World Cruise Day 118/152 - Sea Day - Excursions - The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly (but mostly good)

Cruise day: 118/152

Ports days: 55
Sea days: 63
Countries: 20
Continents: 5
Ports: 40

Sea day - bridge, trivia, Arlona's art.  Well, bridge - yes.  Trivia - yes, but different. Art - yes, but it's a multi-day project so nothing today.

Today, we did a "Missing Lyric" music trivia that featured the entire entertainment team. Birthday girl and Cruise Director, Kate, emceed the festivities that featured 20 songs performed by various entertainment team members.  The song snippet was displayed on the screen with a word blanked out.  The performer sang the snippet, but when the mystery word came up, they hollered, "Ka-Kaw". Think about any comedy movie where the good guys use a "nature sound" to alert their team of something, but that sound doesn't fit in where they happen to be. That's what it sounded like.  And it was hilarious.

The winning team got 15/20 and second place had 14/20 correct.  What about us?  13/20 - one correct answer out of the points, just like usual.  And for the record, the song pictured above is I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles) by The Proclaimers and the missing word is "more". 

Yesterday, I talked about our poor shore excursion experience where the described excursion, both in print and in the port talk was different than the excursion everyone received.  Viking, as a show of good faith, refunded everyone on that excursion 15% of their excursion fare.  That's a start. Consider this hypothetical scenario where I use an imaginary concert hall as an example:

• I really want to visit someplace - let's say a concert hall
• I read the description of a tour that visits several places including the concert hall
• I watch the tour manager's presentation where he tells me this tour visits several places including the concert hall
• I pay for the tour that visits several places, specifically because one of those is that concert hall, foregoing another wonderful tour that was offered at no cost
• I get on the tour and the tour guide tells me this tour doesn't visit that concert hall but I can look at it across the bay, just like I can do from my ship
• The remaining stops on the tour are lovely and the tour is nice, but the one thing I wanted to see and paid to see wasn't included by design, even though I was told it was

I would feel misled.  I would feel cheated.  That's exactly what happened yesterday. Viking responded with a 15% discount.  Too little in my not so humble opinion, but that's what it is. It all comes down to communication.

Now, for as poorly as that was handled, there is another side to excursions.  In previous posts, I mentioned a couple of excursion events.  The first was in Malta when we attended a concert at the Metropolitan Cathedral of St. Paul in Mdina.  The second was another concert experience a couple of days ago in Istanbul.  Both were terrific events.  Neither was originally part of the cruise.  Both were put together on the fly and were top-notch local cultural experiences that Viking provided at no cost to the World Cruise passengers.  Tomorrow, in Athens, Viking has struck again.  Let me explain.

We're headed to Athens, Greece tomorrow for a couple of days.  One of the things we really wanted to see was the Acropolis.  We booked and paid for an optional experience called the Full Acropolis Experience. A few days ago, Viking advised all passengers that had booked Acropolis excursions to cancel them.  What?  Why?  Because...Viking put together another experience called Greek Heritage, folk show, and Acropolis. This new excursion includes the Acropolis and then includes a local heritage and folk show. Oh, did I mention that this tour is offered at no cost?  So, we were able to cancel our excursion for a refund and replace it with this enhanced experience.  That makes three unexpected included experiences provided by Viking at no cost. That certainly enhanced the value of the cruise.  Kudos to Viking for this.

So, what do people feel about Viking?  Overall, are people happy, or are they focused on the hiccups and are abandoning ever cruising Viking again?  Numbers don't lie, so let's present some that were provided by Cruise Consultant, Hamed.

There have been somewhere north of 900 passengers on this ship at some point during the cruise.  The first 17 days from Ft. Lauderdale to Los Angeles, while part of the world cruise (sort of - see previous posts about that), it was also bookable as a standalone cruise.  Of the 737 that made that journey, about 400 of them, give or take, were only on for the transit.  About 200 more passengers got on in LA and the 515-ish of us headed out on this adventure.  I don't have the exact numbers, but these are close enough.

Of all those passengers that have been on this ship since December 24, 2021, fully 75% of them have booked another Viking cruise while on the ship.  That accounts for a total retail value of about $13.2 million.  That is broken down as $10.9 million spent by passengers and $2.3 million in future cruise credit vouchers redeemed by passengers.  For the record, we are counted in those totals. And for more perspective, this all happened without any real marketing to passengers other than a few optional presentations on interesting itineraries.

Seriously, if this cruise sucked, would three out of every four people that have been on here at some point book another cruise?  Nope.  We're having an amazing cruise, bumps notwithstanding.  We're hoping that our comments will help Viking improve (especially in the area of communication) and make everyone's next experience with them even more amazing.

Speaking of amazing, as we ate breakfast this morning, Arlona looked outside - dolphins!  Several dolphins were swimming by.  Other folks have spotted lots of them over the last few days. Back in the cabin, I spotted one swimming underwater near the ship.

It's hard to make out, but this is a dolphin

As I was looking, I spotted something I wasn't expecting - jellies. Most were just below the surface.

We also spotted this Turkish military ship as we exited the Dardanelles and headed out into the Aegean Sea.

We enjoyed the afternoon as Arlona worked on her painting and did some writing.  Not to spoil it but you're reading it now.  After dinner with friends and a lovely sunset, it was time for an early evening to continue catching up on lost sleep.

Tomorrow morning, we dock in Piraeus, Greece, the port that services Athens.