Dis / Dreams Viking Sea Cruise around Italy 3/24 - 3/31/2018

Oilheadbob2017 said:
We are Bob and Nancy Ryan. Recently moved to Florida in July of 2016. I retired from a major electric utility in Va. Managed to stay retired for a whole two weeks, back to work for Duke.
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Welcome Bob (and Nancy of course), we have a few things in common. I moved to FL 3 years ago now after retiring. Before that I worked for a major electric/gas utility in MA for 39 years.
 
I know many of you are doing a pre-trip in Rome and/or a post-trip in Venice, but I was thinking about doing a pre, pre trip in Paris at the Disneyland Paris resort. After doing some digging I found an early booking promotion that you can reserve right now that is out of this world.

You can get 4 nights at the Hotel New York or Newport Bay Club in a standard room for 2 adults plus 5 days of park hoppers for $492/person (including tax). It's an early booking buy 2 nights get 2 nights free offer. The Disneyland hotel is more expensive but also available. You can book online and pay in full or call them and only put 15% down and then have up until early February to pay in full.

I'm sure our pals at Dreams Unlimited Travel could book this offer for you. I wanted to pass it along because I found the price so reasonable. In fact, single pricing is also available and you would shave off about $225.

Tom
 
Thomas Hamilton said:
I know many of you are doing a pre-trip in Rome and/or a post-trip in Venice, but I was thinking about doing a pre, pre trip in Paris at the Disneyland Paris resort. After doing some digging I found an early booking promotion that you can reserve right now that is out of this world.

You can get 4 nights at the Hotel New York or Newport Bay Club in a standard room for 2 adults plus 5 days of park hoppers for $492/person (including tax). It's an early booking buy 2 nights get 2 nights free offer. The Disneyland hotel is more expensive but also available. You can book online and pay in full or call them and only put 15% down and then have up until early February to pay in full.

I'm sure our pals at Dreams Unlimited Travel could book this offer for you. I wanted to pass it along because I found the price so reasonable. In fact, single pricing is also available and you would shave off about $225.

Tom
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Great deal! It should be a good year to go being the 25th anniversary. Last year they had just finished refurbishing a couple of rides including Peter Pan's Flight which looked amazing. Big Thunder was under a massive refurb at the time, and I saw on Twitter recently they were starting to put up their 25th Silver decorations.
 
Oilheadbob2017 said:
Geez, just after I posted, I realized it might be good to introduce my wife and I to the group. We are Bob and Nancy Ryan. Recently moved to Florida in July of 2016. I retired from a major electric utility in Va. Managed to stay retired for a whole two weeks, back to work for Duke. My wife transferred to Orlando from Tyson's corner Va. She works for EY as an Executive Assistant.

We live in Groveland, Florida and so far have no regrets for moving south. So that is a little background on us, as I said earlier, looking forward to getting to know everyone else on this cruise.

Bob R.
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Hi Bob!

Looking forward to traveling with you and Nancy again!

Jason
 


DisneyKevin said:
Please help me welcome Doug to our cruise!
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Thanks Kevin! Now, if I could just figure out what side of the ship I will be on, I know my stateroom number, so I know what deck.... do they have a floor map of each deck available?
 


I would love to see the statue of David and the da Vinci last supper on this trip as well anyone know how to do that? I know one is in Florence and the other one is in the Milan...
 
Capwkidd said:
I would love to see the statue of David and the da Vinci last supper on this trip as well anyone know how to do that? I know one is in Florence and the other one is in the Milan...
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Those two cities are quite a bit north of the cruise departure point. We've been to Florence and its a beautiful city. Haven't been to Milan but understand its also very nice.

You could consider flying into Milan (the furtherest north) before the cruise, stay a couple of days, then take the train to Florence for another couple of days. After that take the train to Rome, or the port area, to catch the ship. Just keep in mind that you'll need to wrangle your luggage during this part.
 
I wonder if Dreams could setup a private AVD for us before the cruise... Hitting Milan and Florence... What do you all think?
 
