Live from the Viking Sky (Ft Lauderdale to London) December 20, 2023 - May 6, 2024

[UWDawg]

15 hours ago, Clay Clayton said:

Our optional excursion today from was a game drive to Bonamanzi Game Preserve. This park doesn’t have lions so our eyes were peeled for the other four of the “Big Five”-elephant, rhinos, buffalo, and leopard.  Given it was a daytime drive we knew the chance of seeing a leopard were pretty slim. Unfortunately our vehicle was driven by a very knowledgeable guide who wasn’t familiar with the park and his vehicle had issues. I was really hoping to see giraffe and we also knew there were nyala, impala, warthogs, wildebeast and zebra in the preserve. Nobody saw elephants or rhinos but everybody including us saw all of the those. But our group didn’t see any giraffes or buffalo unlike everybody else.  Lunch was tasty but was Very disappointed🤬 when everyone else was sharing their giraffe and buffalo photos. All due to a bad driver.  

 

But on the way back to the ship in the big tour bus, we saw giraffe! #daysaved  Africa exceeds anything you’ve ever heard.

 

 

We didn't manage to see any giraffes during the included Huhluwe-iMfolozi Park excursion.  Probably because all of the elephants were blocking the view.  

 

The included Huhluwe-iMfolozi Park excursion FAR EXCEEDED expectations.  I highly recommend it.

 

[Clay Clayton]

Just now, UWDawg said:

We didn't manage to see any giraffes during the included Huhluwe-iMfolozi Park excursion.  Probably because all of the elephants were blocking the view.  

 

The included Huhluwe-iMfolozi Park excursion FAR EXCEEDED expectations.  I highly recommend it.

 

WOW!

[Clay Clayton]

We’ve gotten to the promised rough seas!

[Missmelisk]

3 hours ago, Clay Clayton said:

We’ve gotten to the promised rough seas!

 

 

Hang on tight! 

[Clay Clayton]

Noon update from Sky as we make our way to Port Elizabeth, South Africa.  According to the Captain, winds are now up to 40 knots, with 50-55 knots gusts (gale force), waves are 15-16 feet and it’s rainy. The good news (again according to the Captain) is that it is going to get better overnight. The bad news is that it is going to get worse before it does😳. #washingmachine

[LunaSeaRetreat]

Our captain promised us force 8 winds this evening on our way to Richard's Bay.  Still smooth sailing for now.  Hold on to those hand rails.

Cynthia

[Clay Clayton]

Let’s hope the wind dies down before we get to Port Elizabeth tomorrow and Capetown on Monday!

 

https://www.ttgmedia.com/cruise/ambassador-ship-collides-with-cargo-vessel-during-world-cruise-45674

[odblnt]

I notice that Walvis Bay is on your itinerary. Please be sure to read the following trip report from the "infamous" Sailorjack:

 

 

[Clay Clayton]

Thought y'all might like to hear Patricia!

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C5a6BjrqFCLCd8sPDBM82iPuU0HsS2HYbhjsBo0/?igsh=MXZlODg4ZjF4ZGg1Zw==

[Clay Clayton]

Great day onnour Sibuya excursion. The 1.5 hour trip there was well worth it!  Lunch was good too. Lots more pics (and videos) on Instagram

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Jim Avery]

Great safari pix Clay.  #Skygetsitall!  Especially after Neptune's missed ports...

[Clay Clayton]

So sad that they’ve missed both ports. Hopefully they will be able to make it up in Port Elizabeth with an overnight? Or two?   Though our guide said it looked like they were gonna have four days of rain😢

 

Nice fixed course meal on the pool deck this evening.  Made for a nice end to this great day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 6 by Clay Clayton

[Pappri]

On 4/3/2024 at 10:38 PM, cruising denise said:

Just wanted to bid farewell to my Viking Sky traveling partners, some of whom I have been in communication with since fall of 2022 (when we booked this adventure!).  @Penspack  Debbie:  you know who I'm talking about!!!

 

Eddie and I are disembarking in Cape Town on April 8th, where we will spend five days exploring, then heading home on April 13th.  

 

Although we have made this decision and feel confident it is the right one for us given our own situation, those of you who stay on will have a wonderful adventure ahead of you and I will be following these posts to see what happens!  

 

It is bittersweet, this saying goodbye after embarking on Dec 20th, which right now seems eons ago!  To those of you who we first met in person in Ft Lauderdale prior to embarking - we have a special connection, and to those of you who embarked in LA, it has been an amazing journey.  Despite the missed ports and changed itinerary, in the end, it has been incredible, and we have been places, met people (passengers, crew and residents of the many ports we've visited) and seen things we never in our lives would have seen otherwise.  We are truly blessed to have undertaken this journey, and don't regret it for a second.  

