Dr Millmoss

We are having a very unhappy time with excursion bookings on our first Viking ocean cruise. We booked several excursions only to find that they were removed because someone else apparently got to them before we paid. This is done without any warning or explanation, and of course those excursions are now fully booked and unavailable. The root of this problem is Viking does not allow the creation of a online credit card account (as other cruise lines do) so you have to pay a la carte for each excursion, inputting your credit card information in full each time, which is a tremendous nuisance. It also led to us thinking we'd pay for all of our excursions once we'd made all of our decisions so that we wouldn't have to do this over and over, only to find that we lost out on pretty much everything we wanted to do. This system needs to be fixed by Viking generally, and our situation needs to be addressed specifically.

I understand your concern, and how as an experienced ocean cruise you thought you knew what you were doing. But river cruising and ocean cruising only have one thing in common: your hotel floats.

 

Perhaps you can try to understand the frustration of the posters who have responded to your thread: we are here all the time, with almost 175,000 posts on over 12,000 threads [and half a dozen Stickies maintained by yours truly to help newbie river cruisers]. Apparently you read none of this before booking your cruise, and now come to complain. So we feel like, "What are we, chopped liver?"

Try to understand the frustration I am experiencing from being talked down to, more than once. It is not helpful to be told that I should have known better and the cruise line bears no responsibility to its customers, which appears to be your point. I am taking my time here as well. It was not difficult to show that others with a lot of experience with river cruises share the very same concerns I have expressed here. Perhaps you should not treat their opinions like chopped liver.

The writer's point is the cruise companies know a lot more than they tell. Some did a bit of telling when he asked. Others (Viking conspicuously not included) did supply some general information about the percentage of river cruises that have experienced itinerary alterations due to river levels. The writer also mentions that cruise line typically offer some sort of compensation for disrupted itineraries. Viking said nothing about compensation in their email to us.

I am not making it sound that way at all. I am only reporting what Viking is telling us.

Please read the articles I linked. This travel writer expresses my feelings exactly. Apparently I am far from the only one to have these concerns about what the river cruise companies tell their customers.

Sorry for the multiple posts but I wanted to share these two articles from Travel Weekly. The express the same concerns based on extensive experience with river cruising that I am offering based on just our first experience.

http://www.travelweekly.com/Richard-Turen/River-cruisers-need-facts

http://www.travelweekly.com/Richard-Turen/Fact-checking-river-cruises

Note in the second article the response from Viking.

We did the Elbe in September 2016. Although it was a bad year for the Elbe, we were blessed and impacted minimally. We were notified at least 5 days ahead that our cruise would be impacted. Given a choice to cancel or get $1000 for future cruise.

We only lost 2 half day sailing, one at beginning of trip and other at the end.

Booked the trip for itinerary and was aware of low water problems when I booked. That is the chance you take when river cruising.

I just noticed this post. Viking has made us no offers to cancel or any credit towards a future cruise. Perhaps they have done this in the past, but they are not doing it now.

Dr. Millmoss,

 

Thank you for your detailed reply in post #63. You raise an interesting point: "They could have disclosed in the probabilities of the cruise not proceeding as advertised when we booked, so that we could decide whether we wanted to take the risk with this cruise or book another."

 

How did you find out about the cruise and how did you book? I am interested as I - apart from living sort of with high and low water levels close to "my" river - read about the details of possible mishaps on my cruise on the pages at the back of the catalogue before I booked. I just read the terms and conditions and it was clear to me what the company was feeling responsible for and what not. Just to remind you, I booked with a German company. I am only now thinking that many people actually do not book having had a detailed catalogue in their hands. Perhaps I am one of the few who actually turn lots of pages, I love catalogues. :)

 

notamermaid

We got most of our information directly from Viking online. The reservations were made through a local travel agent many months ago. We had originally considered taking a Danube cruise she was leading herself, but it booked up before we could decide. We tend to research climate conditions and the itinerary independently. We liked this itinerary and late August seemed like a good time to travel to this part of the world, after the peak summer travel season. As first time river cruisers it never occurred to us to be concerned about water levels in the river.

