Amazing Viking Service

[cheeruson]

On a previous cruise (river, not ocean) we missed our transatlantic flight because we listened to a travel agent wanna-be.  The best the airline could do was get us to Prague 30 hours late, so we completely missed our first days in Prague.  Viking assured us, no worries, they would meet us at the airport and get us to the ship, already at its first stop. Sure enough, Viking agents at the exit from baggage claim, our names on a sign, and a private car to get us to the ship.  At the first sign of the car nearing the dock, a gang of officers and crew descended on the car and scooped up all the luggage, including our carryons.  The last office, looking a little forlorn with nothing to carry, looked over at me, and offered me his arm.  My DH later said he expected me to have been scooped up, too.

[deec]

On 8/27/2022 at 5:54 AM, CDNPolar said:

On Viking Star in December 2022, we were so pleased to see 6 crew members that we knew from a pre-pandemic cruise, in a totally different part of the world.

 

Katerina who was the host at The Restaurant instantly recognized us and called us by name, and each night we were quickly seated in the same section - often the same table - with the same serving team that we adored.   She remembered us from over 2 years prior.

 

I prefer "Club Soda" to the Viking sparkling water, and on the second night with the same serving team, the Club Soda just arrived as we sat down.  We often asked for additional butter, and that just was on the table with the bread when it arrived.  This serving team really took care of us and the leader of this team was Jacobs.

 

Overall, we knew crew in various parts of the ship and this made us feel more than welcome as they all went out of their way to recognize us.

 

On our most recent Homelands cruise, the bartender in the Living Room - I Made - greeted us by name on the second day.  This was very special and obvious to us as he would call out to us even if we were just walking by.  

 

I could go on for hours about the over-the-top service that we have grown to love on Viking...

 

Thank you for starting this discussion!

We were on the Jupiter with I Made this Spring.....40 days of great cocktails.....he explained his were the Best because they were made with "love"

 

[THR]

Some amazing stories. I can’t wait for our first cruise (ever, and on Viking) next year (June, Into the Midnight Sun). 

[Clay Clayton]

44 minutes ago, THR said:

Some amazing stories. I can’t wait for our first cruise (ever, and on Viking) next year (June, Into the Midnight Sun). 

Welcome to Viking. If you haven’t already discovered it, you might want to check out the thread I’ve linked below.  It has great advice and tips to make the most of your cruise:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/2416372-tips-for-new-viking-ocean-cruisers/page/62/#comment-62141739

[dottythecat]

16 hours ago, deec said:

We were on the Jupiter with I Made this Spring.....40 days of great cocktails.....he explained his were the Best because they were made with "love"

 

I Made and Von were two of the Living room bartenders on Homelands this spring. They were such a delight. We had our regular seats every "happy hour" for two weeks.

 

[Peregrina651]

3 hours ago, THR said:

Some amazing stories. I can’t wait for our first cruise (ever, and on Viking) next year (June, Into the Midnight Sun). 

 

Welcome!  You have made a good choice.  Midnight Sun was our first Viking Oceans in 2016. Norway is beautiful in a rough and rugged kind of way. The cities have plenty to keep you busy if you want explore on your own and Viking does its best to get you out into the countryside (which IMHO is what this itinerary is all about).

 

If you like viewing other people's travel pictures, here's a link to my photo/travel blog for Midnight Sun.

[linda_22003]

On 8/27/2022 at 4:32 PM, Neptune2022 said:

I am LOVING these stories, keep them coming everyone!   We are soooo looking forward to our first cruise ever in December - 117 days, but who’s counting!  

We are doing our first on Viking in December, as well!  Really looking forward to it after covid years onshore!

[johneb2]

I can add we had an entire crew that was fantastic in every aspect.  Unfortunately, it was on the infamous March 2019 in search of the Northern Lights cruise with the evacuation of half the passengers.  Nevertheless, it was almost universally agreed the crew went above and beyond in making a serious situation more tolerable.

Edited August 30, 2022 by johneb2

[PasadenaDave]

Virtually no wait leaving or arriving at the gangway at all ports.  Excellent service for early morning coffee and sweets in the Living Room.

We are joining HAL next week Quebec City to Boston, chosen for itinerary.  I am already doing the Viking comparison in my mind.  Lowered expectations generally is a good thing.

[The Shrike]

Not a VOC, but during our first VRC, Romantic Danube.  The first day was of course quite hectic with everyone getting settled, exploring the ship, etc.  I went to the semi-crowded bar twice in the evening for a glass of Scotch and was served by the same bartender both times.

