tomculb

Jazzbeau, thanks for your post.

Our Scotland cruise had no air included since the entire trip was within the UK.  I’m assuming with your previous NC cruises, and traveling from the US (Washington state in our case), you may have both opted  in and opted out of the included air to and from London. I’m wondering what your experience may have been in doing that . . . Was included air a cattle car experience or better than that? If you declined air, was the reduction in fare reasonable? Thanks for any thoughts you might have.

Also, thanks for pointing out the Travel Post section of the NC website.  Somehow I missed that entirely.  And finally, your experience with the wine and ice cream sounds so typical of the service we experienced aboard.  Their mantra seems to be “Find a way to say ‘yes’ if you possibly can.”

Thanks Jazzbeau.  We did the Scottish Island Odyssey cruise and were delighted that's the one we chose. 

Very possible I'm wrong about the premium wines.  We were at the same table with another couple twice, and each time they asked for and got something that wasn't otherwise being served.  I assumed they paid for it, but maybe not. 

Have you done any expedition cruises with NC that you would recommend?  Obviously that is the kind of cruise we prefer. 

My wife and I just returned from a fantastic 10 day cruise aboard Noble Caledonia’s Island Sky, exploring the northern and western islands of Scotland. Like Host Jazzbeau, we cruised on one of the Australis ships in southern Patagonia, about four years ago, and after that great experience we swore we would never cruise on a large ship again. This was our first cruise since Patagonia, and our first with NC.  We can’t wait to cruise with them again.  

Jazzbeau has written so informatively and extensively about NC’s two ships, I hesitate to try to add anything new, but here are some random thoughts.

The expedition leaders (10 of them) were outstanding. Mostly gray-hairs like ourselves, they were all very well educated, physically fit and informative world travelers.  They ate and otherwise mingled with the passengers, enthusiastically sharing their experience and knowledge.  They were a delight to discover new places with.

The shore excursions were varied and well-chosen, with a good mix of history, culture and wildlife, many in places that would be hard to get to other than by ship.  How many Scots have ever been to Fair Isle, Papa Westray (locally known as Papay), or St. Kilda?

While we were not the only Americans aboard, we were among a small minority, with the vast majority of the passengers being British, most of those English. One Brit kindly informed me that she was Welch, not English, and that we should be sure to include Wales in our future travel plans. Another was from Guernsey, which I guess is neither England nor Wales. A complicated nation that UK is. There were also at least two couples from Australia. I think at least half had cruised with NC before. In any event, all were very friendly, well traveled, very interesting, and great fun to meet and get to know. 

The age demographic surprised me, as the average age appeared to be at least 70, and only a handful appeared to be under 60. Most were quite fit, making the sometimes tricky transfer between ship and Zodiac raft with ease and unphased by the longer and more hilly walks and hikes. A few needed and got some extra assistance and were told when a particular activity may not be a good idea for them.  

Both the dining room and the lido deck were open seating, which was very conducive to meeting new friends or reacquainting with almost new ones.  There were tables for 2 (dining room only), 4, 6 or 8. Sometimes it was fun to sit at a large unoccupied table and see who chose to dine with us. All very friendly.

The lido deck was surprisingly protected from the Scottish weather, and once we discovered how comfortable it was, we ended up eating a majority of our meals there.  Thank you heat lamps.

As far as I could tell the only extras we could pay for were cocktails, premium wines and laundry. Absolutely everything else was included, including all shore excursions and associated admission fees. Wine and beer flowed freely at lunch and dinner. I’m sure many passengers had nothing extra to pay for when they left the ship.

At the end of the trip we were asked to fill out a survey . . . on mine, I refrained from answering any of the questions and simply wrote “Don’t change a thing.”

We are very excited about a cruise we have booked around Scotland this summer on Island Sky, and I have an embarrassingly mundane question. A review of the ship I read said everything is included except laundry, and I'm wondering whether that meant laundry is available for a charge?  We'll be spending a couple of weeks exploring shore-side Scotland after the cruise, and it would be nice to have clean clothes for the latter part of our trip.

Thanks

If I go to the cruise I'm interested in on the website, I get a long list of what appears to be every instance of that cruise from now to the end of the year.  Once I have a date in mind, the only choices are "staterooms", which shows the additional charge for each class of stateroom, or "get a quote", which is the way of messaging AMA with my contact information described above.  If that reflects what is available, then no cruise this year is sold out and no stateroom category on any cruise is sold out.  That seems pretty unlikely.  That's the information I'm looking for.

Unless I'm missing something (it happens), with AMAWaterways the only way to get information about availability on certain cruises (in our case, Douro River this fall), you have to send them a message from the web site in which you consent to they're sending your contact info to certain travel agents, or call them and be told you must endure a wait time of 30 minutes or more.  Doesn't seem like a productive way to treat prospective guests who are at the window shopping stage.  Can someone tell me I'm missing something?  

