noe4laj

We are due to be on the 12/17 sailing of the Polaris. I do not see a chance that they get needed repairs complete before we fly out and/or are due to embark. I’m not sure either option is great - extreme disappointment if trip is ultimately canceled, esp so close to departure and the holidays vs sailing goes on schedule and dealing with anxiety related to the recent events and questions if are we safe. No word whatsoever from Viking, other than VMAIL today that I can only hope was a poorly timed automated message from our original salesperson saying they were “Wishing us bon voyage” on our impending sailing. Their tone was peppy, clearly sounded like they had no knowledge of the incident. If they did know, it was extremely tone deaf. If they didn’t know, why not? People are surely reaching out now for rebookings/refunds on the 12/6 sailing now.

Viking Expedition ships currently sailing Antarctica out of Ushuaia (Polaris and Octantis) are doing daily testing and quarantine. Pax testing positive are quarantined both on board while in Antarctica and in Argentina, if they still test positive on disembarkation day.

We had booked the junior suite over the Nordic penthouse, including paying for business airfare. Cabin difference was 1,000 pp for our sailing. With this offer had we booked now, we would’ve paid over 9000 LESS bc the rooms are same prices but we wouldn’t have needed to pay the airfare. That’s basically the cost of a seven day ocean cruise or a river trip.

I’m not going to go into a long, drawn out conversation on this but putting the deviation on it wiped it out of MVJ…hence why I said we canceled when they refused to put it back IN WRITING.

I’m beyond peeved with Viking Air Plus. I’ve spoken to reps 12+ times now (literally hours each week on hold) and still can’t get flights booked. Like you, we do VAP so that we can fly with our preferred airline (Delta). The last few calls they’ve tried offering us back the money we spent on VAP, while claiming that they’ll still honor booking it that way. I’ve refused, because I expect this is a ploy by them to get us onto another airline, like American, who I will not fly and saying that we canceled VAP. If we had booked our own flights when we booked the cruise, it would’ve been about $1000 more a person than the Business/VAP price. In retrospect I wish we had done that. Now the difference would be around $10,000, meaning that we priced ourselves out of an independent booking. VAP also could never figure out how to do the deviation on the end of our trip when we wanted to stay in BA for a few extra days, meaning we had to jettison that as well. The way they worded our itinerary it implied that we’d be on our own to get from Ushuaia to BA, which shouldn’t have been the case. They kept saying don’t worry, of course we get you to BA, yet they refused to put it in writing. I’ve never had this much difficulty booking flights with VAP. TBH, the entire process for getting this trip booked was a real pain as well. More difficult than planning all previous cruises with Viking combined. It’s definitely draining some of the pre-trip excitement, even beyond the ongoing worry that Polaris won’t be ready in time for our sailing.