UK Only Viking Venus Cruise

[bafinegan]

7 hours ago, jtwind said:

I'm not negative on the entire Viking process.  Just the part about clearing positive test with a single negative tests.  

Then why are you cruising ?  ANd why spread all this negativity on a board where people are so happy/excited to be back cruising and are good with the precautions Viking is taking?

[Dukefan]

10 hours ago, FoggyEthan said:

Not speaking for him, but I think his concern was about the publicity relating specifically to cruise lines, and the impact it would have on our upcoming sailings if Viking was shown to have ignored a positive test which led to on-board spread.

 

Also, drawing people out on their covid views is rarely productive. The topic involves both lots of uncertainty and lots of emotion. This can heat up very quickly. It's not worth it.

Each of us has had to decide how to deal with this pandemic.  The solutions have ranged from “I’m not going to get vaccinated and I am going to go on living my life as if the pandemic didn’t exist” to “I’m going to get vaccinated, I’m going to get tested regularly and I am going to live my life as if I haven’t been vaccinated by not going out unless I have to and when I do practice social distancing, hand washing and mask wearing” and everything in between and maybe even some beyond these two extremes.  

 

The bottom line is we each have to chose what we are comfortable doing.  When we visit someone’s home, they generally set the rules on how to deal with the pandemic while we are there.  If we don’t feel comfortable because we believe their rules are to lose or to strict, we can choose not to visit their home. When we sail on a Viking Ship, they get to set the rules and we get to chose if we are comfortable enough with these rules to either sail with them or not sail with them.  It is our choice.

Vikings rules in short are everyone must be vaccinated, they must agree to regular testing, they must wear a contact tracing device, they must wear a mask and practice social distancing except when eating, drinking or in their cabin, and they must agree to only leave the ship in the Viking bubble.

 

There have been many complaints on Cruise Critic about how restrictive these rules are. Jtwood and now FoggyEthan are the first comments that I have read suggesting that Viking’s rules are not strict enough.  When I am currently out and about in the stores in my community, more folks are now not wearing masks and I have no idea whether they have been vaccinated or not thus I still wear a mask.  The point I have been trying to make in my posts on this subject is that went we are on the Viking ship following the current Viking rules we will be saver than we currently are while we are home.  When I see comments suggesting that the Viking rules are not strict enough it causes me to ask two questions:  1) What should Viking do differently?   2) What practices are you following at home that cause you to feel Viking’s rules are not strict enough (in other words, why do you feel saver following your rules at home than you would following Viking’s rules)?

[FoggyEthan]

2 hours ago, Dukefan said:

There have been many complaints on Cruise Critic about how restrictive these rules are. Jtwood and now FoggyEthan are the first comments that I have read suggesting that Viking’s rules are not strict enough.  When I am currently out and about in the stores in my community, more folks are now not wearing masks and I have no idea whether they have been vaccinated or not thus I still wear a mask.  The point I have been trying to make in my posts on this subject is that went we are on the Viking ship following the current Viking rules we will be saver than we currently are while we are home.  When I see comments suggesting that the Viking rules are not strict enough it causes me to ask two questions:  1) What should Viking do differently?   2) What practices are you following at home that cause you to feel Viking’s rules are not strict enough (in other words, why do you feel saver following your rules at home than you would following Viking’s rules)?

 

I think you are reading into the comments more than is there. First, I never expressed an opinion at all about Viking's policies, so please don't put anything on me. And as I said, I think jtwood was not being negative and was expressing a thought specific to cruising and not daily life. He also explicitly said what Viking should do differently -- require 2 negative tests after a positive test.

[Janet&David]

Hello all.

We returned on Saturday from the second ‘England’s Scenic Shores’ cruise. I would have posted something when on board but I struggle to type more than a couple of sentences on my phone!

There are many posts on the Facebook group ‘We Love Viking Cruises (UK)’ if you want to get a flavour of the cruise – including almost 500 photos (!) posted by a passenger on the first cruise.

So here are a few points following our cruise.

 

Number of passengers and crew

After the first cruise with 230 passengers we were expecting that there would be 450 on our cruise. In fact there were around 280. One of the crew suggested that this would increase to around 330 on the third cruise but early posts on Facebook suggest there may be more. There appeared to be an almost full complement of crew – so they outnumbered passengers by more than two to one!