Looking at doing a river cruise for the first time, and AMA river cruises caught my attention since its excursions are said to be more active than most.

With regard to its bicycles, are there plenty to go around?  Or do you have to sign up for a bike excursion in advance to be assured of getting one? Any problems getting a bike when you want one?

More generally, in choosing a stateroom, in addition to the obvious size difference, you pay more to get an outdoor deck and to be further off the water.  I understand that in some ports on river cruises two or more boats may tie up along side each other, so at least while in port you may be looking straight into a stateroom on an adjoining boat, negating those two advantages completely. On a typical river cruise, do you spend some significant daylight hours not tied to a dock, in addition (I assume) to being underway most of the nighttime hours?

Thanks

We are doing some future cruise window shopping, and I had some questions about Viking excursions. I recognize that these questions would be easier to answer if we had a specific cruise in mind, but we’re not that far along.

1. Any generalities about the included excursions? At worst, I envision several hundred of us loaded onto a fleet of buses to drive around the city/town for an hour or two. We are fortunate in that age has not impaired our ability to walk and otherwise be active, and we would prefer that kind of thing to a lot of time on a bus.

2. Conventional wisdom is that with excursions you pay for, you pay quite a premium for a cruise line sponsored one compared to a comparable private one you set up yourself. Is that generally true for Viking Oceans too?

3. If you sign up for a cruise late, say less than 60 days prior to departure, does that limit your choices of excursions?

4. The website doesn’t show arrival and departure times for any of the ports of call, and I’m leery of port stays that aren’t long enough to be meaningful.  By not showing that information, is VO hiding something I might like to know? And is an overnight really significant parts of two days (I remember seeing a different cruise line brag about an overnight when in fact the ship left at 1AM the day after it arrived in port).

Any and all observations would be appreciated.

Merely window shopping now, but we're giving some thought to a Greek islands cruise followed by a few days on Santorini. As it happens, one cruise spends it's last day there, followed by disembarkation in Athens the next morning. Wouldn't it be nice to simply disembark on the island the afternoon before the cruise ends, rather than hightail it to the airport to fly right back to where we just were. My fear is there's some reason why that's not allowed, but does anyone know?

Getting away from credit cards and back to French Polynesia . . . .

I remember reading a while ago some complaints about this cruise, to the effect that almost all the stops are by tender and that the facilities on the islands were inadequate to handle enough tenders . . . end result being that at least a few passengers felt they spent too much time waiting to disembark and embark and too little time ashore. Did you experience anything like that?

One of the reasons I like cruising is I love to be at sea. The open deck space on these R ships seems somewhat limited, at least when I think of an Alaska cruise we did on HAL's Westerdam. I'm daydreaming about a cruise on a more upscale line, possible Panama Canal with a lot to look at while underway. I suspect the pool deck feels pretty enclosed, and the deck above goes only partially along each side. I saw a picture of Quest with people at the stern on deck 11, above the specialty restaurants -- is that deck open to passengers? The forward part of deck 11 clearly is, but not sure about aft. Also, passengers were allowed on the bow in Glacier Bay on our W'dam cruise; do they ever do that on A (like going through the Canal?). Thanks for any thoughts.

Thanks for all the useful suggestions.

Hawaii Dan, I lived in your beautiful state for 18 years, we've been back several times since, and another trip is high on our list. Someone mentioned Kauai--I could write pages about the spectacular hiking there.

I just found an intriguing itinerary next March that hits the southern Caribbean and north coast of SA. From Miami it goes to Santa Marta, Oranjestad, Kralendijk, El Guamache, St. Georges, Pointe a Pitre, Fort de France, ending in Bridgetown -- not places that run off my tongue easily. Anyone know anything about these ports?

Shoveled the driveway yet again this morning and decided we need to make plans to go someplace warm next winter. A cruise would be nice, and that suggests the Caribbean, a part of the world my wife and I have never been to and know anything about.

I do understand that cruise ships occasionally visit there. It seems to me that the benefits of cruising on a smaller, Oceania-sized ship are diminished a bit (maybe more than a bit) if we cozy into a small, picturesque harbor next to Tenement of the Seas and a fleet of sister ships. Are any of O’s Caribbean itineraries better than others in terms of avoiding the carnival crowd? (That’s with a lower case “c”; I don’t want to get in trouble here.)

Although we enjoy looking at a pretty beach as much as the next person, we’re not really the lie-on-the-beach-and-toast types. We enjoy walking, biking, snorkeling, history, culture, etc. Anything to look for in an itinerary for a couple wanting to be physically and mentally active (and perhaps a little bit anti-social)?

Thanks for any thoughts.