CDNPolar

I now "shop around" and ask in advance what a TA is offering. I am not subtle about it. If the TA does not offer anything I move on. I go to the one that will give us the best deal. Our experience is that the OBC may be different if it is a 8 day vs. a 10 day vs. a 15+ day cruise. Like it has been said, your TA is under no obligation to give you anything. We have had recent experiences where the TA wanted to upfront charge us $300 just to make the cruise booking. Sorry. I will use a TA that gives me nothing, but I will not use a TA that must charge me to bring my business to them. Most TA's now won't book air because they get nothing for doing so. And then they are potentially hours on the phone if there is a problem.

For Canadians the TD Visa Infinite and some others cover the cost of renewal of our Nexus (Global Entry Similar).

One thing that I do, is purchase far more data than I seem to need. It is much cheaper than paying roaming on Rogers, but still I am spending more on the eSIM than I need to. I bought 30GB of data and was in Europe for 12 days and used my phone constantly for email, maps, Google, etc, and did not quite use 5GB. I would have only saved about $10-$15 bucks, but still, next time I will buy less. With Airalo you download the app and you can watch your usage and add more if necessary.

But the internet package on the ship does not give you regular calling features unless you are set up for WiFi calling or using WhatsApp or other App that enables data calling.

Agreed. Many times on an ocean cruise, when you are too far from land the eSIM or physical SIM is useless unless it can connect to a land tower. The only true full-time connection is if you have Satellite calling.

Physical or eSIM - which do you need? Also, you know that during transatlantic period no SIM is going to give you service. While you are that far at sea, you will only have the ship's WiFi and WiFi calling or WhatsApp through data and WiFi.

I cannot comment on anything other than if you are using a Canadian Credit Card and paying your onboard bill with Princess at the point of disembarkation, then the exchange rate that you will pay is your credit card's bank rate either the day of the charge, or the day that the charge processes onto your CC statement. It would then be up to you to know if your Canadian CC charges you a fee for "foreign transactions" which would be in addition to the exhcange rate. Some CC's do and some don't. This is my understanding and how my CC works, so if I am misleading in any way, I apologize. But, we see any foreign charge as being calculated at the rate of our Canadian bank the day that it is charged and would have nothing to do with what arbitrary rate a company like Princess would have for exchange. Also, as a note, when you are paying anywhere in the world and the CC machine asks if you want to be charged in local currency (Euros, USD, Rand, etc.) over CAD we always choose the currency of the country, because then again our bank is going to apply the bank exchange rate of the day. If you choose to be charged in CAD at point of sale, some conversion is happening in the bank of that country or the store itself, and guaranteed it will be to their advantage.

Do you need a physical SIM or you want an eSIM? Physical SIM, I have never purchased, but I believe you would have to buy on the ground in whatever country you are travelling to. You probably can buy in the airport when you land. For eSIM, you just buy online and scan the QR code, make a few setting adjustments and you are done. We use Airalo for the last three times we have purchased eSIM's and they have worked well and saved us hundreds of dollars. https://www.airalo.com/?gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiAkp6tBhB5EiwANTCx1KEvoK7ML3LAjGkQrh-PAd5GJoFYO7yaDam7lYOPVs0DcwKU2MeUuRoCPtgQAvD_BwE

You could absolutely forward your Canadian home cell/cell to the temporary phone number BUT if you answer a call then you are paying for that call from Canada to wherever you are. The eSIM will be registered to a country in Europe or wherever and so when you forward to that number, and answerthe forwarded call, then you are paying for an international call.

For us - YES - anything that makes moving through security faster and easier. We have TSA Pre-Check connected to our Nexus card in Canada, and now leaving Toronto airport, there is no removal of shoes, no removal of laptops, no removal of the liquids and gels, etc., etc., and with Nexus our lines are generally 2-3 minutes and we are done.

This depends on if your baggage is "Delayed" or "Lost". Delayed on the trip home no coverage. Lost - never to be returned to you - should have coverage. This is my understanding. Too often we misuse the words "delayed" and "lost" luggage. Everyone does it. Automatically we say "our luggage was lost on the way to our destination" when in reality it was just delayed.

I have had the experience with Google Flights that when you get your options and then choose outbound and return flights that Google then offers you several booking options at the bottom of the screen. Some of these are lower price options. I have clicked on these in the past and you end up in some strange booking site that personally I was not prepared to trust so I exited and paid the slightly higher price to the airline. The other thing that I think can happen sometimes is if you are picking airlines and flights that are not in the same alliance then you are technically booking separate tickets and not one ticket return with one airline. This can also bring challenges. BUT, I DO use Google Flights as my starting point for any booking. The other thing to note is that if you are putting specific dates and don't have flexibility with dates, you can miss availability of an airline that you might prefer to fly, because GF is only giving you results for airlines that fly on your specific dates. Play with the dates if you have flexibility and sometimes you find better deals. Then I book directly with the airline.

