SantaFe1

OK, I am sick of Rocky Mountain winter. We had an almost white out blizzard here today. I want a Mai Tai. To make me think of warmer climes. I know Viking doesn’t do umbrella drinks, but I’ll take one without the umbrella. Please! Only 25 days till we go to Greece, Turkey and the Mediterranean. Yay!

I just read this too. Sign me up! (Except the owners suite is already sold)

You are absolutely correct about Amazon. I might have misunderstood CDNPolar. What happened to me was I had the SSBP in my cart for $x on Jan. 1, the day the prices increased, and went to purchase it for $x. My transaction went through, and they thanked me for purchasing. Next thing I know MVJ shows I haven’t paid in full, for a cruise I had paid in full 3-4 months ago. I couldn’t book anything else until I “paid in full,” which meant the extra $175 I think it was for the package. I had never received an alert from Viking that the item I wanted to purchase had changed price. I had to have my TA get in touch with Viking the next day and pay the extra. I thought it was bad enough on the day of the change over, and I though CDNPolar had the same thing happen weeks later. Just no excuse for that, in my opinion.

I just find this astonishing!

If I may say one more thing about this: we book PV so we have a good chance of getting the shore ex and dining that we want. We book a PV1 to get the place on the ship we want our cabin. But the various increments within a cabin category do not get you a better place in line to book shore ex. DV 1-6 all book at the same time, and there are a lot of them!

All DV cabins have the same booking window, DV 1-6. So a lot of people! The only way to get a “better” booking window is to go up to a PV cabin, and again, all those, PV 1-3 have the same booking window.

Well, I think it is certainly wonderful to have friends who have friends. Thank you so much! My husband also says that he remembers the restaurant had an “animal” name, so I guess this it is. I will book 4-6 weeks out, especially since we will have to go on a Friday or Sat. Looking forward to being in your beautiful city again!

Andy, you are more than kind! I’m glad you are getting out again. I believe you have a new RV this past year. And hope you can cruise again. We are loading up on cruises against the day we can’t any more. But I am hoping for a long time!!

Oh, thank you. I do think it is crocodile, given where it is and where we were staying five years ago. Vancouver is a treat for us.

Oh, I remember well trying to adjust from pacific time. I believe Athens is ten hours difference for you. Wishing you a warm, sunny day! The adventure begins. And ours in just one month!!

A question for Heidi13: Andy, we will be in Vancouver at the end of our Alaska cruise in June for a “big” anniversary. We were in Vancouver five years ago for a semi-big anniversary and ate at a wonderful French restaurant. I am wracking my brain, but not sure. I think it was Crocodile. Does that sound right? We want to go there again. Thanks so much, Christine .

Wishing you a smooth flight and easy connections!

Thank you. We are originally from Los Angeles until retiring a few years ago, so I understand your point—although usually not so much rain. I keep watching the weather in various ports, but although we are still a month out, luggage Forward wants our bags on Feb. 2. So I need to make some decisions pretty soon. Layers, I know, layers. But we will probably arrive in parkas! Enjoy you trip, and thanks for posting about it.

We will be on Med. Antiquities in mid-February. In addition to the Athens hotel and restaurants, a report on the weather in those parts would be appreciated. I have no idea what to pack for the Mediterranean in the winter. Thanks so much!

We will definitely lift a glass to you and toast good health for 2024 WC. As to weather, we are using Luggage Forward and they want to pick up our bags on Feb. 2 for a Feb.17 sailing. I can’t even get a 14 day weather report. Oh, well, layers!! Have fun in London.

Well,yea, because that would mean we are in Italy! We will be there again next month! Hope you are doing well, and on the next WC!!!

In my opinion, the first rule of world cruising is to expect the unexpected. Sometimes the losses are very great. We lost Easter Island, we will never have a chance to go back. Kauai, you will be able to visit again fairly easily if it is important to you. We lost Morocco, but added Portsmouth, and we got to go to Stonehenge, where my husband had never been. If you sign on to a five month trip, time and tides will change. It’s not that hard to make lemonade out of these lemons, in my humble opinion.

Well, maybe the easiest is to leave the car out of the picture. For our upcoming Alaska cruise we have flights on Alaska airlines from Seattle to Anchorage and the from Vancouver to Seattle. We have Viking pre and post excursions, so we also have Viking transfers. But if you don’t want to do the excursions and don’t want to use Viking air, you can still buy the transfers, $49pp last I heard.

On the other hand, ours for May 2023 are still not posted. I’m checking every day now. It used to be they were posted about 120 days out, but recently some cruises have reported 150 days out. We are 137 days out.

We currently have four cruises booked. This makes me very unhappy. I hope Tor is listening. He used to say that his clientele was him. This not so much!

On our WC and all others it was also 2 per stateroom at a time, and we were in PV1. I don’t think the cabin level makes a difference.

Third from the bottom

There is not a place where I see that it has been paid. That is on the final invoice. But right away when there was a balance due between the original price of the SSP and the new price, I got red notices at the top of every category on MVJ telling me that I couldn’t access that category (even air) until my balance had been paid in full. So, for example, if yesterday, after purchasing the package in good faith, I had wanted to purchase a spa treatment, I wouldn’t have been able to. And unless I had read about it on CC, I would have had no idea why that message suddenly appeared. This morning my TA paid the difference and the message disappeared. That really doesn’t give me a warm fuzzy feeling about Viking right now!

Well, this is sort of what happened to us. I had the SSP in the cart for $558. I went in and paid for it yesterday. I got a “receipt” for $558 paid and a thank you. But now MVJ shows I have not paid in full for my cruise which is six weeks away. I can’t add shore ex, dining, spa treatments, I can’t even change seats on my Viking air until the difference in SS is paid! And I can’t pay it, because my TA has the booking and the payment has to go through her. I think this is COMPLETELY unprincipled! I may be a Viking cheerleader, but this is very off-putting. I think it has to work both ways. If Viking lowers the price of a cruise you have booked, you don’t get the new lower price, but if Viking ups the price of SSP and gratuities from what it was when you booked, they tack the difference right on. Am I mad about this. You bet!! (And upping gratuities at a time when everyone is complaining about service is just a bad business move, in my opinion.). Sorry to vent…

You get a 3.3% discount if you pay by bank draft rather than credit card. Not much on a $50 down payment but quite a bit on a $20000 cruise!