All cruise lines list similar caveats in their terms and conditions. Essentially they absolve themselves from any failure to reach a port, and so on. As I said we've been on plenty of big ship cruises and know and understand this well. The thrust of some of the responses to my concerns about how Viking has handled this summer of poor levels on the Elbe (never mind, the way they advertised the cruise) seems to be that not being more experienced with river cruises, we got what we deserved. I don't see you as saying that (danke!) but others are, more or less directly.

Sadly, this seems to be Viking's position on the matter, in effect. I suppose they have the right to sell a cruise that might not float a single meter on a river, and make us pay just the same. But then we have the right to never do business with them again.

If Viking could have offered you "an alternative booking" it would have to be on a different river as Elbe levels couldn't be guaranteed or predicted for any alternative date.

That, of course, would change your entire trip, including your pre and post cruise stays in Prague and Berlin - in other words an entirely different vacation. Were you really ready for that? Presumably Viking would cover your airline changes?

We obviously aren't expecting any guarantees. As I've said several times, the Elbe has been a problem for months now, so this is not an issue that just cropped up yesterday, it was only yesterday that Viking opted to inform us. Yes, I would have considered an entirely different trip, had I known and been provided with that option, even at a higher cost. What we were not ready for was what has apparently happened. We booked our flights though Viking, so yes, they could have accommodated us with that as well, again with the understanding that the cost might be higher. Instead they offered us absolutely nothing but the news that our cruise may be ruined, three days before we were set to leave.

I do feel bad about the difficulties on your upcoming cruise but I do have 2 questions

1 In your opinion what should have Viking done to make this acceptable to you

2 If Viking had informed you 2 or 3 weeks earlier - which many here pointed out is TOTALLY impossible as water levels cannot be predicted that far ahead - what would you ACTUALLY do? Not what you could have done theoretically but what would you actually do. Cancel the cruise?

I have this cruise boooked for Sept '18 and will have to face the same potential problems with water levels.

I believe I already answered both of these questions in previous posts. To make the main point again, water level has been a problem on the Elbe all summer, so this is not something that just happened. If Viking had warned us a few weeks ago of the possibility that the low river levels experienced all summer on the Elbe could continue, and they'd offered us an alternative booking, we very likely would have taken it, probably even at a higher cost.

Welcome to the joys of river cruising :)

 

There is no perfect solution, absent a genuine working crystal ball.

 

A good TA and plenty of research can help you minimize water level issues, but never eliminate them.

I don't think we're being unreasonable, having cruised many times before and being aware of the impacts of weather conditions, so a perfect solution isn't what we expect. This one is far from perfect, and in fact it is difficult to think of a single positive in the way Viking has handled it thus far.

Our travel agent is very good and responsive, but she hasn't been on this particular cruise herself.

Thanks for the replies and good wishes.

I can think of any number of ways Viking could be handling this situation better. They know the historical conditions on the Elbe and perhaps should be offering Elbe cruises only in the months when the river conditions are likely to be sufficient. Apparently spring is best on this river. So perhaps they should not offer mid-or-late summer cruises, if they are often interrupted. They could have disclosed in the probabilities of the cruise not proceeding as advertised when we booked, so that we could decide whether we wanted to take the risk with this cruise or book another. No doubt they are perfectly aware of those numbers, they just don't tell their customers. Also, the Elbe has been a problem all summer. So they could have offered us an alternative cruise, perhaps weeks ago, when it was apparent that low water was a continuing issue this year. They could have also have skipped the abrupt email that tells us essentially nothing but that our cruise may be ruined.