 

Embarkation

Parking in the Portsmouth International Port Car Park was very straightforward and efficient – staff on hand to guide you to the dedicated area for Viking passenger parking. We didn’t realise that we were supposed to drop off our cases at the cruise terminal before parking but the car park staff directed us back there. The luggage drop-off point is lay-by with space for only two or three cars so this could become a bit of a bottleneck when passenger numbers increase. After parking the car it is only a couple of hundred metres walk to the cruise terminal.

We had pre-booked the 11.00 to 11.30 boarding slot (other slots were 9.00 to 9.30, 10.00 to 10.30 and 12.00 to 12.30) but because our journey and parking were quicker than expected we arrived at the terminal at 10.30 and were allowed to check-in immediately. Check-in was very quick and we were then transferred by shuttle bus to the ship. We then when straight to our cabin where we had to provide the first daily saliva sample for a PCR test. Once we had done this we could move around the ship. The World Café and Pool Bar were open for lunch.

 

Restaurants

We had reserved the Restaurant in advance for every evening (by phone as MVJ hadn’t allowed this) but it seems that everyone’s reservations for the Restaurant (and possibly the speciality restaurants) had been lost by the system. However, there was a big notice outside the Restaurant saying that reservations were not necessary – this may change as passenger numbers increase. We hadn’t pre-booked speciality restaurants as we weren’t entitled to with a V1 cabin.

At around noon on the first day we phoned the dining reservations number from our room and reserved a table at the Chef’s Table for that evening at 7pm – our preferred time. We dined twice more at the Chef’s Table (therefore experiencing all three of the menus available on the cruise as it changes every 3 days) and twice at Manfredi’s – all within half an hour or so of our preferred times. The other two nights we dined at the Restaurant and the World Café – in each case just turning up without a reservation. Reservations will presumably get a bit trickier when passenger numbers increase.

Diners in all Restaurants were very safely separated from one another. In the main Restaurant we felt that this reduced what little atmosphere there is (the ambience isn’t brilliant at the best of times) which is why we only chose to eat there once. The speciality restaurants and the World Café were great – with service perhaps being almost too attentive due to the fact that staff almost outnumbered diners.

 

Excursions

We had low expectations of the excursions – I joked in advance on this website that we were looking forward to our coach trip around the centre of Liverpool. In the end I think that Viking did all that they reasonably could to give us some sort of experience in each destination.

The Liverpool coach trip was quite interesting – mainly pointing out where the Beatles lived and went to school etc, but seeing the barber shop and bank that feature in the lyrics of Penny Lane was fun and there was a reasonable amount on the history of the city.

Tresco Gardens in the Scilly Isles were stunning and we were allowed to roam around on our own. Falmouth coach tour probably the most disappointing but again we were allowed to wander freely in the area around Portland Bill lighthouse on the Portland coach trip.

All in all a good effort by Viking. Anyone who considers it an unreasonable limitation of freedom to have to stick to official Viking excursions should spare a thought for the crew who are not allowed to set foot off the ship during their six month tour of duty!

 

Entertainment

Pretty much unchanged from what is normally available with Viking. In fact, the three shows that we saw were identical to our last cruise to the Baltic in 2020 – including the ‘ad lib’ jokes. Slightly cheesy but great fun.

Other entertainment consisted of the usual lectures/destination talks and three sessions of trivia over the week.

 

Safety procedures

I’d sum these up as being comprehensive, reassuring and non-intrusive. Each morning you have to provide a 2ml saliva sample (quite a lot when your mouth is dry from a few glasses of wine the previous evening!) in the tubes left in your cabin, for collection by your steward by 10am. Processing the tests seemed to take all day, with the explanation of a couple of late port departures being that testing had not been completed. I think all the crew were also being tested regularly but this could be a problem when the number of passengers is scaled up.

On the last evening of the cruise medical certificates confirming that our final PCR tests were negative were delivered to our room. Not relevant for our UK-only cruise but will presumably be useful on future cruises that end in overseas destinations.

Once a day you need to have your temperature taken. This is done by a machine that uses facial recognition to identify you and then measures your temperature from a couple of feet away, using infra-red. There was a machine in Passenger Services and others outside a couple of the restaurants – we had ours checked going into the World Café for breakfast, to get it out of the way.