Not that you have, but just a note, we cannot name Travel Agents on this site. You will find that many of the large cruise lines (mentioned in the CC article below) actually point to TA's or how to find one on their websites. As I said, we don't look for that kind of group booking because we sail mainly the premium to luxury lines and there are not many if any discounts to be had. We use TA's for the OBC and rebates. Here is a great article. https://www.cruisecritic.com/articles/finding-a-cruise-travel-agent

The voice mail thing was a more recent thing for us. Because we do email friends and family that might be more "need to know" and ask them to contact through WhatsApp, we should not have to worry. BUT... the voice mail thing came up because I all of a sudden realized that my voice mail only keeps messages left for 10 days. Many of the trips that we take are 12+ days from start to finish which means is a random voice mail is left on the first few days it would be missed as it would delete before we got home. What are we concerned with? A doctor's office that is calling to confirm an appointment or make an appointment, or the bank with a problem, or something rogue that we were not considering. The insurance company calling where we have our travel insurance through. A neighbour calling to tell us some problem or issue with our home that is not aware that we are away. They would leave a message and we would never get it. At least with a voice mail message, they would be immediately aware that we are not checking or would not receive this message.

We have friends that are convinced that they are getting better deals when they are buying from one of these "cheap alternative" sites, but they have had issues because they did not investigate closely enough and got caught paying to check luggage and then once when they needed to cancel, they lost the whole fare. We personally always buy direct from the airline, or in the case of a cruise, through the cruise line ONLY IF the fare is lower or free and we don't want to upgrade. We also closely investigate airlines cancellation policies when buying and sometimes pay a slightly higher fare to have a full cancel policy. We bought Premium Economy seats on EVA Air about 10 months ago now for a total of $6,500.00 for the two of us. (Toronto to Bangkok). We bought these because we could cancel up to and including the day of travel for a $200.00 per person penalty. Because of this cancel policy we did not have to include the cost of these tickets in our insurance. Unfortunately we had to cancel close to last minute because of a health concern, and we got all but the $400 back. Through a cheap seats site, this never would have happened.

We absolutely loved the Douro River cruise on Viking. We went in October and all the river banks were covered in vineyards and because it was Fall season, all the leaves on the vines were golds and reds, and orange in colour. On the Douro, you only sail during daylight hours and this was a plus because you don't miss the multiple locks and the scenery that is so beautiful. The River Ships are also only half the size - purpose built to fit the locks on this river - and this makes for a more intimate experience as well. You spend a couple of nights in Lisbon to begin (Part of the cruise) and then do a day excursion from Lisbon to Porto where you board the ship on Day 3. It is not a concern that you only sail during the day because the ship really in essence does not move that far and you are only sailing for a short while, and that is either early or later in the day. We would do this river cruise again we loved it so much. See our video below.

Odd that you got two different stories from the ship's crew. They should know exactly what this noise is.

We have used Airalo now three times and will keep using them. This is an eSIM company and not a physical SIM. To date we have only used the data option, but I am going to look at adding the calling option using your home number - have to check that out further. The Airalo eSIM's are easy to install and their instructions are pretty easy to follow and what we love most as we river and ocean cruise around Europe is that the Europe packages cover almost every European country. We are Rogers and I cannot pay their $15 bucks a day for roaming in Europe. The cost for one, let alone two phones is more than our cost per month for the package we have. With the data only eSIM this is what I do: 1) Change my voice mail the day I leave to a direct message saying: "Voice Calls are NOT being answered. If this is urgent, you can reach me through WhatsApp, or Email. (I then of course change that back on return) 2) I email all friends and family that need to know, the dates we are away and ask for them to contact using WhatsApp and Email. 3) I go away confident that if anything urgent happens I can be reached and anything left on voice mail after hearing the message I recorded was not urgent.

