My husband and I are on the same cruise in a DV6 so I was part of the mad dash for excursions on May 10 as well. I agree, it was very stressful. And this is a cruise where many of the smaller ports don’t have the infrastructure to book tours privately, especially post-Covid, so you are really at Viking’s mercy. The excursion booking went live at exactly 3 PM EDT - I was set to go with my first excursion and kept refreshing the screen until it popped up. I went with the strategy of booking the one that I thought might sell out first and that I wanted the most (Vigur Island) and paying for that immediately as I had read on Cruise Critic (thank you all!) that just because it’s in your cart doesn’t mean it’s reserved for you. I then booked the others that I really wanted and finished up with ones that were less important to me. Booked the included tours in Reykjavik and Seydisfjordur last. I only missed out on the all day tour in Akureyri but I had tried to book that last as I knew I could book a similar small group tour with Saga Travel that hit the same spots. I thought I had booked the Vestmanna Sea Cliffs in the Faroe Islands for us both but it turned out that between putting it in my cart and actually paying for it, there was only one spot left, which I hadn’t realized before paying. So I had to go back, cancel my spot and book us in at our second choice time. I used the chat function to ask when I would get my money back for the spot I canceled and was told 21 days as well. But, lo and behold, it appeared on my credit card this morning. So I think that’s just their standard response - you may get your refund earlier.
This is our first cruise with Viking. We’ve only done two other cruises - a HAL Alaska cruise in 2006 with our kids and an Oceania Baltic Cruise last year. I mostly used Tours by Locals for the Baltic Cruise, or we just explored on our own, but we did do a couple of Oceania excursions and they were easy to book. This was crazy. If not for all the advice on Cruise Critic, I would never have mapped out my strategy in such detail, but there has to be a better way, although I’m not sure what it is. If we ever cruised with Viking again, I would seriously consider a PV just to avoid this - although I hate to spend the extra money on a cabin that we will just use to sleep in.
This is a trip that was postponed twice due to Covid so we are really looking forward to it!
