We are booked to take an Antarctic Expedition Cruise because we watched the Smithsonian Channel and they showed a two hour special on an Antarctic Cruise through a company called Hurtigruten Expeditions. The show featured the MS Roald Amundsen, and it looked fantastic.
It was something we had considered doing for a while, and had gained interest again when we had some friends go on a Viking Antarctic Expedition Cruise last November.
We looked at some of the pricing for the Hurtigruten Expeditions, and found them to be quite expensive, and that did not even include airfare.
A couple of days later, we received a coincidental email from Viking offering a special rate on their 13 day Antarctic Expedition Cruises, and free airfare was included in the pricing. That sort of started the ball rolling on planning our next potential adventure, an Expedition Cruise to Antarctica for sometime in February. There were some available cruises in January, but most or all of the lower priced cabins were sold out. We then started looking at the February cruises, but needed to do some research and make some decisions to determine if we could go at all before we booked.
With the cruise departures being so soon, any booking requires full payment at time of booking, there is no time for placing a small deposit and then thinking if we could, should, or can go before paying the remainder of the fare.
The special pricing from Viking was only open for several days, and so we were also worried about cabin availability if much time passed by before we made our decision, and the available lower priced rooms were booked before we decided.
We also wanted to compare some other expeditions cruise prices, other than with Hurtigruten Expeditions, as well as gather some more information on the Viking Expedition Cruise as well.
However, now we had the expedition cruise itch, thanks to The Smithsonian Channel and the Sale at Viking, and we are emotionally set to go, now we just needed to work out the logistics.