 

The next evening I went down to the almost empty bar for a pre-dinner drink.  The bartender looked at me for about 1.5 seconds and said "Hello, Mr. James, we've just brought up a couple of bottles of 15 year-old Scotch, would you like me to pour you one?"

[Twitchly]

12 hours ago, The Shrike said:

Not a VOC, but during our first VRC, Romantic Danube.  The first day was of course quite hectic with everyone getting settled, exploring the ship, etc.  I went to the semi-crowded bar twice in the evening for a glass of Scotch and was served by the same bartender both times.

 

The next evening I went down to the almost empty bar for a pre-dinner drink.  The bartender looked at me for about 1.5 seconds and said "Hello, Mr. James, we've just brought up a couple of bottles of 15 year-old Scotch, would you like me to pour you one?"

How do they do this?? Viking must make it part of the job requirement to have a memory like an elephant. I couldn’t do it, that’s for sure. Just ask my husband, Whatshisname.

[Clay Clayton]

37 minutes ago, Twitchly said:

How do they do this?? Viking must make it part of the job requirement to have a memory like an elephant. I couldn’t do it, that’s for sure. Just ask my husband, Whatshisname.

I asked during a conversation with the Hotel Manager how they train their folks to remember all the information and he never really gave me an answer.  I feel sure there must be some system they use. 

[Heidi13]

56 minutes ago, Clay Clayton said:

I asked during a conversation with the Hotel Manager how they train their folks to remember all the information and he never really gave me an answer.  I feel sure there must be some system they use. 

 

During the 2019/20 WC, they only had about 57 pax doing the entire 245-day cruise. Each of their photos were posted in the crew spaces and all crew were expected to know them and treat them as V-VIP's.

 

Every Viking pax is considered a VIP, so these were very, very important!!!

[Clay Clayton]

50 minutes ago, Heidi13 said:

 

During the 2019/20 WC, they only had about 57 pax doing the entire 245-day cruise. Each of their photos were posted in the crew spaces and all crew were expected to know them and treat them as V-VIP's.

 

Every Viking pax is considered a VIP, so these were very, very important!!!

57 I can get but 930???

[Peregrina651]

The wait-staff on many cruise lines have amazing memories.

 

We were sitting at high tea (on another cruise line) when the waiter said to us, "Do you remember me? Pistachio ice cream?"  It was Alexander (from Macedonia) who had been our waiter on a cruise two or three years earlier. Of course we remembered him. Pistachio ice cream was a big deal for one of the guys at our table; he asked every night but it was at the back of the freezer and not due to be served until the following week. It was a big thing at our dinner table for most of the cruise.

[Heidi13]

In addition to the wait-staff, we have found situations where the housekeeping have similar excellent memories.

 

One of our last Princess cruises, the Accommodation Supervisor stopped by the cabin to address an issue and said he had been our Cabin Steward a number of years previously. He also recalled our son was a Bridge Officer on the same ship.

[Mich3554]

14 hours ago, Clay Clayton said:

57 I can get but 930???

And for us, 3 months apart!

[THR]

Hopefully we can keep this on topic to Viking experiences and not other cruise lines 

[Moonlion]

We’ve experienced many examples of outstanding service on Viking river or ocean cruises.  Here are two that stand out for us.

 

On our Viking River cruise in 2019 (Cities of Lights, Prague to Paris), we used Viking Air and my luggage did not arrive upon landing in Prague.  The Cruise Director personally took it upon himself to call the airline to track my bag and arrange for it to be delivered to our next port. It took 3 days for the airline to track down my bag and deliver it to the ship, and the Cruise Director stayed on top of it the entire time.  Fortunately, I brought a change of clothes in my carryon bag.  The Cruise Director worked with the Guest Services Manager to have my clothes laundered each night (returned early the next morning clean and ironed), and locate other essential travel items I needed.  I was very impressed!

 

On the first night of our Northern Lights cruise (January 2022), we dined at the Restaurant and were assigned a table by the window at the back, portside of the Restaurant.  Our server that night, Junar, and his assistant, Martin, were so friendly, engaging, and personable (not to mention providing outstanding service) that we asked to sit at the same table or in their section the rest of the cruise.  By the third night or so, we began to consider Junar and Martin our new “best friends” on the cruise, and had a lot of fun laughing and joking around with them. We learned about their home countries, travels and professional goals (Martin was studying to be a sommelier), and we shared with them stories about our lives and family in the US. We enjoyed our dinners in the Restaurant so much that we cancelled several nights at the Specialty Restaurants. At the end of the cruise, Junar and Martin gave us a signed package that included the menus of all the nights we dined at the Restaurant, highlighting what we ordered each night...their memory was much better than ours!

