MrRandal

Ponant is displaying typical French arrogance in this matter. Pinault is basically saying "Let them eat cake". 

On 2/23/2020 at 7:43 AM, Jacqueline said:

I just found out my cabin disappeared through these threads! No word from the cruiseline or TA. 
I see from logging on that I have been reassigned to 8009. I have zero use for a butler on a cruiseship. 

As SWFLAOK stated, your Butler can help you with a lot of little things, but he is not the main advantage of a B cabin on Deck 8. Bigger room, forward, quiet, very few other rooms, everything else SWFLAOK pointed out, plus a $2000 free upgrade for our 2021 11 day Cooks cruise. I've stayed in on the 7th deck, although never in an aft cabin, and I've stayed on the 8th in a B cabin. While I was looking forward to the aft cabin, I took the B Cabin upgrade in a heartbeat.

Thanks Mich3554, this is precisely why we are inclined to stick with Viking tours, whether they are the included or extra cost variety. Stuff happens, anywhere and everywhere. 

Thank you, cathome, we are studying the included tours as well as those that are an extra cost. My wife and I are honing in on what we want see and do in each of our ports. While we have been to Barcelona, we have not been to any of the other cities on this cruise, so we want to make the best use of our time and get to see everything we can, without exhausting ourselves. We notice that many tours are 8 hours, some as long as 10-10.5 hours. 

We live on the West Coast and have always vacationed in Hawaii, many trips over the years, we've stayed on every island numerous times, although we recently discovered French Polynesia, and have cruised there each of the past 2 years on the Paul Gauguin and love it, we're returning again in 2021. The Viking Med cruise is like nothing we have ever done, so we want to make sure we do it right. Hopefully we will fall in love with Viking.

2 hours ago, AuntieWerewolf10 said:

Check out the Viking Sea Roll call for May 6, 2020. 

CharTrav has a Dropbox detailed listing of excursions and prices.

 

Thank you Auntie, not the same itinerary, but many of the same ports, this is exactly what we were looking for. Having printed it out, many of the excursions listed on the website pre booking, don't quite line up with what is actually being offered. But at least we have a very good idea of the price range for many excursions. 

1 hour ago, Jim Avery said:

 Bus quality varies dramatically from the above mentioned Mercedes luxury coaches to clapped out school busses in some of the remote ports.  European ports have the best options with good public transport and taxis and will have better quality busses.  Legroom from one bus to the next can vary dramatically.  

And thank you Jim, I'm not a fan of sitting on busses either, however our itinerary is all modern Mediterranean ports, hopefully they will have acceptable transportation. As far as taking a private tour while on our cruise, we're not really inclined to search them out, we believe in better safe than sorry as far as missing getting back to the ship, and we like being under Viking's umbrella as far as responsibility and liability. That's not to say if someone on our roll call were to come up with a great private tour we were interested in, had good timing, and were looking for additional bodies, we might give it a go. But our roll call is pretty much dead, I think 3 posts for a cruise 9 months away, maybe it will get more active as we get closer. At any rate, we're going to be in Europe for 2 weeks pre and post cruise, I have plenty of tours to research and schedule during that period.

1 minute ago, philw1776 said:

Busses are excellent.  Typically Mercedes.

Thank you, any insight on excursion pricing?

My wife and I are taking our first Viking Ocean Cruise in Oct 2020, the 13 day Mediterranean Odyssey. We are presently researching shore excursions for our entire cruise, quite a daunting task. We realize all of the tours on the website may not be available, and we can't see the pricing or book them yet. We are curious about many things, but the 2 things I'm most curious about at the present time are (1) How expensive is a major excursion through Viking, say the Sistine Chapel and Vatican City excursion from Civitavecchia, and (2) many of these tours include some extensive bus rides, how comfortable/new are the buses that Viking contracts with in their ports. Thanks for your help, I'm sure I'll have additional questions later.

While I have never stayed in 767, I had it reserved for an 11 day Society/Cook cruise in Sept 2021. Booked the room the day the 2021 cruises were announced. I have stayed in a C Cabin 721, and a B cabin 811. Perhaps there is something special about 767, I'll never know. I do know that there is something special about Deck 8, and the B cabins there. We took the upgrade, a $4000 value, in a heartbeat, gratefully. 

On our last cruise, in October, on Bora Bora, Day 2 last tender to ship was 5:00pm, Moorea, Day 2, last tender to ship was 4:30pm. These times are directly from the dailies from Paul Gauguin, which we kept. This was for a 7 night Society Island cruise. They may change times with different itineraries, or different times of the year.

