OnTheJourney

Thanks. No to mandatory masks. Is any ship still requiring them at this point? Pretty much all voluntary I'd think. When we did the Viking Chairman's cruise back in May several religious sites we visited off the ship did require them, and most of the time on the busses. Sometimes they even gave us masks that they wanted us to wear on the busses for excursions regardless of what people had with them.

How are things here? Crappy...just got home today from the 9-day on the Adventure out of Bayonne. Both my wife and I have covid. Total bummer of an ending to an otherwise pretty nice trip. We both know now, however, that a ship of that size is bigger than we like. Just feels too crowded at times. So many people...not enough masking.

non-stop preferred even without kids!! Makes sense, though sorry to hear you'd have to make such major changes to your plans. Things have indeed changed. What amazed me is some of the totally insane connection times for certain destinations I've had to research of late. 13-18 hours layover between flights? Seriously? I've seen some totally bizarre combinations of flights even for domestic. Madness.

Are you talking domestic or long-haul?

I agree. I also like to plan and book early. Prices are pretty crazy, but once I book I don't look at it anymore to see if I paid more or less than the going rate. Once paid, it'd be nice to know that there's a reasonably good chance that the itinerary won't change, but can't count on that now.

Also consider wrist (sea) bands. I use them all the time while cruising. Bonine, even a non-drowsy formula, still makes me feel a bit drifty (though I'm that way most of the time due to meniere's so doesn't much matter I suppose). Ginger pills help also.

Oh good Lord. What a crazy goings-on. We had very nice premium economy heading over to Rome for the Chairman's cruise, but then on the way home from Barcelona that premium economy was basically economy with a slightly better seat - plus free wine. I know we had the same food as economy. I had paid for United's "Premium Plus" (quite nice) going both ways and only got it going over. Complained to the airline once we got home, and they gave us each $100 in airline credit. Oh well..at least something. I agree...much of this stuff is not under Viking control.

I failed to mention that we ran into a pretty major glitch a few weeks ago. Our early a.m. flight out of Athens (to Paris) was canceled by Air France, so they put us on a flight (also to Paris) that leaves 6 hours later... hours after our connection from Paris to Newark is scheduled to leave. Tough to be on two planes at the same time especially when the first plane has already been in the air for awhile 😆 You'd THINK someone would have noticed that the connection doesn't work, but....no. So I chatted with them and they verified that the flight was indeed canceled (actually just about all of them) and that I'd have to make corrections through Delta (since it was codeshared anyway). Get this....I talk to a Delta rep (after being on hold for over an hour listening to the same 3 songs over and over again) and he said that, on their end, nothing had changed. I actually saw that - on the Delta website all looked fine - so then he said that he'll have to contact Air France and verify that some sort of change was made. Oooookay dude....you do that. Came back about 20 minutes later and said......wait for it......"yes, I see that your flight was canceled". YEA...we're making progress now oh boy. So then ensued a crazy search for a flight out of Athens that would work. The rep came and went several times, so I was on hold intermittently. All told I think the process took a bit over 2 hours. The whole inbound schedule had to be changed being that we now come into LHR instead of Paris. I'm holding my breath for further changes before January. I guess these sorts of situations are when it is nice to have a cruise line air department take care of things, but this way at least I could work with the airline directly to find the itinerary that suited me (though actually there weren't a whole lot of options). I went on the Delta website afterwards and changed a few seats. I like that aspect of doing it myself also. Oh Lordy.....car trips are nice.....

Yes I decided not to go through Viking at all. My TA agreed based on a few phone calls with them. Neither she nor I like the uncertainty of not being ticketed (they couldn't even guarantee when this'd be done even if paying for "early ticketing"), not knowing seats, etc. So I booked flights on my own directly through Delta. I do like the idea of having everything through Viking in case something goes sideways with the trip, but I paid extra for fully refundable flights. Hopefully all will go well...for all of us. In this day and age, who knows anymore.

Been wondering about this. So currently no cruising in or out of San Juan I presume? I feel so bad for all of you there. Still not fully recovered from Maria and now more devastation.

LOL...seriously! There have been so many instances where I've said exactly the same thing!!!

Yeah...that's about it. Not all things new are better. My cruise is on the Adventure so no old-style cruise planner for me. 😟 Nothing stays the same.

So... this is still available or not?

I agree with you! An overview is nice to have. I was just thinking that a spreadsheet is the next best option. Macbook has "Numbers" application - probably similar to Excel's program. Nothing fancy but it'll serve.

Just wondering if anyone knows an answer to this: I just created this thread but suspect that I'll have to come up with my own spreadsheet of some sort. Sad that so much is being tailored to only accessing info on a device rather than a printer friendly version.

All I find anymore is the calendar icon with which you can scroll across and find whatever activities, shorex, etc. that are booked, but I liked when you could print out a one or two-page summary of the entire thing that showed arrival and departure times and so forth. We always hang it up in our room as a sort of 'schedule' for the entire trip. I guess in the wake of having everything on the app the old calendar feature went the way of the dodo....

So you bring someone into your house? Or take to theirs?

Would love to see a pic of the boat!

Understand the sentiment, but I must say I'm always happy to get back home after a trip! Always feel guilty putting pets in a kennel for one thing.

That's pretty much the cost I found for flights next January. I experimented with different dates to see how the prices change. I discovered that unless I chose dates that are within the next few weeks, going out several months or more didn't make much difference. It moreso often depends on how full the plane is. Like keeping tabs on the cost of cruises, similarly doing the same for flights can drive you crazy. One thing I don't do is...once I book...I don't research them anymore. I don't want to know if I either paid more or less than the current pricing. Doesn't matter at that point! Sort of like trying to time the markets.

Ours was a non-public sailing and only for those who were on the Sky incident back in March '19. Not everyone signed up for the (invitational) cruise so I think we had around 700 total pax.

It's whatever you get used to over the years. We were elementary school teachers and so generally home by 4:00 (at least in the early days - a bit later towards the end of our career) so, yeah 5:00 - 5:30 depending on what we had available in the fridge or had to make something.

Yep...same situation here.

That was our experience as well back in March. After the first two nights, they said to come even earlier. I was shocked to find out in the past few weeks that it had changed - apparently it had already before our March cruise but would never have known it based on our last experience with RCL.

I'm confused on parts of this discussion. A proctored test is and has always been required by any cruise line - either a kit ordered thru the cruiseline done via proctoring, or else supervised at a clinic, pharmacy, etc. Our May cruise stops at Bermuda on day 6 and so presumably the ship will provide the testing. It makes sense. Any covid test only proves being negative at that moment. Next day or two could be a different story. Only way to be reasonably sure of people not coming ashore with covid is to test everyday, much like Viking had been doing with daily PCR aka "spit in a tube" testing each morning. We did it - PITA but probably a good idea.