huntersyaya

We did the Helvetia from Basel to Amsterdam May, 2013. It was our second year in a row to do a river cruise with Viking and we loved it! If you are staying in the "Aquarium level", the cabins are actually better than those on the Viking. They have a large window that you can actually see out of. They did serve lunch in the lounge BUT I do not remember anyone eating dinner in the lounge. We did not know one soul on the ship but by the end of our week, we couldn't wait to eat with our new found friends. With less than two hundred people on board, you will get to know an array of people and eating with others, will probably not be uncomfortable! Hope you have a great trip!

Read your insurance policy carefully. After missing 3 days precruise hotel in Copenhagen and a 10 day Baltic cruise when a freak hail storm closed our connection airport (Newark) in July 2009 we filed for payment. We had immediately contacted our travel insurance company when this occurred and they tried unsuccessfully to get us to Copenhagen ,however, several thousand flights had been cancelled and they could not get to this ship until three days after it would sail which would have caused us to miss our precruise hotel and the cruise. We were flown back to DFW. Continential airlines refused to reimburse us since this was weather related and at first the insurance company (Travelguard)did not want to either since this was a flight cancellation and not a delay. Luckily, there was a congress woman on our flight and there was a news story on TV about how we had been diverted to Washington Dules where we had sat on the ground for seven hours without food or water before flying back to Newark and Continential decided to pay. We had a great insurance rep and finally recovered most of our cruise, air, and hotel monies. I now read my policies very carefully the problem is that the lower and middle of the road policies have many loop holes and the top policies are very expensive $1150.00 or more for our next trip, but I guess that's just the cost of traveling. I really feel sorry for the OP. I think Viking could have saved a future customer by simply assisting him in booking another flight to the ship. Viking may not have been under any legal obligation to help, but its just good business and its the right thing to do.

Please keep in mind that we have only heard one side to this story. My gut tells me the original poster was as mad at himself (for not having travel insurance if in fact, he did not) and at the situation as he was at Viking....he obviously needed to vent.

We did the Budapest to Nuremberg Danube cruise in 2012 and the Basel to Amsterdam cruise in 2013 on the Rhine...both with Viking. The water levels cooperated and we had two fabulous trips. Not one complaint. That being said, if you rent and prepay for a condo at the beach and it rains the entire week you have booked, you will probably be disappointed. If you pay for a river cruise and the river is either too low or too high to travel...you will probably be disappointed. It's not the condo's fault if it rains and it is not Viking's fault if the boat can't make the trip on the river. To us, it was worth the risk. We traveled the last part of May both trips.

Let's not beat this poor guy while he is down.

 

This is horrible and Viking completely abandoned you. While this cluster is the fault of Canada Air, Viking was ultimately responsible for your travel.

 

I will never book anything with them and spread the word.

I would think you need to make sure of all the facts before you "spread the word"...there are many happy Viking customers out there and if you have never personally dealt with them, you really have only here say to spread. Just my thoughts.

My husband and I have booked this same cruise. We are really looking forward to it. As time gets closer, I am hoping some people will want to book some two-day tours with the private guides in St. Petersburg who get such good reviews on this site and others. We have done this on other cruises in Europe and have always had great results.

We will be embarking on our fifth Viking cruise in about two weeks (Portugal) and cannot say enough about the wonderful service we have enjoyed on evey trip! We have another booked on the Viking Star in 2015 and are thinking seriously about booking a trip this summer as well ... yes, we are hooked!

We have done the Danube and the Rhine with Viking and have been pleased with everything. We have booked the Viking Star fro Bergen to Stockholm 07/11/15-07/27/15. We are really looking forward to that trip! We are Pam and Hank and live just outside Memphis .

I have been looking at choice air and air france website. But if you look close at my dates the flights leaving rome with more connection time is early morning like 7am and 8am and not on air france they are on Italalia airline which I don't want. I want to fly air france. You don't think one hour in paris going back to the states is enough time? I don't have to go through customs until I get into the states so it just a connection.

