 11 AM.

So funny!  We just watched again the movie Bottle Shock for the first time in 10years or so.  We first visited Napa in 1976 to wine taste so it brought back those memories as well.  And don't forget Chalone (down towards us in Paso)....

Will have to stop by our next visit to Napa 🙂

Have enjoyed Trefethen (and Freemark Abbey)  as well as Stags Leap (which won best red in 1976).

Have to put a biased plug in for our region in Paso Robles though.  There's some good wines here too 🙂

1 minute ago, Insanityx4 said:

It depends where your OBC comes from. Ours was from Viking because they changed ships and dates on us so the Polaris could be repaired after the rogue wave. It was already in our account. If it comes from a travel agent as a perk it's not usually added until you board the ship or a few days before.

@Insanityx4   Our travel agent gives OBC's as a perk and they get applied to our Viking Cruise anywhere from 60-90 days out, so we usually have used it for excursions.  Didn't know that some people don't see the TA OBC until you board the ship or a few days before.

4 minutes ago, Insanityx4 said:

We don't drink hardly any wine at all anymore. Married to a winemaker for 50 years. He prefers beer and good scotch these days! We have cases and cases in our garage which we mostly give away. We were part owners of a winery so still get all of the new releases. On the expedition ship they kept delivering wine and champagne to our cabin. We gave most of it to our room stewards!

How interesting!  May I ask, what winery in NorCal?  

I've met so many winemakers who are really more beer drinkers.  One told me it takes good beer to make good wine, so to speak!

9 hours ago, CDNPolar said:

 

Don't forget that you can bring any wine on board and they will chill it, open it, serve it for you.

 

On River cruises we do this.  We go to a winery as one of the excursions and if we like what we tasted we bring a bottle or two back to the ship.  If we had paid for the SSBP we would feel more obligation to drink Viking's wine, but if we don't do the SSBP (which we don't anymore) we bring wine back.  Sometimes we will share with the table at dinner and sometimes not.

We do the same thing!   (At least with white and sparkling).  We like to bring bottles onboard at the beginning and shop for some in some of the ports.  For us it is so easy, but I realize many don't want to "lug" bottles onto the ship.   

I have brought bottles even from California - what is fun is talking about them with the wine steward.  Always fun to have discussions about wine with the staff!

1 hour ago, Twitchly said:

Now, if the ducks start wearing baseball caps … 🍿
 

 

....   and tattered jeans . . . .   and put their webbed feet on the eating tables and other furniture 🙂

1 minute ago, FetaCheese said:

Was just ready to respond, and  @Peregrina651 was faster.  Spot on advice.

 

Will add:  Wine lists on VO can, and do change mid voyage.  This has occurred on 2 of our cruises.  Have always been satisfied with included wines, if SSBP not purchased.  Remember, even without pkg, one can order any wine by glass for, in my opinion, a very reasonable charge, grat included.

 

Me too!

I can agree that wine lists do vary by itinerary.  Having been on several different itineraries on Viking, I have seen different wine lists.  There have been a usual group of wines they've likely contracted with for awhile and then there is always a fresh batch of wines.  Often they are dictated by the locale (i.e. we just had some wonderful Portugal, Spain, and Italy wines on our recent Rome-Athens cruise, that I had not seen before).

Also - Viking RIVER cruises are a completely different story.  As Peregrina said, you'd need to look at the CC board/forum.   My only recollection on European River Cruise is that it was dominated by European wines, most of which I never heard of and weren't on Viking ocean cruises, but tried them of course!.

2 hours ago, hutch1994 said:

Certainly we didn't get our $700.00 worth of wine or drink that we paid for the package.  Could have just spent that amount and picked out what we wanted from the wine list instead of buying it by the glass from the silver spirits list.

Don't beat yourself up.  You had to try it to learn this.  We went through the same experience (buying it once) and now we just pick out what we want!   

We felt that most of the Silver Spirits folks were cocktail drinkers (and large ones!) rather than wine drinkers like we are.  I think it might have benefited them, but for wine drinkers, it didn't seem to so much.

4 hours ago, FetaCheese said:

Today we attended a cooking class in Kitchen Table.  We learned how to make paella. There are many ways to prepare paella. 

 

Led by Chef Junner.  He was very informative and all present seemed to enjoy the class.  I volunteered and accepted invitation to begin the stovetop prep, then another pax took over.

 

After eating our paella, which was very delicious, the chef led us on a galley tour.

 

Cooking classes are not publicized in V Daily.  Must sign up at GS early in voyage, as # is limited to 8 pax.  Held on Sea days only.  Thanks to CC V regulars, I learned this and also about booking ship tours (also not publicized) with GS early on.  Other themes were Italian, French, etc.

 

Was a nice experience, and in my opinion,was time and $69pp, well spent.

Glad you had a great time!   Yes - this is the hidden unknown value on Viking.  We always try to take at least one sea day cooking class.   So interesting!  Our last one we did California menu (with Crabcakes and halibut).  

Bring out the popcorn!  Looks like we've stumbled on a topic that people feel real strongly about at both directions - sort of like the elections.

2 minutes ago, Mike07 said:

 

 

The way your comment is written, I think the comments above should set you straight. Viking caps commissions on sail-date lengths in refundable OBC and doesn't allow agents to rebate their commission monies. Booking or transferring a Viking booking to an agent allows you to still ACH the monies over. Also, if you have Big Box credit card, you can pay thru visa credit and still get the 3% travel CB from Citi.

Yes, I know all that - that's what I was trying to say.

I had thought the person was saying agents would give back some of their commission (beyond max OBC) and thus could compete with each other to see which one would offer the lowest net price - as does happen with some other cruise lines.

I also believe that Viking limits the amount that agents can give their customers on Viking cruises (perhaps unlike other cruise lines).  So an agent "giving" their commission to the customer would be in violation of Viking policies - if they ever got caught.

1 hour ago, Pam said:

Did I say that?  I said it was a red flag.  I wouldn't go on Viking based on several reasons, but that wasn't one of them.

Sorry - I guess I inferred that given that their problem was all you wrote about, not any other reasons.