5 hours ago, cindivan said:

We were booked in room 765.
221 interior/74 balcony

They moved us to Room 7003.

256 interior/47balcony

 

doesn't seem like an upgrade to us at all. I have no idea what I would do with a butler

 

and no longer a king bed. Just a queen bed. No tub. 
 

Outside of butler who can’t make balcony or bed grow,

what is the upgrade??

Cindi,

The square footage I quoted was for all of the B Category rooms on Deck 8. Room 7003 is an anomaly, and I'm not sure I would be pleased with that room either. Perhaps you should contact Paul Gauguin directly. If all A and B rooms are sold out I'm not sure what they can do, but it may very well be worth the phone call.

On 10/6/2019 at 2:20 AM, happydolphin said:

 I do have to be mindful of what I send to them because they seem to wash hot and dry hot. 

We specified "Cold wash and Cool Dry Please" on our laundry ticket, and that is the service we received. We had a number of items where it would have been very apparent had they been washed and dried "Hot".

There is some noise from the lowering of the tenders and the tender operations, which usually happens quite early, and they run them from both sides of the ship. I don't know what determines which side at which port. If you are in a cabin directly over the tenders, you will certainly hear them when they lower and raise them. Whether it's loud enough to bother you is subjective.

On 12/27/2019 at 8:39 AM, Hutchinj said:

The good news is that PG wanted to move us to some other Cat C room but our TA talked them into upgrading us to a Category B Veranda Suite for free. We love aft cabin views but maybe the larger room, balcony, and Butler will help ease the pain. 🙂

 

We likely never would have opted to pay the $3K or so to upgrade so we will look upon this as a bonus. Would appreciate any comments on those who have stayed in these cabins on Deck 8. Seems to be convenient to the pool and pool bar but hopefully not too noisy. The Cat B veranda balcony appears to be a bit deeper, too, if not as wide as others. Kind of like the idea being up high on the ship and having no cabins above us. We shall see!

 

I think your TA is taking credit for something Paul Gauguin is offering everyone who was booked in the aft cabins. I responded on the other thread, so I'll just say that we've stayed in both a C (721) and a B (811) and absolutely loved the B cabin. Bigger cabin, bigger veranda, excellent location, extremely quiet and a $4200 upgrade from our C 767 on our 11 day Cook/Society cruise in 2021. Granted, we've never stayed in 767, so we're not able to compare it to the other cabins, but we're quite happy.

We were contacted yesterday by a Paul Gauguin representative to inform us. They have a lot of cruises booked, they found out about this over the Christmas Holiday, and they are contacting everyone as quickly as possible, although not as quickly as some would like. We were booked in 767 for a 2021 cruise, and while we haven't stayed in one of the aft cabins, we have stayed in both a C (721) and a B (811). We loved 811. We were looking forward to 767 for our 11 day Cook Island/Society Cruise, we're happy with the upgrade to a B category cabin. While the Butler was not a necessity, the location of the B cabins is great, ours was extremely quiet, the cabins are 47 sq/ft larger than a standard C, and 20 sq/ft larger than 767. 767 does have a larger veranda, by 25 sq/ft. The B category cabin is a $4000+ upgrade from a C on our cruise, and we're quite happy to accept it.

We we staying pre cruise at the Tahiti ICH and asked the Concierge if they had a shuttle into town because we wanted to go to the market, then after shopping the Roulettes. He recommended the 2pm shuttle, as he said most of the shops will be closed by 4-4:30. This was a Friday night in October. He was correct, not only were almost all of the food/fish/fruit stalls closed at 4, but many of the other vendors starting closing at 4, and by 4:30 only a handful were still open. I'm glad we spoke to the Concierge, because had we shown up at 4, as we planned, we would have missed 80% of the vendors.

If you are interested in an ATV tour, you should check out Top Jet tours on Moorea. They limit their tours to 3 ATV's plus a guide. Other ATV operators can have 5-6 ATV's per tour. Top Jet gets great reviews on Trip Advisor. There are many great places to eat close to the ICH, don't miss Snack Mahana, make sure you make a reservation (lunch only) and bring a big appetite. I've eaten Mahi Mahi 100's of times at dozens of different restaurants, the best I've ever had was served at Snack Mahana. Many of the nicer restaurants will pick you up and return you to the ICH at no charge. The excellent Holy Steak House is directly across the street, and easily walkable. Others we have enjoyed are LeLezard Jaune, Restaurant Tiahuru, Rudy's and LeMahogany. 

