Don & Kully's World Cruise on Viking Neptune

This post is directed at those of you planning for a world cruise in the future. Viking provides a service for obtaining Visa’s through a company call GenVisa. GenVisa is located in Washington DC and provides expert Visa processing service. We received a packet from them in July 2023 with all of the forms required by the handful of countries that require a Visa, for us it was seven or eight countries. For the sake of this post the exact number really isn’t important as it will likely be a little bit different next year, just like the number of countries and specific instructions we receive were different than they were for the 2022-2023 World Cruise. The process wasn’t overly complicated, we simply filled out the forms and returned them to GenVisa and about six weeks later our completed Visas were mailed back to us.

One change occurred in the middle of the Visa process that did cause problems for some, and is the basis of this post, in August or September of last year Australia stopped allowing third party companies to apply for Visas. All applications had to be made by the individual applicants electronically through the Australian Department of Home Affairs, meaning the responsibility for getting the Visa fell the individual traveler and not GenVisa. Although, GenVisa provided pretty explicit instructions, yet some people struggled with the process.

Once onboard and somewhere around New Zealand we started hearing rumors there were a number of passengers who had not completed the Australian Visa Process and were going to have to leave the ship prior to entering Australian waters. That sounded extreme and we thought maybe it was one of those crazy shipboard rumors, but we kept hearing it. Turns out it wasn’t a rumor at all. I don’t know the total number, or the specific details of why they didn’t have a visa, but I did confirm with the Assistant Hotel Manager that there were a number of guests who had not received the appropriate Visa and yes, they did have to leave the ship in New Zealand and could rejoin in Indonesia approximately three weeks later.

I know, you’re thinking how could that happen? Didn’t Viking know? etc. I don’t know the answer, my point in posting the information is to let future cruisers know that it is imperative that all of your Visas are processed prior to boarding the ship. According to Viking it is the passenger’s responsibility to insure they have all required travel documents. The passengers that were forced to leave the ship while we were in Australian waters had to pay all associated expenses for hotels, meals and flights while off the ship.