steverhodes

My wife and I have taken 6 Viking cruises (5 river and 1 ocean). We are avid Viking voyagers. We love them.

Here is my pictorial website of all six of our Viking cruises (Grand European in July 2014, China in May 2015, Southern France in October 2015, Russia in July 2016, Portugal in September 2016 and Caribbean in November 2016) as well as two recent trips we did on our own to Britain in July 2015 and New Zealand in March 2016. Also on my site are links to my CruiseCritic reviews of the 6 cruises.

http://www.RhodesVacations.com

On most Viking trips, many people assume that I am the official Viking photographer since I am everywhere taking pictures. I am not. I am just a guest with photography as a hobby. I take 6,000+ pictures per trip but cull them down to about the best 600 for posting on my website.

If you have a chance to look at the site, I hope you enjoy it and hope it gets you eager for your next travel adventure.

My wife and I just finished a nice cruise on the Viking Alsvin from Amsterdam to Budapest.

 

Already our friends are asking would we recommend it. I answer them with a question.

 

Do you like cruises? If the answer is yes, then I tell that this could well be the best cruise they have ever been on since it is smaller, newer and the guests and staff as so super friendly.

 

However, if they don't like cruises, or, if they are like my wife and me, and have done lots of international travel but no cruises, I would recommend it as ONLY as a one time experience. Cruising is something we will not be doing again. We had a great time but we prefer to set our own pace and spend less time eating and on buses and more time seeing things.

 

The breakfasts and most of the lunches were great. The dinners were hit and miss with about half of the dishes being failed experiments.

 

We spent about 6 hours of every day eating and talking, which was fun, but would rather have been able to set our own pace and spend more time sightseeing. Also, about 2/3 of the time, we had to take a bus into the city so we spent a fair amount of time on or waiting for buses.

 

Still, we made great friendships on board and the staff was amazing.

 

But, as we look back on the cruise, all of the time on shore was way too hectic so we came back pretty exhausted. Also, except for Amsterdam (which we did completely on our own for 4 days), Vienna and the phenomenal evening lights when coming into Budapest, neither of us can remember much of anything about the other cites we saw. They are now just a blur.

 

Finally we got so tired of having to get up in time to make the many 8:15am bus calls. This was supposed to be a vacation and not a forced march.

A funny thing happened. We came to love river cruising. Once we got into it, we found that we really, really loved it. No kidding.

And, as I writing this, we have now taken 3 Viking Cruises, have a 4th booked and are looking at possibilities for our 5th. In fact, our Viking Cruise to China was the best trip of any type we've ever taken, and we've been on 39 different foreign vacation trips.

Your experience matches ours on the AMS to Budapest cruise. It really was luck of the draw with the guides. With some, I would wander around and turn my quietvox off. Some feel the need to give out every factoid possible, and never come up for air. And trying to point out every gray building that you are driving past on a bus @ 30 mph/ 50kph...that get's old.

 

Our best guide was in Bratslava. Some humor, quick history of the region and split w/ Czech republic, and a lot of how current life is, how earnings compare to Soviet Union times. Turns out she was an economist. Very interesting.

Our best guide was perhaps the most unlikely. In Regensburg we had a young American girl who moved there 4 years ago. She knew plenty of facts but she was the best of all in making the tour equal measures entertaining and informative.

That was not our experience at all.

I never counted but I think we had about 2 dozen people per group. What I do know is that with the quiet boxes they use for sound, if there had only been 2 people per group the experience would have been the same. We never wished we had fewer people in our group.

The main variable was the quality of the guide. We had a couple of super ones but the rest were adequate but no better. None were bad.

We researched extensively before we took our first river cruise as we had heard of the problems encountered in 2013 by many of the ships with the water levels. Many could not go through the locks or under the bridges.

 

We chose AMA Waterways because of their reputation and how they handled the situation described above. If a cruise line cares more about its bottom line than customer satisfaction, beware if there's a problem as no one will take care of it.

 

We ran into problems with a lock being broken in Budapest which tied up many ships for days. Our captain has contacts with the people who run the locks and had advance warning that maintenance was going to be done so we left Budapest a few hours early to get through before the locks closed down. Once closed, more problems were found and those locks did not open for days. Those on ships that got stuck saw Budapest in depth, but did not have a complete river cruise.

 

Also, AMA, as several people mentioned earlier, divides people into far smaller groups, usually no more than 15 and often as few as 6, to maintain the pace established for that group. We chose "Easy Walker" as that gave us enough time to take the pictures we wanted to without holding up the group. Rarely did we have to bus as we docked right in town and walked with our guides throughout the towns we visited.

 

We ran into people many days later in our cruise who had been stuck in Budapest, missed several points to "catch up" to the itinerary and had lost their docking space so they had to be bused to the towns, in some case, up to 1.5 hours. The whole purpose of taking a river cruise is to really visit the towns, on foot, and to spend as much time as you desire in each town.