Capwkidd said:
I wonder if Dreams could setup a private AVD for us before the cruise... Hitting Milan and Florence... What do you all think?
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Dreams Unlimited Travel (well...me) will not be setting top pre-tours.

Milan and Florence would be on your own.

Milan is 200 miles from Florence and Florence is 170 miles from the cruise port.

Viking offers a 3 night Tuscan pre-stay. The cost is $1399 per person based on double occupancy. It does not visit Milan.
 
Capwkidd said:
I wonder if Dreams could setup a private AVD for us before the cruise... Hitting Milan and Florence... What do you all think?
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I think you might have enjoyed a land-based ABD trip more than this cruise, doing one of the itineraries that includes Florence and then adding some Milan days on your own at the end or beginning.

I'm hoping you have realistic expectations for this trip- it's a cruise that's being booked through Dreams, not an event that Dreams is hosting.
 
OKW Lover said:
Those two cities are quite a bit north of the cruise departure point. We've been to Florence and its a beautiful city. Haven't been to Milan but understand its also very nice.

You could consider flying into Milan (the furtherest north) before the cruise, stay a couple of days, then take the train to Florence for another couple of days. After that take the train to Rome, or the port area, to catch the ship. Just keep in mind that you'll need to wrangle your luggage during this part.
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I agree with this.

Milan is a bit far from Rome to be worthwhile IMO. Milan was great for shopping and eating, but I enjoyed Rome and Florence etc more.
 
Capwkidd said:
I would love to see the statue of David and the da Vinci last supper on this trip as well anyone know how to do that? I know one is in Florence and the other one is in the Milan...
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I actually think that is achievable and actually reasonably simple. You are just adding in an extra bit of travel time - and you will need to be prepared to wrangle luggage - but probably no worse than any other pre trip scenario (although I find that provides inspiration not to overpack)

I think I said earlier I was thinking of flying in and out of MXP (Milan). While it isn't anywhere the boat is going it has the benefit of being an easy (direct) fast train to/from Rome, Venice and Florence - actually Milan is probably the easiest Italian city to get to from most of the rest of Europe.

You can have a look at train timetables and fares here http://www.trenitalia.com/tcom-en? Or check out http://seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Milan.htm#Milan-Italy for everything you could ever possibly ever want to know about catching a train in Italy (or anywhere else in the world in fact - it will even provide advice on getting to Europe by train from Asia - my advice, fly).

It's about a 3 hour trip from Milan to Rome, or from Florence it's a 1½ hour journey to Rome. It's 2½ hours from Venice to Milan.

Milan is a really well serviced hub airport with a good number of carriers flying in direct from the US/Europe/Asia.

From my side of the world I will fly Qantas/Emirates from here to Milan (interestingly the Dubai-Milan flight continues to New York for people looking for another option from NY), I'm thinking of spending a couple of days by the lake in Como, then catching the train down to Florence, then the train to Rome.

Then from Venice I will catch the train back to Milan for a couple of nights before flying home.

It's still a year away and that is all subject to change, but will try for a nice frequent flyer seat/suite so will probably book flights in the next month.

In most circumstances if paying cash I usually find that buying a return flight to a single destination is significantly cheaper than a open jaw (ie home-Rome; Venice-home) flight but YMMV and the pricing model for flights is just designed to be confusing anyway.

Just on the seeing of the last supper, I think Kevin and/or John mentioned in the Dreams podcast the other day that you need to book in advance - when we did it we worked with the hotel (the very very nice Park Hyatt) to arrange tickets.

I just went and found the emails - we asked the hotel concierge in February for tickets and they were 100% booked out for the days we were in Milan in May (In addition Museums in Milan were closed every Monday). We were only able to see it by booking into a city tour (which was a little bit weird but that's another story) which the hotel arranged for us.

If this is something you want to do (and I think it is a must if you are in Milan) my advice would be to book a hotel in Milan early and get the hotel concierge to do the work for you.

Matt
 
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This year March 24-31 cruise to the Caribbean out of Miami. Next year Italy cruise! I could get used to this upward trajectory in cruise itineraries!
 
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