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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.

On 11/17/2022 at 2:25 PM, Insanityx4 said:

I have been following the roll calls of a few cruises where pax have mentioned they have gone back to daily Covid testing or pax being contacted by Viking saying their upcoming cruise will be doing daily testing, especially on cruises in the Southern Hemisphere. Are there any updates on which ships, which itineraries, and which countries are requiring daily testing?

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.

On 7/23/2022 at 11:26 AM, Clay Clayton said:

Nice offer but not sure that paying an additional $10k per person for the business air is a good reason to splurge on a suite! 🤔

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.

52 minutes ago, PeabodyMa said:

If you request an invoice from MVJ, then the invoice document will show you are flown from Ushuaia to Bueno Aires. It’s a Viking charter flight.

 

To request an invoice from MVJ:

-Go to Account (right above log out)

-Choose invoice from the drop down list

Invoice sent to e-mail includes several additional documents.

 

If a travel agent booked your cruise, then you can not access an invoice from MVJ. Contact your travel agent.

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. 

3 hours ago, deec said:

I am a bit peeved with Viking Air Plus right now.  We are flying to Buenos Aires from Detroit to begin Antarctic cruise after Christmas.  We have "free" air and paid $999 for upgraded seats and then purchased air plus but Viking will not let us use air plus for Delta.  We really wanted the Delta miles.  We will be flying American perhaps they will let us change closer to when they will purchase seats. 

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.

While our sailing on the Polaris has not yet been canceled, given the news today that all sailings until just a few weeks before ours are now receiving notice that their cruise won’t happen, I’m not optimistic about our chances of seeing Antarctica.
 

I don’t see that we’d be able to rebook if ours has to postpone due to work obligations.

On 3/28/2022 at 5:06 PM, klfrodo said:

A couple of thoughts.

Why not cancel or refuse to accept the insurance provided by Viking and get a 3rd party policy on your own for the entire trip.

 

or

 

Just get a medical only policy for the entire trip.

 

of course one of your issues may be if you require a waiver for pre-existing conditions since these usually require purchase within X number of days of first payment. A lot of depends on your country and state/province of residence

Viking already made us pay for the insurance at time we did the cruise deposit.

Has anyone for an upcoming Antarctica expedition attempted to put in a deviation at the END of the cruise in BA? We’ve done that and Viking somehow took our transfer from disembark in Ushuaia to EZE off of our guest information sheet, making it look as if we are on our own to get back to BA, where we planned to spend a few extra days before flying home.

This is not correct and Viking acknowledges it is not correct as the transfer is part of the trip. Despite weeks of calling and emailing, asking to speak to a supervisor, etc. they’ve not resolved (by simply adding the missing line back onto our itinerary).

We are now at our final payment date with no resolution and do not feel comfortable with “trust us, you’ll be fine even though it isn’t on your paperwork” as a response.

If it cannot be resolved, we will have to decide if we take our chances, cancel our extra days, or something else. I’ve never seen so many problems with a booking through Viking. 

1 hour ago, Clay Clayton said:

If you have other trips planned for the next 365 days, you might want to look into an annual travel medical policy.  We (thankfully) never had to call on our GeoBlue policy in the two years we lived nomadically.  I doubt it would be cheaper for a one off, but if you can use it rather than separate travel policies in the next year it could be a solution. 

I don’t have another trip planned, so probably not a viable

option. 

9 hours ago, The Other Tom said:

A lot of people find policies on insuremytrip.com, where you can compare policies and prices.

I'm not sure Allianz participates in insuremytrip, but a lot of people seem to favor Allianz.

And, what @CILCIANRQTS said.

I’ll look into insuremytrip, thanks.
 

I already had been in contact with Allianz, who said we’d need to buy the policy for the entire trip to cover those three days. As we already have Tripmate for everything but those days it isn’t a viable option. 
 

also, TBH, I’ve used Allianz previously and they were a pain to work with and impossible to get a claim paid when needed.

We are doing a cruise to Antarctica and plan to go to Buenos Aires for a few days after the cruise is completed. We have Tripmate insurance through Viking that covers the cruise and flights, but it does not cover the deviation as it is not a Viking excursion (Viking isn’t offering one to BA, even though they fly us through there from Ushuaia). Per Tripmate, we cannot pay to add days and when I looked at Allianz they said we’d need to take a second policy for the entire trip.
 

Any recommendations on a company to look into for those extra days? We are mostly concerned about health coverage.

3 hours ago, What was that? said:

I would be interested to learn why you didn't like it - and what cruise. We are booked for a 2021 Northern Lights cruise, and like the idea of a bigger single view.

South America & the Chilean Fjords on the Jupiter.

We accepted the slider because it was the last port side PV1 on our desired floor. We were assured it was just as good as the door but that wasn’t our experience at all.

The main issue was that despite being a single pane of glass, the positioning of the sofa AND particularly how far the curtains opened, obstructed a great deal of the view. On our AUS/NZ on the Orion, we liked being able to sit and watch from inside when we wanted. You had to go outside for a full picture and parts of SA were pretty brisk. 
 

For secondary issues, slider frequently stuck, often needed two hands to open/close, and the latch to lock was finicky. I like always having one hand on my camera gear going in/out of the room, especially in SA where we quite often had rougher seas.

HTH!

We’ve had a door and a slider in PV. Hated the slider.

I did have a wet bag just in case, though technically they exclude guaranteeing against  camera/electronics. I used it sometimes and kept it out while on the zodiac at others. Caught some great shots deciding to keep it out the last time!