When this email arrived I called our travel agent. Not a lot she can do but commiserate. We do have cruise insurance that may cover cancellation for any reason, but we are also traveling with another couple, so this is not really a good option even if we were able to take it at this very, very late date. It is also not at all easy for us to find two weeks when we can get away. Just a bad situation altogether made worse I think by Viking not being as upfront or as informative as they might be. They may well believe that giving their customers better information is bad for business but my message to them is this way is even worse for business.

I don't know if you had done any research on the Elbe before you booked this cruise but the Elbe is horrible for

low water. You take your chances when you book this type of cruise.

A little, perhaps not enough. We picked the itinerary for its proximity at beginning and end to Prague and Berlin. We understand the risk inherent in any cruise, having missed ports on large ship cruises due to sea conditions. Some of that is unavoidable, but nobody should be selling cruises that are routinely subject to being turned into bus tours and then just pointing at the small print and telling you "too bad." I mean, I don't know why they even sent out the email since there's nothing we can do about it whatsoever, except turn the last few days of preparation for the trip into a misery. I can't think of a single good thing about the way Viking has handled this. Not one.

My feeling is Viking chooses to run cruises on this river, which has been marginal at best all summer, not just this week. To find out only a few days before we are due to leave that our ship might be a bus is beyond disappointing. If they'd offered us an alternative weeks ago we might have taken it. Sure they have our money now, and the small print gives them the right to keep it but I can't see them getting any of ours again.

We've just been informed that our Elbe cruise that begins in Decin on Aug 27 may fall victim to low river levels. Since we are adding on days at the start, this means that we will not know whether our trip is a cruise or a bus tour until we are already in Prague. It appears that the Elbe has been marginal for sailing all summer, but Viking did not see fit to supply us with any warnings or options until it was far too late to make any changes. No matter how this turns out, I think this will be both the first and last time we use Viking.

Reviving this thread because we were just informed that our 27 Aug sailing from Decin to Wittenberg may be impacted by low water on the Elbe. Viking is providing a very broad menu of what may be required but it looks like a similar scenario to what others experienced earlier this year. They are not talking about outright cancellation but reserving the right to convert the entire cruise into a bus tour. This is our first river cruise and suffice to say we are horrified finding this out just three days before we get on the airplane. We also have add-on days in both Prague and Berlin and so will probably not know whether we will cruise the Elbe at all until we are in Prague. I don't know exactly what we should have expected in terms of forewarning, but this was certainly not it.

So the poster calling it princess@sea is exactly right!

 

And, you're right, that's a joke, not an app. The android version is actually an

app.

What they call it is kind of confusing. The icon includes the title "Princess@Sea" under the Princess logo, but the name of the "app" is "Messenger." The simplest explanation for this disparity is the onboard system is called Princess@Sea but the purpose of the app is/was to push message notifications (which does not work).

Why the iOS app was constructed in this lame way is beyond me. I haven't done any programming in years, but I know that iOS apps can be created with HTML, so I believe the app could be set up as a wrapper for the HTML being served by the ship's intranet.

I am not an iFan, but apple has much more stringent requirements

for getting something into the iTunes store, that the android play store.

 

It seems like that's sort of good for users.

 

If princess can't make an app that works, that's certainly on princess,

not apple.

The biggest issue is that Messenger isn't actually an app, it simply redirects to your browser, which then loads the ship's intranet URL. On our June cruise on the Royal, this was royal.princess.com (IIRC). Since the "app" did nothing else, presumably you could simply type the URL into your browser and get the same results. The only app-like function was supposed to be push notifications of messages, which I can attest, simply doesn't work, at least not on the iOS version. Perhaps someone who's tried the Android version can report on whether it worked for them.

Oddly, Princess is still marketing this product on their web site, even though since the end of June, it is no longer available for download. I wonder how Princess is explaining this to customers who ask about it.

Incidentally, Apple does not remove apps from the store abruptly and without notice. Developers are notified of any problems and provided with an opportunity to conform to the guidelines.

Princess@sea Messenger is not in the Apple store I guess Apple pulled for one reason or another.