We have debated this over and over BUT have always purchased. We feel that it is a cost we don't want to pay but don't want to get caught without it. Over our travelling years (the last 7 or so) as a couple, we have paid thousands of dollars out for trip cancellation and interruption insurance. We don't by medical as that is covered by our work benefits. If we travel as a group with others - family or not - we typically recommend and buy the package together so that if one person has a valid reason for cancel, everyone else on the trip can decide to cancel or go based on the one person's reason. In December of 2023 we had to out of the blue and unexpectedly cancel a long planned trip that friends were joining us for. We experienced a medical challenge and were advised not to travel. We now have full refund for our travel cost which is about 14-15K CAD but our friends are on the trip without us because they did not feel it necessary to buy the insurance. (And never have before) They did not want to travel without us because this was a trip planned from the start as a foursome, but they had to or lose the full cost of the trip and airfare. We have probably paid out of pocket the same or more for insurance as we got back for this trip, so one could argue, if we never paid for it before, we would be even now. True statement, but you never know if you are going to need it until you need it. I have met many people on cruises that have never bought insurance because "they are healthy" but you can fall, break a leg, a hip, or anything can happen that has nothing to do with your health before you leave.

This was not for a cruise, but a land based tour through Gate1. Gate1 uses Arch Insurance. It was a bit of a stretch at the beginning to understand if Arch being a US based insurance company would insure Canadians, (because many US based will not) but in the end they did. We had to cancel this trip after full payment. We were at 50% penalty with Gate1, and Gate1 had a refund to our credit card for the 50% in a matter of days. We contacted Arch, followed their online requirements which included an attending physician report, and submitted all our receipts and reports. Days later the agent with Arch came back and wanted an additional physician's report because there was more than one specialist involved. We supplied that. We were informed that they had everything that they needed to assess our claim. We received an email that the claim was approved and we have been issued checks in the amount of the other 50%. All of this took approximately 6 weeks, BUT Christmas and New Year was in there and I am sure that slowed things down. I would absolutely use Arch again as they were quick, efficient, and the matter was resolved without issue. I have read about many who have fought for months and longer. I don't know their circumstances. We had every receipt, and most of all our cancel reason was indisputable backed up by doctor's reports.

Canada here which may have different rules and packages to those in the USA and other parts of the world. I am also ONLY referring to trip cancellation and interruption plans as we have medical insurance through our work. We have purchased and looked at many annual plans, but for us in Canada this is a hedge decision and I will outline below: One year - two trips Trip A - Total Cost - $14,000.00 Cost of single trip cancel/interrupt policy $900.00 Trip B - Total Cost - $16,000.00 Cost of single trip cancel/interrupt policy $1,050.00 With the single trip packages above, the FULL cost of the trip is refundable. Purchase an annual plan to cover both of these trips: Cost for annual plan for 2 people $1,200.00 which constitutes a savings for sure. BUT, the annual plans we have access to - that we have found to date - ONLY PAY OUT $5,000.00 per person max. We would be out 4K or 6K or 10K if we had to cancel both. The annual plans are simple and easy, but if your price per person is above 5K, then you are risking not getting the full cost back. This is our experience but we have purchased annual plans with the exact restrictions.

We had this exact noise but I forget on what ship. We too were in rough seas and it was each time that the bow came back down and hit the water. We also on the worst nights heard it clearly in the Star Theatre during the performances. We were told that it was in fact hull design and the sound that comes when the bow hits the water after raising out of the water. In our case this was many people hearing it, not just us. We were on deck 3. Because this was just post covid and the ship was not full, they moved us to deck 6 mid-ship and the sound was gone.

My interpretation of this would be that you are covered, because if you arrive home and your luggage does not, then it is delayed or lost and you can make your claim. My understanding with some credit cards, is that the entire trip must be paid for on the credit card, and then it would be based on dates of the initial and return flight. As a side note, we booked a flight that was combo points and cash and because we did not pay the full value of the flights on the credit card the card would not cover us. This may not be the case with every credit card.

Wow - you have sailed a lot of cruise lines. We have now done 10 Viking Cruises, and although I would say that the demographic and the marketing material is not focused on drawing the 2SLGBTQ+ community, we have never sailed - river or ocean - without seeing other gay couples. We sail Viking for the experience that they offer which is very different from some of the more mass market and large ship cruise lines. You will immediately see a difference for many reasons. What ship and itinerary are you sailing?

I think that if you really want to look closely, there are many countries that have skeletons in the closet from recent history to past history and you could probably make a case for not travelling there.... The USA and Canada included - me from Canada - in our atrocious treatment even now of our indigenous peoples. I won't venture into why travel to the USA could be considered the same - "disgusting and shameful". I think that everyone has to make a decision about where they travel and why, but just because we think we live in a modern world, myself as Gay, I am not willing to spend money in the USA for tourism because of current feelings around the 2SLGBTQ+ community. This, as the above is just my opinion.