We are planning for our 9th Transatlantic Cruise for December, 2022. We will be sailing on the Viking Neptune. The decision process to get to this point was sort of a round about journey, we had not really planned for a cruise of this duration in 2022.
In fact, we had already planned for and booked a 7-Day cruise to the Caribbean in November, 2022 on Princess Cruises.
The November Caribbean cruise was booked because we were planning on utilizing our $1,370 of Cruise Credits with Princess that we acquired when we had our 2020 Transatlantic Cruise cancelled due to Covid-19. The 2020 cruise would have been our 9th Transatlantic Cruise. The cruise credits with Princess were due to expire at the end of 2022, and we needed to both use the credits for a cruise and complete the cruises before the end of 2022, or the credits would expire. These credits were given to us as a good will gesture by Princess, we chose to get this reduced amount of cruise credits (25%) along with a 100% cash refund for the 2020 cruise that was cancelled.
While we were planning the Caribbean Cruise, we were also looking into trying a Viking Ocean Cruise in May, 2023 that originated in Iceland and then visited Greenland and Canada before ending in New York City. We had specifically chosen this cruise with Viking because it had four sea days for us to enjoy learning about the Viking Cruise ship experience. We had specifically wanted to avoid a typical Viking Ocean Cruise itinerary where there are very few, if any sea days, and overnight stays at the dock in both the starting and ending ports. The 15-Day Iceland cruise did not have the overnight stays in port and had the four sea days, which we enjoy.
However, the Iceland Cruise was expensive, and then we learned that May is not the best time to go to Iceland, many of the interior gravel “F-Roads” roads and sights are closed due to ice until mid to late June. We then looked at moving the cruise to August, but the only one available on a newer Viking ship originated in New York and cruised over to Iceland. We were set to move to that itinerary, but it was even more expensive than the cruise in May because August is the peak season in Iceland, the weather is warmer and all of the roads are open for the summer.
Then, on a whim, we looked to see if there were any Transatlantic Cruises on Viking that we might enjoy and just plan on visiting Iceland in August, 2023 on a land trip. We found this December 2020 Transatlantic Cruise from Barcelona to Ft. Lauderdale, and decided to move our reservation from the May Iceland Cruise over to this one. This cruise is 15 nights and has one overnight in Barcelona on the ship. We will go to Barcelona four days earlier than the cruise departure date. This cruise only has port stops in Funchal, Madeira, and then in St. Martin in the Caribbean before ending in Ft. Lauderdale. Because the cruise does not make many stops, and is in late December, the pricing was favorable for a Viking Ocean Cruise, and we determined we would have a better opportunity to experience the luxury of the ship and the great food.
There was also a great special being offered by Viking for Economy Air for $499 per person for flights over to Barcelona and then a return flight home from Ft. Lauderdale. We will add another post on the intricacies of the Viking Cruise Air program, but the airfare pricing was much better than we could do on our own.
Right now, we are only on the hook for $50 for our deposit and for the travel insurance through Viking, which was about $850.00 total. We would normally have gotten travel insurance from a third party, but the cancel for any reason with Viking is 100% in cruise credits, and the best we could do was 75% cash payment with a third party insurance policy for about the same price. We still have the opportunity to change our minds before August 31, 2022 when we make our final payment for 100% of the cruise balance.
Now, you may be wondering what happened with the Caribbean Cruise with Princess. We were still outside of the final payment date by a few days, so we were able to cancel for a 100% refund, which was really the $1,370 in Cruise Credits that had been applied to the reservation. We cancelled that cruise through Costco Travel, and we have already seen the cruise credits returned back to our Princess Cruises Account. Now, we only hope that Princess extends the expiration of the credits past the end of 2022, but if not, easy come, easy go. In the end, we were still paying about $1,400 out of pocket for a 7 day cruise to the Caribbean, even with the cruise credits. So, using the credits was not giving us a free cruise. We were still paying $750 out of pocket for the cruise itself, and then had additional costs for rental cars to and from Ft. Lauderdale, an overnight stay in Port St. Lucie on the drive down to Ft. Lauderdale, gas and food for the round trip, and taxi’s to and from the cruise terminal/airport to drop off and pick up the rental cars, plus 18-20 hours of driving to and from home.
The use of rental cars was our choice, both of our vehicles are 20 years old and using rental cars eliminated the potential for breakdown on our older vehicles. Other than the hassle of getting the cars on both ends of the trip, the cost for the rentals was not that much more than paying for parking at the cruise terminal in Ft, Lauderdale, which is about $120.
We are excited to try a Viking Ocean Cruise, we hope to get a feel for their premium cruise experience, and that may help us to justify the additional costs for Viking over our typical Princess Cruises. We had grown tired of the declines in quality on Princess Cruises, especially in the food served in the Dining Room.
Our overall mindset about cruising has also changed, we have really enjoyed our last two land trips to Italy in 2019 and to Switzerland/Austria in 2021. We just feel like we see more and that was part of the reason for making the decision to go to Iceland as a land trip and not a cruise in 2023. In the end, it did partially come down to economics. We feel that we can do this 15-Day Viking Transatlantic Cruise and do a 15-Day land trip to Iceland in 2023 for about the same cost as we were going to pay just for the 15-Day Iceland to New York Viking Cruise.