I am so done with Apple products seems They just can't get anything right anymore.

Extremely unlikely. The most reasonable explanation for why it is not available now is because it does not actually work. Princess is the company that did not get it right.

We were on the Royal June 14-26. In our experience the app wasn't totally useless, but it was not very useful, either. It also does not work as advertised.

First, the app really isn't really an app; it simply redirects to your web browser and the ship's intranet. From there you can view shipboard events and other features, such as checking your stateroom account. Fine as far as it goes, but we found the events listings to be quite inconsistent. Sometimes events just disappeared, and not because they'd already happened. The most useful feature, especially early on in the cruise, was "map it," which shows the deck plan zoomed to the event location.

Second, Messenger setup was awkward, to say the least. It did not, as another poster suggested, automatically connect occupants of the same stateroom. In fact, if you follow the onscreen instructions to connect to another passenger, it doesn't work at all. I had to ask the tech support guy in the internet cafe show me how to make this work and he walked me though the setup. This involved typing in a passenger code number that you have to discover somehow (I don't recall how precisely, but it required a couple of taps). After I got it set up, it still did not push notifications to our phones, so any thought of actually using it was abandoned.

Third, it theoretically provides access to your paid onboard internet account. This sounds useful, but be warned, the login you created to use Princess@Sea will be different than the one you created to log into your internet account. If you know this ahead of time you could make them the same, I suppose, but you will still need to type them in separately each time. Not very well thought out.

Fourth, the app forgets your login every time your device disconnects from the ship's intranet. So that means you will be logging in again every port day, assuming you take your phone with you. It could remember your password, it just doesn't have that feature. Annoying.

As others have noted, this "app" is now no longer available for downloading at the Apple iTunes store. I can only hope this signals Princess's understanding that it's pretty much a complete failure in its present form.

I second this. Does anyone know if the messenger app is for the Ruby yet? All I could find was that it would be coming in the following months per the princess website but no indication of when that is.

According to the iTunes store, it works currently on the Regal, Royal, Diamond and Star.

I recently emailed Princess Customer Relations about the inconsistent promotion on Princess ships of their wine packages and the complete lack of promoting it anywhere on their website & wanted to share their input.

Thanks for looking into this and sharing the results. I suspect Princess buys wine in massive quantities, but the timing is based on the bids they get from distributors. When they lay in a good supply at prices favorable to them, they promote consumption. Otherwise not so much. The AIB package is obviously a lot more profitable for them than these wine packages. We like a glass of wine or maybe two with dinner and a very occasional cocktail. The AIB is obviously not for us (six-plus drinks a day? Yikes!). Whomever it is for... I hope they don't have the stateroom next to ours!

Unfortunately it isn't anywhere on their website & I do not understand the lack of promotion for the wine package. :(

 

Some ships have been offering the wine packages at tables set up around the ship during embarkation (like those selling drink packages), some have it in a pamphlet on the dining room table but on most ships I've had to ask about it (and sometimes been told incorrectly that it wasn't available :eek:). The prices I posted were from my wine package card & were still valid as of April on the Regal and they have not changed during the 3 times we've enjoyed our wine packages. :D

I can only guess at what the message is supposed to be on this from Princess, though I suspect this is something they like to have the waitstaff offer based perhaps on how well laid-in they are with wine on any particular voyage.

Absolutely!

 

You can even get an full bottle from any dining room to take with you to enjoy anywhere else onboard including in your cabin. :)

Great, and thanks for the answer!

I wonder, where did you get your price list? I don't see where Princess publishes this information anywhere.

We've never purchased the wine plan but as we're going to be on the Royal for 12 days it could be worth the cost this time around especially given all the at-sea days on this cruise. I know unfinished bottles can be stored for you in the dining room but I wonder if they can also be taken back to your stateroom.

Any more recent and/or successful experiences using Princess Messenger on board? We are cruising on the Royal next month, which should be fully outfitted with this technology.