Reaniel

Viking doesn't handle any of the Visa application work...

In my experience, when you call Viking Air, they'd immediately assume that you want to do Air Plus (as opposed to simple deviation). I find it actually less complicated to do stopovers and deviations directly with the live chat department. Of course, if you want more customization and more available destinations, you'd go with Air Plus, but if you just want to do a simple deviation or stopover (and save that $150 for Air Plus), just do it via live chat.

Excellent! I see that there are still plenty of tickets available for Galleria Borghese on that day, so just pick and book the time slot you think that'd fit the best to go with coming back to the ship with the shuttle, and you should be all good. Have a wonderful Rome port day!

Is there an easier way to find out which cities are available for Viking Air deviation? Or do we just have to call Viking to find out? Here are the two itineraries that I've gotten answers thus far: Cities of Antiquity & the Holy Land Athens: Santorini, Istanbul Rome: Venice, Florence, Milan Capitals of Eastern Europe Vienna/Bucharest: Amsterdam, Stockholm, Barcelona, Berlin, Brussels, Basel, Budapest, Paris, Cologne, Copenhagen, Dusseldorf, Rome, Frankfurt, Geneva, London, Lisbon, Luxembourg, Lyon, Madrid, Manchester, Marseille, Munich, Milan, Nice, Nuremberg, Porto, Oslo, Bucharest, Prague, Venice, Warsaw, Zurich. (The Viking Rep I spoke to said that the list is the same for both ends on this itinerary). Oh, and the weird thing is that while the live chat agents can find out about this information, the dedicated booking agents can't.

Hmm... I wonder what exactly does it mean by "new guests". Does this mean this will somehow negate the returning guest discount?

I think it has to do with the (over) simplistic thinking that more tonnage = more stability for ships.

Can you tell us which port is listed as the docking port for Venice? It should be one of these 3: Fusina, Chioggia, or Ravenna. I wouldn't worry that much. The travel time from VCE to any of the 3 are... long enough, and 9 is probably not early enough for them to even try to set a separate waiting site, unless something unexpected comes up. However, if there were multiple ships in Venice (and embarking) on the same day, they "might" make you wait at the airport after passport control while they organize the buses (to make sure they don't send the wrong people to the wrong ships). (This is less likely for Ocean I should add, but very common in River, and we were forced to wait at the airport for about 2 hours before they take us to the ship in Budapest back in 2022).

Yes, they cost extra. But you won't get an answer from Viking customer service. They'd tell you to find out when you're on board. Also, some of the info in the general description (for the included tour part) is obsolete. For example, the Mausoleum of Augustus had been closed for more than a year now, but it is still listed in the description as an optional tour.

The details are usually on your generated invoices. If your booking is currently managed by a TA, you can ask them to generate one and FW it to you. Those whose booking is directly with Viking can generate it manually in MVJ.

Also, I'd skip the San Marco Museums and visit Cà Rezzonico... That place is stunning, and I enjoyed it a lot more than the San Mark's square attractions.

Sorry, wrong thread.

I see that they went with the same logistic setup for Rome as we did. This should definitely allow you enough time and flexibility to visit Villa Borghese and Galleria Borghese. 🙂

With regards to the WC, your shuttle should make 1 WC stop before heading into Rome, and I'd say that's the best opportunity to use it. As for the Vatican, if you do visit St. Peter's Basilica, there's one located right after the security check (and where the cloak room is located). There's also one inside Galleria Borghese, located next to the stairways between the ground and first floor I believe. Good luck and have fun with your Rome port day! Hope everything works out and you get to visit everything you want to see!

I just put in the date and to/from stations into the TrenItalia (the regional and IC train operator) official website. https://www.trenitalia.com/en.html Here's the screenshot of the search result.

In this case, the 3 PM time slot for Galleria Borghese should still be OK, but OP might need to be a little bit more vigilant with regards to time. I'd hold off on buying the train tickets though. You can just buy them once you're at Roma Termini at one of the kiosks. Upon checking the train schedule for that day, I'm seeing the 4.6 EUR trains to Civ at 17:12, 17:27, 17:42, so you shouldn't have any problem catching a train if you watch your time. There's also a direct train at 16:57 for 9.9 EUR. Plenty of choices, and you'll be at the Civ train station before 7 PM.