We fly PE on Airfrance through CDG a lot.....The best thing is you get to board with First Class in a separate line so if you are running tight on time, you can get boarded quickly.

We took the train. It was so simple and FAST! (And we both had two pieces of luggage but no problems at all)

I feel the exact same way. Friends chose Viking as the first river cruise company we would use and 8 of us did the Danube together two years ago. I read too much information on Cruise Critic and was dreading our trip. I thought Viking must have been the most horrible choice we could have made! We went on a new longboat, the Odin, and it could not have been ANY better.....so much so that we went back and did the Rhine this year and we are already booked on the new ocean liner for 2015. We have found that the staff and the fellow passengers on both our river cruises have been outstanding. I don't doubt that most of the other lines AMA, Uniworld, Avalon....and the list goes on are all furnishing similar experiences and for whatever reasons, some people prefer one line over another. I just know that Viking has done a very good job on our two river cruises . So Bill's bride....hopefully we will bump into you and Bill on some river one day!

We stayed on the main deck....I would pick the cabin closest to the main stairs up to the reception area....It is just more convenient but really no big deal. We didn't hear a lot of engine noise or feel much vibration at all....If they rub up against a lock, and they most certainly will, everybody will feel that....but again it is no big deal. Have a great trip. BTW, the cabins on the main deck are actually a little larger than the ones with French balconies.

We used a driver named Pulai Alajos. I think he was the same price as a cab ( I know it was a set price that we agreed upon prior to using him) and we did not pay him until he got us to our hotel. He was waiting for us at baggage with our name on a sign. We liked him very much. pulai31@gmail We paid in Euros, I think but it may have been dollars. We had no Forints at the time.

We stayed at Hotel Schweizerhof. It was very nice and very close to the train station and the trams. You will have a free pass for the trams if you are staying in any hotel and there is also a free bus to the airport. We used it to get from the airport to the train station and then walked across the street to the hotel. It was so easy and nice. If you have time, we took a train one day to Lucerne and went up to Mt. Pilateus. The views were wonderful and it was very easy to do on our own. We took the gondolas up the mountain and the cog train down....the view of the lake and mountains coming down was breathtaking.

We have been on two river cruises with Viking and are doing the Star in 2015. The food has always been very good but this will be entirely different....4 times as many people and multiple venues. I will say that on the river cruises they NEVER quit pouring the wine!

I liked the Black Forest tour, too. The scenery was outstanding and I would have never gotten to see the rural areas were it not for this excursion. We stopped at a quaint town and saw the church there like id est did. We did a hike into the Black Forest and when we came out, there was a small orchestra playing in an outdoor pavillion and there were booths set up with local vendors selling wines, cheeses, etc. No pressure to buy anything but it was fun to see what the locals were making. To me, it was a great morning.

And I totally agree and am really getting a little frustrated by reading all of these complaints. We have had two wonderful, flawless river cruises with Viking the last two years....The Danube in 2012 and the Rhine in 2013. I would jump on the opportunity to go on a third cruise and especially at 50% off. River cruises can be interrrupted because of natural events which are totally beyond the control of any cruise line. The Viking I travelled with has always gone above and beyond making sure that my trip was a memorable one. No complaints from this happy traveller. I think anyone needs to understand that river levels can change, strikes can occur, and locks can become damaged. When they do all ships, on the river at that particular time, have to make adjustments and make them quickly. To think that there are hotels and restaurants just randomly placed along the European rivers to accomodate displaced river boat cruisers is niave. I can't imagine how hard it is to find alternate plans for 200 people at one time. I am very sorry you did not have the trip of your dreams....we just returned from a trip to the Gulf Coast and it rained one full day we were there. The water was brown with seaweed instead of the beautiful blue we are used to. We could have turned around and gone home but we had already paid a couple of thousand dollars for our place for the week and we would LOSE all of that money. Nobody offered me free cancellation and my money back. This is part of travel. And I know everyone has a right to voice their opinion but it is all getting a little old. Sorry.