All areas had some seating marked to not use, including the theatre. Crew wore masks all the time and passengers could remove masks only when seated. Sanitiser dispensers everywhere and frequent cleaning of all surfaces by crew. Altogether it all felt very safe.

 

Cabin categories

Like everything else above, the situation could change on future cruises – but at the moment the benefits of opting for a Deluxe Veranda seem limited. We chose a V1 cabin as this was clearly not going to be the cruise of a lifetime so we thought we’d keep things simple.

On this cruise there was no priority boarding. We chose the check-in slot of 11.00 as it suited us in terms of the journey to Portsmouth. Everyone can (in fact must) go straight to their cabin on boarding. For debarkation, we were allocated the latest time to leave the ship (8.15am) which seemed much more civilised than the 7.00 departure of the first passengers to leave.

At our cabin level we couldn’t make reservations for the specialty restaurants before the start of the cruise but this didn’t seem to work for any cabin categories. We were able to make three reservations from the Chef’s Table and two for Manfredi’s once on board (although it seems that this may be more difficult this week).

So that really only leaves mini-bar replenishment and coffee-making facilities as benefits we would miss out on. However, we still received a bottle of sparkling wine in the fridge on arrival (according to Passenger Services this was to compensate for not having a welcome aboard get-together with fizz) and our brilliant steward provided us with a brand new kettle and a constant supply of tea bags and fresh milk – a better solution than a coffee-making machine.

 

Well that’s all, I think. Overall a very positive experience that we wouldn’t have missed out on. Our next Viking cruise is Athens to Istanbul in November (travel restrictions permitting), and the only thing that would worry us is the flights out and back – I’m sure the time on the ship will be as safe as it can be.

[FoggyEthan]

19 minutes ago, Janet&David said:

Well that’s all, I think. Overall a very positive experience that we wouldn’t have missed out on. Our next Viking cruise is Athens to Istanbul in November (travel restrictions permitting), and the only thing that would worry us is the flights out and back – I’m sure the time on the ship will be as safe as it can be.

 

Thank you so much J&D! That was really helpful for setting expectations. I tried to join the FB group but they're only letting in people on your side of the pond.

 

I'm wondering, with the social distancing, what were the best ways to meet your fellow travelers? It sounds like The Restaurant would not be the way. Shore excursions?

 

Thanks!

-- Ethan

[lisiamc]

This may have been discussed already, but I can’t find it.  When should I expect to receive notice of our check-in time?  We’re cruising on 26 June, so plenty of time left. I’m just trying to plan our morning for the 26th.

[Janet&David]

13 minutes ago, FoggyEthan said:

 

Thank you so much J&D! That was really helpful for setting expectations. I tried to join the FB group but they're only letting in people on your side of the pond.

 

I'm wondering, with the social distancing, what were the best ways to meet your fellow travelers? It sounds like The Restaurant would not be the way. Shore excursions?

 

Thanks!

-- Ethan

In the Chef's Table and Manfredi's the tables, while socially distanced, were close enough for a conversation with only slightly raised voices. Because of the small number of passengers we ended up on the next table to one couple on two consecutive evenings. And yes, you could meet other people on excursions - although at least two rows away on the bus. Trivia was generally couples, rather than teams, which was a pity.

[Janet&David]

8 minutes ago, lisiamc said:

This may have been discussed already, but I can’t find it.  When should I expect to receive notice of our check-in time?  We’re cruising on 26 June, so plenty of time left. I’m just trying to plan our morning for the 26th.

For our cruise last week, you could choose you boarding time by booking a slot in the excursions section of My Viking Cruise (it appeared as an excursion for the first day).

[lisiamc]

19 minutes ago, Janet&David said:

For our cruise last week, you could choose you boarding time by booking a slot in the excursions section of My Viking Cruise (it appeared as an excursion for the first day).

Oh, ok. I’ll have a look.  Thank you!

[aungrl]

7 hours ago, Janet&David said:

Hello all.

We returned on Saturday from the second ‘England’s Scenic Shores’ cruise. I would have posted something when on board but I struggle to type more than a couple of sentences on my phone!

There are many posts on the Facebook group ‘We Love Viking Cruises (UK)’ if you want to get a flavour of the cruise – including almost 500 photos (!) posted by a passenger on the first cruise.

So here are a few points following our cruise.

