Olden questions

[mousefan73]

Beginning of June we are in the MSC Fantasia and our port time is showing for now 10am... I am looking at booking here for an execurion at 11 am..

1. Will we make it with only 1 hour buffer?  We have a sea day before, so what are chances of delays? it's our first stop from Kiel,, does the ship have to cleared as I believe Norway is not EU??but Schengen??

 

Also is the 1 hour hike up over or under estimating? from my understanding there is a cafe at the start of the hike.. my mom will wait for us as she is not so mobile.. please confirm if this si possible.  thanks!

 

Also any reviews tips on booking the Birksdal bus with these guys??

Olden Cruise | Olden Norway Shore Excursions

 

thanks!

 

[hallasm]

it is always difficult to predict whether the ship will be delayed in arrival or whether the port will be canceled due to bad weather.  However, I would think that a 10 am arrival in Olden is pretty safe.  Personally, I wouldn't have a problem booking an 11 am excursion in Olden.  No problems regarding in migration.

[mousefan73]

17 minutes ago, hallasm said:

it is always difficult to predict whether the ship will be delayed in arrival or whether the port will be canceled due to bad weather.  However, I would think that a 10 am arrival in Olden is pretty safe.  Personally, I wouldn't have a problem booking an 11 am excursion in Olden.  No problems regarding in migration.

yeah I think I am paranoid now after the HORRID experience I had back in November in Southampton.. we were delayed 3 hours being cleared and getting off was a mess- our excursion to Windsor was cut in half.

[kitkat343]

9 hours ago, mousefan73 said:

Beginning of June we are in the MSC Fantasia and our port time is showing for now 10am... I am looking at booking here for an execurion at 11 am..

1. Will we make it with only 1 hour buffer?  We have a sea day before, so what are chances of delays? it's our first stop from Kiel,, does the ship have to cleared as I believe Norway is not EU??but Schengen??

 

Also is the 1 hour hike up over or under estimating? from my understanding there is a cafe at the start of the hike.. my mom will wait for us as she is not so mobile.. please confirm if this si possible.  thanks!

 

Also any reviews tips on booking the Birksdal bus with these guys??

Olden Cruise | Olden Norway Shore Excursions

 

thanks!

 

We sailed 6 years ago in the shoulder season (late May) so I can't guarantee it would be exactly the same, but Olden Adventures (that's the original name of the tour company you are considering) runs buses pretty consistently all day so as long to both the Briksdal Glacier and the Loen Skylift.    I don't think they'd mind switching your reservation as long as they have space.  When we visited Olden, we actually flipped our reservations the day we arrived in port because Olden Adventures took us to both the Loen Skylift and Briksdal Glacier and the weather was better in the afternoon and we felt it was more important to have better views at the skylift than the glacier.  That was no problem for either Olden Adventures or for the troll car reservation, but I'm not sure if these things would be full if you travel in the height of the tourism season.  If you have a long enough time in port, I'd recommend doing both (email Olden Adventures and ask them about the timing.  On a beautiful day, I'd say you'd want the Loen Skylift over the Briksdal Glacier, though it is quite expensive.)  6 years ago the pickup point was very close to the port, and you can ask them how long it will take to reach their office/buses but I'd guess you should be fine.

 

We were extremely fortunate to learn that the Loen Skylift opened three days prior to our arrival in Olden. I was a bit anxious about the logistics of visiting a brand new attraction with small children, and the owner of Olden Adventures was very patient and reassuring about the logistics of reaching the skylift. As it turned out, the weather was a bit rainy on the day we arrived, so there were very few crowds. It was still a very beautiful location, with a gorgeous viewing platform. On nice days, paragliders take off from the mountain (that happened the day before we arrived) and that must be spectacular to see if you are lucky enough to get good weather. The food in the restaurant was excellent, especially the sample platter of local meat. It’s unsurprisingly expensive, but the view is outstanding and the food delicious. 

The Loen Skylift is only a 6 km bus ride from Olden, so it isn’t very difficult to get there. Olden Adventures ( http://www.oldenadventure.com/ ) is running shuttles to the Loen Skylift, right next to their buses to the Biksdal Glacier so it would be very easy to travel to both attractions through Olden Adventures. 

 

 

The Briksdal Glacier has been hit hard by global warming, but the 40 minute bus ride there is quite scenic and lovely, as is the hike itself to the glacier so overall this excursion is a very good choice as long as you realize ahead of time that the most beautiful pictures online of the glacier showing lots of ice are not recent and don’t represent what you will see at the glacier. 

For travelers with young children or mobility issues, there are troll cars available for rent to reduce the length of your hike. These golf carts travel most of the way to the glacier, leaving you with a very pleasant and relatively flat 700 m walk. Since we didn’t expect my 2 year old to make it all the way to the glacier, my husband and 6 year old went ahead of us. To my surprise, my 2 year old slowly but steadily made the entire hike in the allocated time (they tell you what time to return to the platform to catch your return troll car). Reservations are required for troll cars in May and October, and recommended during the summer months (the troll car season runs from May-October). The only challenging thing is that they do request that you tell them what time you’d like to ride on the troll car, which is hard if you want to chose a time to do this excursion based upon the weather forecast (although it is completely understandable they ask you to pick a time, since otherwise there might be a lot of people trying to get on a troll car at one time and this would cause really long delays). I don’t know if the troll car operators are always flexible about the time of your reservation, but we changed our minds about what time to visit the glacier on the day we traveled since we wanted to visit the Loen skylift in the afternoon when the weather was scheduled to be better. I emailed the troll car operators at 9 am as soon as we got on the bus towards the glacier, and they had already switched my reservation by the time we arrived at the troll car office. We traveled in May, when things are less crowded so I don’t know if they will be able to accommodate a change in reservation time during the busy summer months. The troll car website where you can make your advance reservation is available at: http://www.oldedalenskysslag.com but someone mentioned that Olden adventures may now offer this service directly (I visited Norway 6 years ago so my info is a bit out of date) , so just ask Olden Adventures if they can arrange this for you.  

Near where you pick up the troll car is a small café off the souvenir shop; they have excellent waffles. They are best freshly made, so if you have time keep an eye on the plate where they store the waffles and order them when everyone else bought up the older waffles. My family started off by ordering 4, and ended up eating 12 (the kids really loved them and since they’d just finished hiking to a glacier without a single complaint I wasn’t going to say no), so we were able to get a lot of fresh waffles.