 

We did miss one of the ports on our stop, Melk, as a very low bridge was ahead of us and the water was rising. Our captain took on extra water and fuel to lower the boat, took down the sun deck almost entirely and made it through with inches to spare. We were always kept informed of what was happening and why and agreed that our captain had made the right decisions to keep the cruise on track. Our biggest disappointment was not being able to visit Salzburg as we had planned, but given the situation and that we were told what was going on, cannot blame the captain or the cruise line for the decision made.

 

Again, research, go on the boards to see what people say about the various cruise lines, go on line and type in the name of the ship line and COMPLAINTS, and then go with your gut reaction to what is being said.

 

We are not employees nor in any way related to AMA Waterways, but felt our research paid off with a great river cruise: good food, wonderful company and terrific service. By the way, when we arrived home after staying for a few days in Prague, we had a postcard from our cruise director thanking us for traveling with AMA. Another reason to cruise with them again: the personal touch!

We traveled at a time of low water. We ran into people on other companies cruise ships who were forced to bussed down River to another boat but our Viking ship made ii fine. Very impressed

As I said in my original post, what we enjoyed hands-down the most were the people we met on the boat. Several people have now responded negatively about the seating arrangements.

A few groups on our ship came on board together, but mainly it was couples. We had a great time meeting people at dinner. We would simply go to a table not yet full and ask if we could join them. We met some many wonderful people this way. By the end of the cruise we probably had 10 different couples that would repeat a few meals with but mainly we tried to join tables of people we had not yet met. We always went with the round tables for 6 by the windows. Best views and it is easier to talk with them than the rectangular tables for 8 in the middle that we sat at once for the first meal.

Only a couple of times at breakfast did we pick an empty table since we were the first ones in.

We spent about 1.5 hours at breakfast, the same for lunch and 2 or more at dinner. Since we found this was the best part and since our fellow dinners were not leaving, we just kept talking with them.

Thank you for sharing your perspective. We love cruising, so I feel fairly confident we will enjoy our experience on our Viking cruise in December. As this is our first time on the Continent we need our hand held just a bit, so I like the included tours. However, in Nuremburg I have no desire to see the **** parade ground, so we will venture out on our own to see the train museum which I understand is pretty good.

Most of our friends are big cruise goers like you. We are the odd man out among them. We've been to Europe 22 times on our own , which is how we like traveling. We wanted to try cruising and we had a good time and are glad we did but have no plans to do it again.

Thank you for sharing your perspective. We love cruising, so I feel fairly confident we will enjoy our experience on our Viking cruise in December. As this is our first time on the Continent we need our hand held just a bit, so I like the included tours. However, in Nuremburg I have no desire to see the **** parade ground, so we will venture out on our own to see the train museum which I understand is pretty good.

We went to the train museum in our free time and loved it

Thanks for your summary--interesting insights, indeed.

 

I'm wondering, from others who've "done" river cruising, about what percentage of folks bypass a significant number of the daily "included" tours? Do some people bypass them all, in your experience?

 

And, if you opted out of the tour, do many ports offer opportunities for catching a ride "into town" that's not with the Viking tour bus (metro, bus, taxi)?

 

I'd rather thought that, in many ports, there was "enough" to see and do just walking off the ship--but perhaps I'm really wrong....If I am, about how many of the Amsterdam to Budapest (and reverse) ports are "self-sufficient" such that a Viking passenger can enjoy it without joining in a Viking tour?

On our ship, the oldest folks (close to 90), of which there weren't many, skipped the tours and stayed on the ship. Other than that group, 95% went on the tours I would guess. You could have Viking arrange a taxi to do your own thing, and a couple of people did that.

My wife and I just finished a nice cruise on the Viking Alsvin from Amsterdam to Budapest.

Already our friends are asking would we recommend it. I answer them with a question.

Do you like cruises? If the answer is yes, then I tell that this could well be the best cruise they have ever been on since it is smaller, newer and the guests and staff as so super friendly.

However, if they don't like cruises, or, if they are like my wife and me, and have done lots of international travel but no cruises, I would recommend it as ONLY as a one time experience. Cruising is something we will not be doing again. We had a great time but we prefer to set our own pace and spend less time eating and on buses and more time seeing things.

The breakfasts and most of the lunches were great. The dinners were hit and miss with about half of the dishes being failed experiments.

We spent about 6 hours of every day eating and talking, which was fun, but would rather have been able to set our own pace and spend more time sightseeing. Also, about 2/3 of the time, we had to take a bus into the city so we spent a fair amount of time on or waiting for buses.

Still, we made great friendships on board and the staff was amazing.

But, as we look back on the cruise, all of the time on shore was way too hectic so we came back pretty exhausted. Also, except for Amsterdam (which we did completely on our own for 4 days), Vienna and the phenomenal evening lights when coming into Budapest, neither of us can remember much of anything about the other cites we saw. They are now just a blur.

Finally we got so tired of having to get up in time to make the many 8:15am bus calls. This was supposed to be a vacation and not a forced march.