 

Number of passengers and crew

After the first cruise with 230 passengers we were expecting that there would be 450 on our cruise. In fact there were around 280. One of the crew suggested that this would increase to around 330 on the third cruise but early posts on Facebook suggest there may be more. There appeared to be an almost full complement of crew – so they outnumbered passengers by more than two to one!

 

Embarkation

Parking in the Portsmouth International Port Car Park was very straightforward and efficient – staff on hand to guide you to the dedicated area for Viking passenger parking. We didn’t realise that we were supposed to drop off our cases at the cruise terminal before parking but the car park staff directed us back there. The luggage drop-off point is lay-by with space for only two or three cars so this could become a bit of a bottleneck when passenger numbers increase. After parking the car it is only a couple of hundred metres walk to the cruise terminal.

We had pre-booked the 11.00 to 11.30 boarding slot (other slots were 9.00 to 9.30, 10.00 to 10.30 and 12.00 to 12.30) but because our journey and parking were quicker than expected we arrived at the terminal at 10.30 and were allowed to check-in immediately. Check-in was very quick and we were then transferred by shuttle bus to the ship. We then when straight to our cabin where we had to provide the first daily saliva sample for a PCR test. Once we had done this we could move around the ship. The World Café and Pool Bar were open for lunch.

 

Restaurants

We had reserved the Restaurant in advance for every evening (by phone as MVJ hadn’t allowed this) but it seems that everyone’s reservations for the Restaurant (and possibly the speciality restaurants) had been lost by the system. However, there was a big notice outside the Restaurant saying that reservations were not necessary – this may change as passenger numbers increase. We hadn’t pre-booked speciality restaurants as we weren’t entitled to with a V1 cabin.

At around noon on the first day we phoned the dining reservations number from our room and reserved a table at the Chef’s Table for that evening at 7pm – our preferred time. We dined twice more at the Chef’s Table (therefore experiencing all three of the menus available on the cruise as it changes every 3 days) and twice at Manfredi’s – all within half an hour or so of our preferred times. The other two nights we dined at the Restaurant and the World Café – in each case just turning up without a reservation. Reservations will presumably get a bit trickier when passenger numbers increase.

Diners in all Restaurants were very safely separated from one another. In the main Restaurant we felt that this reduced what little atmosphere there is (the ambience isn’t brilliant at the best of times) which is why we only chose to eat there once. The speciality restaurants and the World Café were great – with service perhaps being almost too attentive due to the fact that staff almost outnumbered diners.

 

Excursions

We had low expectations of the excursions – I joked in advance on this website that we were looking forward to our coach trip around the centre of Liverpool. In the end I think that Viking did all that they reasonably could to give us some sort of experience in each destination.

The Liverpool coach trip was quite interesting – mainly pointing out where the Beatles lived and went to school etc, but seeing the barber shop and bank that feature in the lyrics of Penny Lane was fun and there was a reasonable amount on the history of the city.

Tresco Gardens in the Scilly Isles were stunning and we were allowed to roam around on our own. Falmouth coach tour probably the most disappointing but again we were allowed to wander freely in the area around Portland Bill lighthouse on the Portland coach trip.

All in all a good effort by Viking. Anyone who considers it an unreasonable limitation of freedom to have to stick to official Viking excursions should spare a thought for the crew who are not allowed to set foot off the ship during their six month tour of duty!

 

Entertainment

Pretty much unchanged from what is normally available with Viking. In fact, the three shows that we saw were identical to our last cruise to the Baltic in 2020 – including the ‘ad lib’ jokes. Slightly cheesy but great fun.

Other entertainment consisted of the usual lectures/destination talks and three sessions of trivia over the week.

 

Safety procedures

I’d sum these up as being comprehensive, reassuring and non-intrusive. Each morning you have to provide a 2ml saliva sample (quite a lot when your mouth is dry from a few glasses of wine the previous evening!) in the tubes left in your cabin, for collection by your steward by 10am. Processing the tests seemed to take all day, with the explanation of a couple of late port departures being that testing had not been completed. I think all the crew were also being tested regularly but this could be a problem when the number of passengers is scaled up.

On the last evening of the cruise medical certificates confirming that our final PCR tests were negative were delivered to our room. Not relevant for our UK-only cruise but will presumably be useful on future cruises that end in overseas destinations.