[longterm]

On one of the nights of our Italy, Adriatic & the Mediterranean cruise in March, we were the first couple to be seated in The Restaurant. As we were escorted to our table, we walked through a phalanx of friendly wait staff, many of whom greeted us by name as we walked by. A little thing, but it felt great; we had previously enjoyed a table at the very aft corner of the restaurant, and without asking we were brought to our favorite table, where our now-familiar servers greeted us by name. 

 

[Donna Claire]

On a post trip when it was really hot, the tour director bribed some gardeners to open a couple of gates so that we wouldn't have to walk as far. We loved that!

[OneSixtyToOne]

The day before embarking I discovered that I forgot to print a required voucher for a third party tour at our destination. There was a long wait for access to the public computers. I explained the situation to a crew member and they had me email it to their personal email, printed it on their office printer, then pulled out their phone and deleted it as I watched. I was extremely grateful.

[Selion]

All these amazing onboard experience stories with Viking are wonderful.  Let me throw couple wrenches in this thread: amazing shore-side customer service.

 

Earlier this week we decided to cancel our Rhine River cruise under RFG and book a Viking Ocean cruise departing the same week in this November, because the promo is pretty good and we don't need to ever worry about ocean levels dropping.  Anyhow.  RFG vouchers may take up to 2 weeks to be issued and our concern was that we may miss the promo window.  So I started a chat session on Viking's website.  Emilia, the Viking chat rep, took my chat session.

 

I explained to her what we wanted to do and expressed our concerns that we may not receive the vouchers before the promo expiring.  She patiently waited for me to type everything out, and offered to manually confirm the booking (full payment would be due within 24 hours since it was 68 days out) with a typical Viking deposit (so that we get the promo), keep an eye on our RFG vouchers, apply them to the booking when they are issued, and refund my deposit for the new booking in full.  That was this Monday.

 

Earlier today I received an email from Emilia, stating she had applied our RFG vouchers and our new booking is in "final" status, and she had processed the refund of the deposits made on Monday.  She took care of everything!  I didn't have to follow up with her, or anyone at Viking, since our last and only contact.  For me that's a breath of fresh air.  So many other companies and cruise lines require constant follow ups just to receive what they promised they'd provide.

 

And one more interaction with a shore-side staff:  When I still had the river cruise booking, there was a Christmas market excursion at Strasbourg.  By the time we decided to book that excursion, it was sold out.  I called Viking, and the rep said she'd keep an eye out on that excursion if there were any cancellations and would contact me when spots opened up.  A while past and I got an email from her saying there were 2 spots opened up on that excursion.  I immediately went into MVJ and booked that excursion, and thanked her for the update.  Don't know how they keep track of excursion spots, but I'm both amazed and grateful that they can.

 

Viking isn't perfect, but for us they are pretty amazing.  😊

[Jchivers]

Our only previous Viking cruise was a "Welcome Back" last July, out of Malta.  Due to our own damn fault we missed our connection in Frankfurt, and the next flight to Valletta was not for another 8 hours.  Fortunately, the ship was not scheduled to sail until the next day.  We were unable to reach Viking at any of their 800-numbers (boo!) as it wasn't business hours in the US...but fortunately #2 we had friends on the cruise, who were already on board.

 

So we texted the friends and asked them if they could *please* let somebody know that we would be arriving around midnight, and please don't pull up the gangway!!

 

We arrived in Valletta and worked our way through customs and baggage claim (our luggage had been going around and around on the carousel for 8 hours), anxious about how we would tell a Maltese cab driver where we wanted to go: when a miracle occurred.  A limo driver was waiting for us (holding up a sign with my last name on it) who whisked us off to the port.  There on the pier was a ship's officer (finance manager, I believe) and an assistant who greeted us warmly and checked us in.  In our room there was cake and champagne waiting for us.

 

Kudos, Viking!

 

Edited September 16, 2022 by Jchivers

[Peregrina651]

3 hours ago, Jchivers said:

A limo driver was waiting for us (holding up a sign with my last name on it) who whisked us off to the port.  There on the pier was a ship's officer (finance manager, I believe) and an assistant who greeted us warmly and checked us in.  In our room there was cake and champagne waiting for us.

 

I've been following all of the stories and, hands down,  yours is the winner. Definitely, kudos to Viking for going the extra miles.

 

3 hours ago, Jchivers said:

We were unable to reach Viking at any of their 800-numbers (boo!) as it wasn't business hours in the US..

 

A heads up for all readers. Make sure to add the ship's e-mail address and the the ship's phone number to your phone's contact list before you leave home (along with the 800 numbers). You never know when you will need to contact the ship.