I understand. LIke I said, the back on board time wasn't changed, and we made it back on time (even though we were the last ones back). It was the departure time, and I was just curious if this happens quite often or not. I mean, previously, I assumed that the ship departing earlier than the original scheduled time is a result of having everyone back earlier. Apparently, that isn't the case, at least not in this particular case.

Was doing test booking on "INTO THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE" and "CANADA & GREENLAND EXPLORER". Invalid on both of them. EDIT: I see that it's automatically put in for almost all the other itineraries... I just happened to click on the two that the code don't work (lol)

Weird. The page says to enter ECU23 for special offer, but when I put it in, it'd say the code is invalid.

It wasn't stated anywhere really. But it was what the crew member said to us after we're back on board, and that the ship left dock at 7:30.

Is it really common for Viking to change the departure time at a port AFTER the Viking Daily is published? I'm just curious since the sailing we just completed was our first ocean cruise, and we'd like to know if this is more common than not. We were on Saturn in Valletta, Malta on 02 Dec, with a back on ship time of 7 PM and departure time of 8 PM, according to the Viking Daily. Since it was a full free day for us (and we've done the included tour plus a paid excursion on the day before), we decided to spend our time exploring Gozo on our own. We had a great time. Long story short, we missed our originally planned fast ferry back to Valletta because of public bus delay, and we were forced to take the next one an hour later, which will arrive in Valletta at 6:30 PM. The walk from the fast ferry dock to the cruise terminal was a 10~15 minute walk. We made it back to the ship at 6:43. We were told that we're the last ones back on board (they even showed us the computer screen, which displayed there are zero outstanding guests after our return). The crew member mentioned that it wasn't so bad since we still have 45 minutes until departure. I was like, wait, isn't the departure time 8 PM? And, sure enough, it's 8 PM in the Daily when I checked again, but then it was changed during the day into 7:30. I mean, in the end, as long as you're back on board on time according to the back on board time, you'd be ok. But still, I'd just like to know, if it's actually pretty common to have the departure time modified after the Viking Daily info is out?

That makes much more sense logistically speaking. Still a pretty hefty undertaking, but probably much easier than moving 900 people to the same places at the same time.

I would highly recommend taking the train for Civ - Rome portion simply because it won't be impacted by traffic. For our Rome port day just a few weeks ago, our shuttle was stuck in traffic both ways, and we ended up spending 2 hours each way. I wouldn't really trust taxi faring better in such a case. You might want to get a cab for the Civ train station back to the ship, but otherwise, train would give you the more consistent travel time. As for booking tickets for Galleria Borghese, assuming the 8 PM back to ship time is going to be more or less accurate, I'd recommend booking the in 3 PM out 5 PM time slot ticket (or the 3:10 PM English Guided Tour). This way, you would have ample time to get to Roma Termini for the train for Civ but still not eating up too much daylight time (the sunset time is ~4:30, but it gets dark and cold after 4). So enough daylight time for you to cover the whole Villa on foot before going into the Palace. And if you decide against booking the guided tour, I'd strongly recommend getting the audioguide, which is excellent (and probably the best of all Rome attractions). You can just get one and share it between two people by just playing and listening to what interests you the most, and then pass it to the other person and replay it.

They had something like this on Saturn as well, but with the land portion so heavy on flying, it's a hard-no for us. It would be REALLY interesting if they would restart the River itineraries and do some sort of River + Ocean combo like they do for Europe.

If you log into MVJ, and go under calendar, you would usually see a preliminary back on board time. The reason I'm asking is because if it's not REALLY early like 6 PM, you should have plenty of time and can just tell Viking that you'll be off on your own after the included tour, and take the train back to Civitavecchia on your own. There are trains from Roma Termini to Civitavecchia every 30 minutes or so for ~5 EUR per person, and the train takes about an hour to Civitavecchia. So time yourself to leave Rome on a train 2 hours before the back on board time and you should be ok. It still all depends on what kind of logistics Viking will run in the end for your Rome port day. If it's something like what we had with our itinerary, then you should have no problem visiting Galleria Borghese, the Villa, and still come back with the shuttle to the ship since they're all close to the Spanish Steps area. However, if it's a panoramic tour with little free time, you'll need to plan ahead with coming back to the ship on your own.

Unfortunately, no. It's only for the specific lunch and dinner hours for the two specialty restaurants, The Restaurant, and World Cafe.