Once a day you need to have your temperature taken. This is done by a machine that uses facial recognition to identify you and then measures your temperature from a couple of feet away, using infra-red. There was a machine in Passenger Services and others outside a couple of the restaurants – we had ours checked going into the World Café for breakfast, to get it out of the way.

All areas had some seating marked to not use, including the theatre. Crew wore masks all the time and passengers could remove masks only when seated. Sanitiser dispensers everywhere and frequent cleaning of all surfaces by crew. Altogether it all felt very safe.

 

Cabin categories

Like everything else above, the situation could change on future cruises – but at the moment the benefits of opting for a Deluxe Veranda seem limited. We chose a V1 cabin as this was clearly not going to be the cruise of a lifetime so we thought we’d keep things simple.

On this cruise there was no priority boarding. We chose the check-in slot of 11.00 as it suited us in terms of the journey to Portsmouth. Everyone can (in fact must) go straight to their cabin on boarding. For debarkation, we were allocated the latest time to leave the ship (8.15am) which seemed much more civilised than the 7.00 departure of the first passengers to leave.

At our cabin level we couldn’t make reservations for the specialty restaurants before the start of the cruise but this didn’t seem to work for any cabin categories. We were able to make three reservations from the Chef’s Table and two for Manfredi’s once on board (although it seems that this may be more difficult this week).

So that really only leaves mini-bar replenishment and coffee-making facilities as benefits we would miss out on. However, we still received a bottle of sparkling wine in the fridge on arrival (according to Passenger Services this was to compensate for not having a welcome aboard get-together with fizz) and our brilliant steward provided us with a brand new kettle and a constant supply of tea bags and fresh milk – a better solution than a coffee-making machine.

 

Well that’s all, I think. Overall a very positive experience that we wouldn’t have missed out on. Our next Viking cruise is Athens to Istanbul in November (travel restrictions permitting), and the only thing that would worry us is the flights out and back – I’m sure the time on the ship will be as safe as it can be.

Thanks for taking the time to make such a detailed post!  As one who isn't on Facebook, I really appreciate getting this information here.  Sounds like the trip met expectations!

[kittycrews]

11 hours ago, Janet&David said:

For our cruise last week, you could choose you boarding time by booking a slot in the excursions section of My Viking Cruise (it appeared as an excursion for the first day).

Greetings from Kitty & Murray!

Great to read your detailed post. We are on 19 June cruise. Perhaps we can meet again; still hoping for that Sky make-up offering.

 

Edited June 10, 2021 by kittycrews
typo

[Janet&David]

16 hours ago, Janet&David said:

Safety procedures

I’d sum these up as being comprehensive, reassuring and non-intrusive

I forgot to mention one important point. According to crew members that we spoke to, all the crew of the Venus have received at least one COVID vaccination. Not sure where they had this done - unlikely to be in the UK but presumably somewhere when the crew boarded before sailing to the UK. This is good as I had assumed that the biggest risk of COVID would be among the crew as all the passengers will have been vaccinated, most of them twice. Still room for doubt around the level of protection from one dose, and the emergence of new variants, but with all the other measures on board it made us feel pretty safe.

David

Edited June 10, 2021 by Janet&David

[Marmaduke]

Thank you David and Janet for taking the time to post a very comprehensive review of your cruise, which is very helpful for those of us who don't do Facebook.  You mentioned dining in the specialty restaurants more than once. To obtain these extra reservations did you just turn up at the restaurant when you wanted to eat and enquire if they had any vacancies or did you pre- book, if so when and where  on board do you do this.

[Heidi13]

6 hours ago, Janet&David said:

I forgot to mention one important point. According to crew members that we spoke to, all the crew of the Venus have received at least one COVID vaccination. Not sure where they had this done - unlikely to be in the UK but presumably somewhere when the crew boarded before sailing to the UK. This is good as I had assumed that the biggest risk of COVID would be among the crew as all the passengers will have been vaccinated, most of them twice. Still room for doubt around the level of protection from one dose, and the emergence of new variants, but with all the other measures on board it made us feel pretty safe.

David

 

Chatting with crew members on various ships, it sounds like they got vaccine in Malta.

[Janet&David]

1 hour ago, Marmaduke said:

Thank you David and Janet for taking the time to post a very comprehensive review of your cruise, which is very helpful for those of us who don't do Facebook.  You mentioned dining in the specialty restaurants more than once. To obtain these extra reservations did you just turn up at the restaurant when you wanted to eat and enquire if they had any vacancies or did you pre- book, if so when and where  on board do you do this.