We did a Danube cruise with Viking last year on a new longboat and then we did the Rhine with Viking this year on a slightly older boat. Both were excellent. We had friends in all levels of cabins so we got to see and compare. The windows in the lower level on the longboats are not as big as the windows in the lower level on the older ships. The french balcony rooms on the longboats were actually a little smaller that the lower level rooms. We would have been happy anywhere on the ship. We were hardly ever in our rooms. We did enjoy the Aquavit lounge for lunches outside. Hope you enjoy your trip as much as we have enjoyed ours the last two years. We mets lots of great people and really had a wonderful time. No complaints.

The first time we cruised with Viking another couple picked the trip and Viking. I had read a bunch of "stuff" on cruise critic and wondered if we had made the right choice. It turned out to be a great trip as did the one we took (again with Viking) this year. If you read enough on here you will read good and bad about every one of the river cruise companies....I think Viking gets more hits because it is the biggest so there are more people to be happy and more people to be mad. My experiences have just been good and I feel it is only fair to present both sides. We are actually booked on the new Viking Ocean Liner in 2015 to do Scandanavia and Russia. I am sure there will be some wrinkles during their first season having Ocean vessels but this was a trip we really wanted to do and they just happened to be in the right place at the right time. We wanted to see the Fjords and do the more typical Scandanavian cruise, too. Their itinerary fit the bill for us. Hope you have a great trip(s) next year!!!!

My husband and I have done two river cruises in the last two years with Viking. He and I are both professionals and are fairly discerning about hotels, tours, cruises, etc. We have not ONE complaint about Viking after having travelled with them . I am sorry that the poster had such a bad experience but things happen on the rivers and I think most of the companies have to scurry to make alternate arrangements for their customers when the rivers become impassable. The service the poster has described would be frustrating and unacceptable to me also but it is just not what I experienced at all. His description of his one week on the ship "World Class" was what we experienced the entire time on both of our recent river cruises. I appreciate his wanting to make fellow cruisers aware of what happened to him but let's not assume that one cannot have a "World Class" cruise with Viking.

Booked for July 11!

 

Margaret Beyer and Ralph Sager

Rockville, MD

Pam and Hank. Memphis Tn ...looking forward to it!

Lauri, we are on the same cruise as you! We did the Danube with Viking last year and the Rhine with them this year and loved both trips. This ship and the ports look great. Only 23 more months til we sail. We are Pam and Hank from Memphis.

We have done the Danube on a Viking longboat and the Rhine on the Viking Helvetia and had no problems with either one. They had brand new Mercedes buses following us up the Rhine this May to carry us wherever we needed to go for excursions off the ship....distances as short as 1 mile....they were there to get us up the side of the mountain. We have not done anyother lines so have nothing to compare but both my husband and I are professionals and not easily pleased....nor are we nitpickers....and we would not hesitate to recommend them, too. When the water levels make the rivers impassable, EVERYONE is unhappy and I would be, too but I would not blame the cruise line. I can't imagine trying to find lodging (probably 100 rooms) and places for people to eat at the very last minute in these small European towns. We probably all tend to like what we know.

We loved our on board experience with the Journey for three years. Sadly, from shore side behavior even prior to the "enhancements", last year was our final Azamara cruise. WE are very excited about Viking. So much so, that in anticipation of the ocean cruise, we may be taking a river cruise with Viking to wet our appetites.

We did the Danube last year with Viking and just got back from the Rhine this year with Viking. Have not gone with anyone else but have no complaints. They really treated us wonderfully and yes, we have booked the Star for 2015. They just make travel SO easy and we love meeting people on the smaller ships. By the end of the week, we felt like we had 200 new best friends.

We have cruised multiple times with Princess and twice with Celebrity. We preferrred Princess over Celebrity but that was mainly because of the food. We really liked the river cruises.

Hopefully, they will post port times soon. Port times are generally not posted on the river cruises I have been on because you are at the mercy of the locks a lot of the time, so a totally different thing.

Stockholm Sweden