We were ready to go back to the Paul Gauguin after about 3 1/2 hours. It's funny, because we also booked a 5 hour motu lunch tour in Moorea, through Miti Tours, for our after cruise stay at the Hilton. We were sort of dreading it after our experience in Huahine, but it turned out to be excellent, perfect balance between boat, snorkeling and motu. Plus the guides were amazing. 

We were very underwhelmed with Marc's tour. I know a lot of people like it, but it was way too much time on the boat and Motu, and not enough time in the water. 

I just returned from a 7 day cruise in Cabin 811. With the exception of a neighbor on one side who had long, loud phone conversations with her kids every day we were in port, while sitting on her veranda, the room was also "exceedingly quiet". No ship noise whatsoever, and no noise from above. On our last cruise we were in 727, and we heard noise from the tenders being lowered, as well as the pool deck chairs being moved every morning/evening. Not terribly loud, but if you are sensitive to noise, stay clear of the tenders.

It is officially illegal to chum for sharks in Moorea, although many vendors continue the practice. Since this was a whale watching trip, I'm pretty certain there was no chum, just a bizarre, freak accident. We were in the lagoon with black tips just a couple of weeks after this happened, and we had vendors who were using chum.

We just flew AF PE round trip LAX to PPT, and while we were able to get a great price, we were not at all impressed with the actual seats, the food or the service. We took the PG air credit of $1700 and for an additional $200 each we were able to book PE on Air France. We purchased at an opportune time, as PE seats were selling for considerably more a month later. The seats supposedly give you an extra 40% room, so I can only cringe at what the seating is in economy. The seats are within a plastic shell, and they "slide down" to give you the illusion of a recline, but in fact they do not recline. There are pull down foot rests, and they fit my wife, at 5'2" perfectly. At 5'11" I found them useless. The positive is that the seat in from of you does not recline into your space. They were hard, very uncomfortable, even for my 5'2" wife. The food was barely passable, on par with what US airlines were offering in economy before they quit offering food at all. Our restroom choice was to head to the back of the plane and que up for an economy toilet, we were not allowed to use business class facilities, and we had no special PE facilities. We did get priority boarding, 1 piece of extra checked luggage each, and the entertainment system and choices were excellent. For the price, it certainly beat basic economy on either AF or ATN, but not the experience we were hoping for.

I'm pretty certain it is only for hotel guests, but you could always inquire.

On 10/8/2019 at 6:34 PM, huladoula1 said:

Today was "excursion booking day" for the PG 12/7 sailing & I'm glad I set my alarm for 4am to do it.  We've booked PG's Lagoon Excursion & Polynesian feast on Day 1 on Bora Bora, and then PG's ATV tour on Moorea!  We've also booked Marc's Motu Picnic on Huahine & Pure Snorkeling on Day 2 on Bora Bora.  We still have a couple of days on Moorea pre-cruise to figure out, but I'm honestly looking forward to just hanging around & relaxing at the IC Moorea.  Either way - the countdown clock is really ticking now!!!

 

You can go to the marina at the ICH Moorea and for $16 each they will take you out to a great snorkeling spot about a 5-10 minute boat ride away, between 2 motus, one with "restrooms". You just need to tell them how long you want to stay and they'll come back and pick you up. This spot is a popular stop for many of the tour operators, you get it for a fraction of the cost of an excursion.

The drift snorkel, I'm going to guess, is a little over 100 yards long, you walk up to the start, change from water shoes to fins get in the water and drift. They bring your shoes down to the finish. They make 3 trips, walk up, drift back. Some in our group were done after one trip, some after 2 trips and about half of us made all 3. My wife and I walk 3 miles every day, and swim for an hour 2-3 times a week, so we stay in relatively good condition. If you have never done an excursion with Pure Snorkel in Bora Bora, one of their stops is an absolutely amazing coral garden with no current. Very easy snorkeling, and breathtaking beauty.

By PG's description of the excursion it is for "experienced snorkelers who are extremely comfortable in the water". My wife and I, who are in our mid 60's, fit into that category. While you are drifting with the current, there are areas where the coral is very close to the surface, and you must swim around it or be pushed into it. On occasion, it takes some pretty strong kicking, for a short period, to stay on the "trail" that the guide is following. I've described it as exhilarating, because of the sheer beauty of what you are seeing, combined with the fact that there is a small  element of "danger". It's not death defying, but coral cuts can be nasty. There are plenty of other coral gardens in FP that you can see that don't include the drift factor.