Hi. Apart from the first Chef's Table reservation which we made by phone on the first day we made all bookings at the Dining Reservations desk in the Atrium. In fact we made all four reservations in one discussion with the guest services person at the desk on the second or third day. She checked availability online and made the two reservations at each of the Chef's Table and Manfredi's. I suspect this may change as passenger numbers increase, but always worth a try.

[jenna37]

1 hour ago, Janet&David said:

Hi. Apart from the first Chef's Table reservation which we made by phone on the first day we made all bookings at the Dining Reservations desk in the Atrium. In fact we made all four reservations in one discussion with the guest services person at the desk on the second or third day. She checked availability online and made the two reservations at each of the Chef's Table and Manfredi's. I suspect this may change as passenger numbers increase, but always worth a try.

Thank you J and D for a most comprehensive and informative review of your sailing. I have made reservations in the restaurants using MVJ and have reviewed the diary which shows the reservations have been logged. Do you know if that means that they are on the system or will we have to re-book once onboard.

Thanks again for taking the time to post your excellent review.

Jeff

[Peregrina651]

32 minutes ago, jenna37 said:

Do you know if that means that they are on the system or will we have to re-book once onboard.

Thanks again for taking the time to post your excellent review.

Jeff

 

 

You should not have to re-book once board.

 

However, we are talking about technology and as DH says, "Technology is great...when it works."

 

Print out your calendar (either on paper or as a .pdf) and have it ready in case stuff does happen (you won't have access to MVJ on the ship). Then you can bring out the document and point to what you had already booked and ask them to fix it.

 

Here are a couple of heads up: MVJ becomes read-only 7 days before sailing. That is when it is uploaded to the ship to be ready for our arrival.  During this black out period, we can not make any changes.  If you are anticipating making any changes to your day 2 or 3 optional shorex, you should get it done before MVJ the 7 day mark. By the time you board, it will be too late to make changes (because cancellations must be done 36+ hours before the tour).

 

Our bookings are deleted from MVJ when we board the ship; they will not be available to us during the cruise or after. If there is anything you want to save from MVJ in reference to this cruise, do it before you leave home.

 

 

[Janet&David]

48 minutes ago, jenna37 said:

Thank you J and D for a most comprehensive and informative review of your sailing. I have made reservations in the restaurants using MVJ and have reviewed the diary which shows the reservations have been logged. Do you know if that means that they are on the system or will we have to re-book once onboard.

Thanks again for taking the time to post your excellent review.

Jeff

Hi Jeff

Hopefully Viking will fix the systems but there appear to have been a range of problems with MVJ on recent cruises. We had problems making any reservations using MVJ - with our V1 cabin we were only entitled to make bookings for the Restaurant, which seemed to be required at that time. We phoned Viking and someone in the admin team phoned us and made reservations in the Restaurant for every night. When we boarded all the reservations had been lost and did not appear on our calendar on the TV in the cabin. Not a big deal, as I said, but we know that others lost speciality restaurant reservations too. We had taken a print-out of our calendar from MVJ (I don't trust technology!) and if there had been an issue I would have used this to make a moral claim on the slots I had booked. You may consider doing the same.

David

[Peregrina651]

21 minutes ago, Janet&David said:

if there had been an issue I would have used this to make a moral claim on the slots I had booked.

 

Sweet. You found the words I was looking for. I hope I remember them for the next time.

 

And thank you for the detailed review. I'm following this thread just to get an idea how things are being handle -- and hoping that procedures are the same for Iceland.

[FoggyEthan]

9 minutes ago, Peregrina651 said:

 

Sweet. You found the words I was looking for. I hope I remember them for the next time.

 

And thank you for the detailed review. I'm following this thread just to get an idea how things are being handle -- and hoping that procedures are the same for Iceland.

 

I've noticed lots of discussions about the main restaurant and the specialties, but not much about the buffet, or heck, Mamsens. I've yet to sail Viking, so I don't know for myself. Is there a consensus that the restaurant is generally the better place to eat vs the buffet?

[Heidi13]

11 minutes ago, FoggyEthan said:

 

I've noticed lots of discussions about the main restaurant and the specialties, but not much about the buffet, or heck, Mamsens. I've yet to sail Viking, so I don't know for myself. Is there a consensus that the restaurant is generally the better place to eat vs the buffet?