 

Thank you to all who have shared this with us, who have helped make our adventure more fun and enriching, and Godspeed for fair winds and great adventures ahead of you.  You will always be in our memories.  

Denise, were you able to use your credits and everything is good?  If not, I can tell you what our resolution with LA was and who to speak to. 

[Clay Clayton]

6 hours ago, Pappri said:

Denise, were you able to use your credits and everything is good?  If not, I can tell you what our resolution with LA was and who to speak to. 

How about sharing with all of us!

[Clay Clayton]

Almost to Capetown aboard @vikingcruises Sky.  It’s 8am which was our original posted docking time but we are currently on a one hour delay due to winds.  Hoping the pilot boards at 8:30 so that delay doesn’t get longer🤞

 

 

 

[UWDawg]

About a 4 hour delay in docking at Cape Town. Longer excursions were cancelled and Table Mountain excursion is going to the Histoy Museum instead. I’ll miss seeing the penguins. 

[Clay Clayton]

as Cory said, 4 hours late but currently on our included tour to Stellenbosch.  Unfortunately the tablecloth is fully covering the mountain. #clearskystomorrow🤞

 

 

 

 

Edited April 8 by Clay Clayton

[Pappri]

8 hours ago, Clay Clayton said:

How about sharing with all of us!

Brooke.williams@viking.com.  The Viking “system” doesn’t work well with longer cruises like the WC.  In the “system”, the pre-cruise non-refundable credits get applied to the most expensive excursions first.  Every time you schedule a new excursion, the “system” re-shuffles the credits to the most expensive first.  So when we cancel the most expensive excursion (in our case the Indian Overland) the “system” returns non-refundable credit.  She says it just takes someone knowledgeable to manually work it out.  It took us nearly 4 weeks until we found Brooke and her knowledge working through all the other unhelpful, condescending, unknowledgeable knuckle heads until we finally got to her desk.  She understands that the WC’ers are in a special circumstance that requires special manipulation of the “system”.  Now it does require trust because she can’t balance out until post cruise - which got me hollering BS.  After she calmed me down, she sent an email that committed her and Viking to refunding our non-refundable credit for the excursion in full provided we didn’t spend it on other things. Ie. we still have to have $4998 in non-refundable credit at the end of the cruise.  We still have the extra $2K that we received when we got onboard that we are using for our new excursions that came up during the new itinerary.  I think accepting a Viking future credit is easier for her to approve and give without anyone else being involved then it is if you are wanting your credit card or bank account sent real cash.  The credit was acceptable to us because we have future cruises already booked and this will pay for them.  Like Denise, we were all set to cancel the 4 cruises we have if this hadn’t worked out for us.  I know another passenger on our ship wasn’t about to settle for a voucher, and they were able to work out a cash refund (post cruise with the email promise).

 

hope this helps other folks.  Brooke is super to work with and very pleasant- most of all - knowledgeable.  If you have been assigned someone else and they aren’t helping, then hang up the phone and send Brooke an email.  She’s able to call your state room directly from LA - usually around 8am her time, 5pm our time.

[Evy and Jeff]

We are booked on the WC aboard Viking Sky starting on December 19 2024 . 
I want to thank you very much for sharing this information about Credits .

 

Hopefully it won’t be something we need to be concerned about . 
But better to be prepared and armed with this information . We have noted the

contact information of Brooke just in case .

   
We have just started following  the  Current WC on Viking Sky .

The posts have been so helpful and informative . Thanks to all

 

 Hoping that you all have a smooth trip the rest of the way !

[cruising denise]

22 hours ago, Pappri said:

Denise, were you able to use your credits and everything is good?  If not, I can tell you what our resolution with LA was and who to speak to. 

We were able to use our credits because we did the overland 2-night 3-day safari which soaked them all up.  However, the issue really was never resolved in that they never honored the request to change the cancelled Sri Lanka credits from "nonrefundable" to "refundable".  I'm not fighting any more because we're okay since we used them on the safari.  But it still upsets me just on the principle of it.  I'd be very interested in hearing whether you got your issue resolved.  I think we emailed offline if I remember.  We are now off the ship in CapeTown for 5 days before heading home, with plans for every day, so prob won't be checking email too much.  But I am interested in hearing what happened for you.

