Good news from Viking River Cruises

[brichar499]

We just received an email from Viking that our Sept 27, 2021 ten day Paris to the Swiss Alps on the Viking Hild will operate as planned. This is the first communication from the line since February. Hopefully, the so-called delta variant won't change the plans yet again.

[dogs4fun]

40 minutes ago, brichar499 said:

We just received an email from Viking that our Sept 27, 2021 ten day Paris to the Swiss Alps on the Viking Hild will operate as planned.

Good news - hope you have a wonderful cruise. Please report back after your cruise.

[GasPowered]

Good to hear some cruising is still on schedule (for now)!  

 

Unfortunately our Viking Rhine trip scheduled for Sept 16, 2021 from Amsterdam to Basel was involuntarily canceled/moved by Viking just 3 days ago to October 2021.  We declined their new date and have rebooked for March 31, 2022.  In doing so our party of 8 has now shrunk to just 4.  Dang Covid strikes again - put me in the bucket as ready for this to be over!    

[goldwingers]

1 hour ago, GasPowered said:

Good to hear some cruising is still on schedule (for now)!  

 

Unfortunately our Viking Rhine trip scheduled for Sept 16, 2021 from Amsterdam to Basel was involuntarily canceled/moved by Viking just 3 days ago to October 2021.  We declined their new date and have rebooked for March 31, 2022.  In doing so our party of 8 has now shrunk to just 4.  Dang Covid strikes again - put me in the bucket as ready for this to be over!    

Same thing happened to us!  Got an email Thurs at 3:15 stating our Rhine cruise was a go as scheduled - but the header of the email referenced a different ship and one day earlier - 9/3 instead of 9/4.  At 7:00 got a new email apologizing for the erroneous first email and telling us we had been rebooked - without our knowledge or permission - onto the earlier departure...  Long story, but we have accepted the change since this was the third attempt at this.... but all our excursions we had booked months ago were gone and we were only able to rebook 2 of them as one was not offered and one was sold out.  also our hotel rooms had to be changed and that cost a bunch more money....  Now with the tragedy of the flooding over there, I'm thinking this is just not meant to be!

[GasPowered]

Goldwingers - we had the same issue - radio silence followed by 'The Big Change'.  We actually had 5 rooms books on this cruise and are now seeking refunds on 3 of them.  And like you, we had additional travel booked on both sides of the river cruise - a few nights in Amsterdam for our entire group and following the float up stream (feels like we are without a paddle) nights booked in multiple cities including Lyon, London, Florence, Montalcino, and Rome.  We have a lot of rebooking to do  😞 

 

Additionally, Viking has dropped our ship board credits ($375 per person x 10).  Now we have to have another conversation about this too...the logs on the fire are burning bright at the moment 🤬 

[goldwingers]

14 hours ago, GasPowered said:

Goldwingers - we had the same issue - radio silence followed by 'The Big Change'.  We actually had 5 rooms books on this cruise and are now seeking refunds on 3 of them.  And like you, we had additional travel booked on both sides of the river cruise - a few nights in Amsterdam for our entire group and following the float up stream (feels like we are without a paddle) nights booked in multiple cities including Lyon, London, Florence, Montalcino, and Rome.  We have a lot of rebooking to do  😞 

 

Additionally, Viking has dropped our ship board credits ($375 per person x 10).  Now we have to have another conversation about this too...the logs on the fire are burning bright at the moment 🤬 

Yes, agree - this has been very frustrating.  Up until now we were pleased with the way Viking had handled a bad situation, but this was uncalled for.  This was our third attempt at this cruise - now the fourth.  We are to leave in less than 40 days and still have no air itinerary (we paid for the Viking Plus).  I'm surprised they dropped your credits - they gave us each an additional $250 pp to spend onboard which is a joke as there is nothing to spend it on as we had already prepaid for our tips & excursions and we don't drink.  Our wonderful TA was able to upgrade the room from a FB to a verandah to use some of the extra credit we had accumulated, but we were just as happy with the FB, so no big deal there.  Just hoping we will be able to sightsee on our own at the ports where we now have no excursions or we will be spending a lot of time reading on that lovely verandah!

[mnjack]

Just checking in to see what was going on. Not terribly encouraging!  We booked a Lyon to Marseille cruise originally for March 2020. We cancelled moments before Viking did and rebooked for early April 2021.  This cruise was also cancelled and we have not yet rebooked - still sitting on our voucher(s). I don't want to have to rebook again so waiting for a bit more clarity on the Covid situation in Europe, and it hasn't happened yet!