 

MDR v's World Cafe (buffet), unless you have time constraints such as returning from a tour, it is really personal choice on your preferred style of dining. The quality of the meals in the World Cafe was very good, way better than most cruise ships, we just prefer waiter service, especially when you have the same waiters every night. Having the galley crew do portion control is also a bonus.

 

Personally, we prefer eating most meals in the MDR - breakfast, lunch and dinner - when it is open, as meals in the MDR are a lengthy & social affair. Even B'fast and lunch, which are mostly 2 or 4 tops, we get chatting to the neighbours and can easily spend 90 mins. Dinner at a 6 or 8 top can be up to 3 hours. Some nights we missed the show, as we were still sipping Port & chatting.

 

For early morning tours we will head up to the World Cafe for a quick breakfast and will also use the World Cafe if coming back from a late tour, and don't want to change. Some of the special evenings in the World Cafe were also of interest, so we would check those out.

 

However, most dinners we had in the MDR,  Mafrettis and either of the 2 private rooms.

[Peregrina651]

18 minutes ago, FoggyEthan said:

 

I've noticed lots of discussions about the main restaurant and the specialties, but not much about the buffet, or heck, Mamsens. I've yet to sail Viking, so I don't know for myself. Is there a consensus that the restaurant is generally the better place to eat vs the buffet?

 

 

Ethan, I don't know that there is a consensus one way or another. Food is subjective. Style of service is subjective. Ambience is subjective.  It is like comparing apples and oranges -- there is no right answer.

 

 

[minka34]

I always try to have the Mamsens special waffles with Norwegian brown cheese at least once for breakfast on each cruise.  We usually do breakfast and lunch in the World Cafe (buffet) and then dinner in the Restaurant, or perhaps a specialty restaurant.  I love the adventures in eating at the Chef's Table, but some prefer to only try menus that sound good (all sound interesting to me).  There is also a pool grille that serves burgers/fries type food with a salad bar also there open only for lunch, I believe.  Some days, that grille is the ticket for lunch, with maybe wander through the World Cafe afterwards for dessert (ice cream?)  For me, my favorites are the Mamsens waffles, the giant croissants at World cafe for bfast, and the really fresh salad greens mix at the World Cafe at lunch.  Plus all the other food!  Can't really go wrong in my opinion.

[arlowood]

2 hours ago, jenna37 said:

Thank you J and D for a most comprehensive and informative review of your sailing. I have made reservations in the restaurants using MVJ and have reviewed the diary which shows the reservations have been logged. Do you know if that means that they are on the system or will we have to re-book once onboard.

Thanks again for taking the time to post your excellent review.

Jeff

I wouldn't count on it. We're currently aboard Venus and pre booked all our dining slots through MVJ about 3 weeks before departure. When we boarded last Saturday none of our dining  choices was showing up on the onboard Calendar. This is a known glitch apparently but Viking have not yet sorted it AFAIK. We managed to rebook Chefs Table and Manfredi's but on different nights to our original bookings. No need to book the MDR ahead of time - just roll up when you fancy - there's plenty of room

[NeilP57]

On 6/9/2021 at 6:48 PM, Janet&David said:

And yes, you could meet other people on excursions - although at least two rows away on the bus.

 

On 6/9/2021 at 6:10 PM, Janet&David said:

Tresco Gardens in the Scilly Isles were stunning and we were allowed to roam around on our own.

 

What a great review, many thanks for taking the time to post.

 

I was not on the cruise but the published itinerary reminded me of my strong desire to visit the Isle of Scilly so we booked a weeks holiday there. We happened to be on Tresco waiting for our return boat when the Viking Venus passengers were arriving on Tuesday afternoon. I noticed that they were not using the Viking tender vessels to land at Tresco but were using the local open air boats that are used to ferry passengers between the Islands.

 

I also observed that passengers were not that distant from each other on the boat and by contrast to the gap of two rows on the bus that you mentioned they were very close. 

 

I was just wondering was there anything said about this or was it viewed that as it was not "inside" it was not important.

 

I am on one of the Welcome Back Icelandic cruises at the end of July and we definitely have some tender ports on that trip so I was wondering whether they will maintain social distancing on the tender vessels.

 

Any observations on this topic welcome.