[cruising denise]

Just now, Pappri said:

Brooke.williams@viking.com.  The Viking “system” doesn’t work well with longer cruises like the WC.  In the “system”, the pre-cruise non-refundable credits get applied to the most expensive excursions first.  Every time you schedule a new excursion, the “system” re-shuffles the credits to the most expensive first.  So when we cancel the most expensive excursion (in our case the Indian Overland) the “system” returns non-refundable credit.  She says it just takes someone knowledgeable to manually work it out.  It took us nearly 4 weeks until we found Brooke and her knowledge working through all the other unhelpful, condescending, unknowledgeable knuckle heads until we finally got to her desk.  She understands that the WC’ers are in a special circumstance that requires special manipulation of the “system”.  Now it does require trust because she can’t balance out until post cruise - which got me hollering BS.  After she calmed me down, she sent an email that committed her and Viking to refunding our non-refundable credit for the excursion in full provided we didn’t spend it on other things. Ie. we still have to have $4998 in non-refundable credit at the end of the cruise.  We still have the extra $2K that we received when we got onboard that we are using for our new excursions that came up during the new itinerary.  I think accepting a Viking future credit is easier for her to approve and give without anyone else being involved then it is if you are wanting your credit card or bank account sent real cash.  The credit was acceptable to us because we have future cruises already booked and this will pay for them.  Like Denise, we were all set to cancel the 4 cruises we have if this hadn’t worked out for us.  I know another passenger on our ship wasn’t about to settle for a voucher, and they were able to work out a cash refund (post cruise with the email promise).

 

hope this helps other folks.  Brooke is super to work with and very pleasant- most of all - knowledgeable.  If you have been assigned someone else and they aren’t helping, then hang up the phone and send Brooke an email.  She’s able to call your state room directly from LA - usually around 8am her time, 5pm our time.

Haha, sorry I shouldn't have responded to your earlier post till I finished reading through the rest of the posts.  Thanks so much for all this info, not for us as we are okay now, but for everyone else, especially anyone who is still fighting this issue.  Really happy you were persistent enough to find this person.  It is astonishing to me that a company as big as Viking does not have established policies and procedures with which the right people are acquainted.  Sometimes it feels like they are playing telephone using paper cups and string....

[Clay Clayton]

We had a wonderful time in Cape Town. The included tour to Stellenbach was enjoyable although unbeknownst to anyone the museum there was closed-likely due to the many downed trees. But the town is artsy and enjoyable and the winery beautiful.  Our tour finished near the ship at a beach club (think twenty year olds in Miami Beach) and some sparkling wine and really great musicians.  Afterwards, Mike and I took an Uber to a Cape Malay restaurant for a delicious traditional supper.
 

Affer we got back onboard we went to hear the University of Cape Town Choir.  Really great performance!
 

Our plan for today was to go to Table Mountain if the clouds lifted or to the V&A Waterfront if that wasn’t the case.  Unfortunately, we had a more when we got to the room that the port authority was not going to allow anyone to go out in order to address the many ships waiting to enter due to the delays of the last few days. So after our 20 minutes ashore at 8:30 to “exit” immigration we have been back onboard enjoying the sunshine and wonderful weather. We presumed that as soon as all had cleared immigration we would be leaving, but that isn’t the case, didn’t leave until 1pm….seems like we could have had time to explore a bit this morning afterall. #nexttime

 

Neptune-enjoy the beautiful weather hereafter missing Richard’s Bay y’all deserve it!

[Clay Clayton]

Our Trivia Team had our first perfect match today and won the tiebreaker for our third win!

 

 

Once we left Cape Town the sun came out but the temperature dropped-we could see our breath-quite a welcome change at least for us from the heat of Asia!  While sitting on the balcony this afternoon, a friend texted that there were whales off the starboard side-too far to really see well. About them I heard a splash and realized I could see whales blowing off the port. They were too far from the ship to see them but their blows and the occasional breech were visible. We also had a beautiful sunset on our side since we are heading north again😁

 

Our assistant cruise director, Rosanna had her solo show tonight-she is quite the musical theatre performer!  She is newly married to the sommelier onboard so it was fun to watch his reaction to her show too!

 

 

 

 

 

Sea day tomorrow 

[ural guy]

Hi-  Enjoying reading this report.  Just wondering, how many passport pages does a cruise like this use up?

[Clay Clayton]

Just now, ural guy said:

Hi-  Enjoying reading this report.  Just wondering, how many passport pages does a cruise like this use up?

The information we received prior to the cruise required their be 6 or 7 blank pages.  To date, I think we have only had stamps in three or four countries