On 2/28/2020 at 5:21 PM, SantaFe1 said:

Mine did the same. We got the glossy brochure in the mail Last Friday afternoon. By Saturday morning We had a provisional booking ( wanted one of those elusive DX rooms) and paid on Monday morning ( right before the stock market fell). I looked at all the hotels, which look wonderful, read the excursions, wondered if I was too old to do a “wet landing” and just told myself oh what the heck, I’ll buy some water shoes!  I am so glad Viking finally came up with this bucket list trip and will take care of all the details for us!

I did the Galapagos extension with Viking in December before my SA cruise. The wet landings in the islands were easy. Ankle to lower calf deep and always two people stabilizing you if needed (I’m perfectly able to do it but was nice with all my camera gear in hand).

TBH though, not sure I’d do the Expedition ship as the National Geographic hotel (Finch Bay) that they put us up on was lovely and we had a really nice 20 passenger yacht to take us to each island with a National Geographic naturalist as a secondary guide. It was a much nicer level of individual attention with just 11 of us. 

On 8/8/2019 at 9:26 AM, lackcreativity said:

A personal favorite in Boston is the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum. The building itself is a real treat, built in the style of a Venetian palazzo. It is accessible by the T, but there is a walk from the nearest stop. It is also only a 5-10 minute walk from the Museum of Fine Arts, so if art is your thing, you can make a day of it!

This was a favorite of mine on my recent trip to Boston. If you want to see the lovely courtyard without a gaggle of “influencers” though, prepurchase your ticket online and arrive at least 30 min before the museum

opens. Otherwise you’ll be hard pressed to see anything past the mob of younger women in white sundresses and straw hats laying all over the steps for selfies! 

18 hours ago, cstrick said:

We are on the December 27 Australia to New Zealand cruise. Very much looking forward to it. This will be the longest flight that we have ever taken. I am traveling with my daughter. I keep warning her that she will be a little young (45).

I took this trip with my mom last year. I’m in her age bracket. Yes, she will definitely be on the younger side of most passengers, though there will be at least some her age, or younger (we had all the way down to a few college age).

if you are ok with splitting up on some of the excursions, I did some of the more demanding or on foot options (or explored solo), so that we could both see things at our own pace.

for flights, highly recommend Virgin Australia The Business. It was fantastic. Comfortable, great food and sleep. We arrived with virtually no jet lag.

12 hours ago, CCWineLover said:

 

 

We are on the Dec 21st Santiago to Buenos Aires Jupiter Cruise - and with Patrick Watts on Dec 31st in the Falklands.  I will be sure to post updates during the cruise to let you all know how things go -weather-wise and more!!

We (fortunately or unfortuantely) had to take this Dec 21 cruise due to family timing - we'll at least see how the Christmas and New Years are on Viking I suppose.

CCWineLover: we are booked for Volunteer Point with Patrick on the same sailing. I’m hoping this gives us extra time to photograph.

On 8/14/2019 at 11:05 AM, zitsky said:

 

Do you take anything?  Meclizine, benadryl, etc?

Last time I managed with just sea bands and ginger chews all but one night. I had prescription meds then, have to look up what it was. We had really smooth seas the entire trip.

1 hour ago, orchestrapal said:

We were as aft as one could get on deck 5 and with exception of the occasional door banger next door it was silent. Great location because very few people pass your door.

Thank you. I sometimes get hit with motion sickness and worried about being that far back.

We normally stay in PV1 cabin mid-ship, but for the current cruise we are looking at, the only PV1 cabin facing land is pretty far aft. Can anyone speak to noise, vibration, and/or increased movement at the back of the ship?

Having been independently to Iceland, I think this is one country where you can easily book your extension individually and get a much better experience.

Good points. We are doing a 4 night pre cruise excursion to Angkor Wat in April. We plan on living out of our carryons for this leg of the trip and have our real luggage sent directly to the ship using Luggage Forward.

We are considering doing that for our cruise and extension as well (if we cannot make carryon only work.

I always include at least one change of clothes and two undergarments in my handbag as well, just in case the flight attendants make me gate check.

Does anyone know if it is possible to see the wish lists for both people traveling in one place and that only one of us is in charge of booking? We do not want to do the same excursions on all days but I can only seem to see my own wishlist.

Having just been to Iceland last year to see the northern lights, a few things.

• As someone else noted, as a natural phenomenon, you cannot guarantee you’ll see them.
  
• Iceland is flooded with companies that offer northern lights tours. Book yourself.
  
• Depending on your type, book for every night you’re there (a mini-coach/coach usually rebooks if they cancel your original date because of weather/you don’t see them. Smaller excursions that include something else do not (see next bullet)
  
• I recommend a couple of the small group options. Of the three I did, one was mini coach, one was a private SUV tour (fabulous driver + 3-4 passengers that included dinner at a wonderful fresh seafood restaurant in Vik) and one North Atlantic small yacht (could hold about 15-20 people, we had crew + 5 passengers) while I saw lights on the mini coach tour, there were 40+ of us, which made it crowded and rushed, they weren’t as accomodating
  
• Know that the lights can be very subtle in the sky. You’ll get wonderful long exposure photos with a tripod but it is not vivid to the naked eye in many circumstances
  
• You *can* sometimes see them within Reykjavik if you get away from the city center but that is hit or miss
  
• Finally, there are a ton of great hotels in the city. Standard big names and cool little boutique ones. I stayed at a boutique one, while small, nicely appointed and I could walk everywhere in town in 10-29 min, about 30 minto the harbor
  

Too bad Viking requires full payment so early. I'd prefer to know that my "essential" tours are available before I'm fully committed to go on the cruise.

 

Not sure I'm ready for that "leap of faith" as there is so much travel effort and money involved.

 

The cruise we're looking at is to see the Northern Lights -- where tourist accommodations are probably limited, and we're only there for one purpose, to get to see the Lights. If the most advantageous tours were unavailable, I would not be a happy camper!