Just returned from our first ever Viking river cruise and had a great time. But don’t think I will choose Viking for any future river cruises for the following reasons:
Food was fine but I have to admit that I expected it to be better given the price
Most disappointing, the quality of the guides for the tours varied greatly. One of the tours that we paid extra for had an exceptional guide. The other tour guides varied from not great to ok to pretty good. On two of the tours, we switched our channels to listen in on the Viking group next to us because that guide was so much better than ours. But we could only do that for a small portion of the excursion when the two groups happened to be next to each other. This is one area where I would have expected Viking to do better.
We did two. The first the Rhine, I thought the food was good and the guides we had were excellent or good.
The second, Cities of Light, I didn’t think the food was as good, some of the menus were similar to the first but I think the chef maybe wasn’t as good.
Guides were generally good but some were just ok. Viking uses guides from the cities they visit and I’m sure they vary. We had a guide in Cochem who was so good, she was a Canadian married to a German.
For our next cruise we want to try an ocean cruise
If you were disappointed with any of your guides on Viking excursions be sure to fill out the review after each one. Be as honest as possible. Viking does not want blah guides. They will react if there are a number of negative reviews on a guide. They can only know if you tell them. Actually, fill out all of the reviews. It only takes a couple of minutes.
We are looking at a River cruise for the first time since my 24yo son wants to really see budapest, and we would be traveling with my 85yo mother. So the questions I have are, as as party of 3 with one young male , how would that work cost wise? Would it make sense to try to find a “4th”. Also will a 24 yo (who is ASD and can relate to adults, but…) be the only 20 something? We are comparing Viking to AMA, Avalon .
Also ideally this would be May, which might still be cold, but should be ok. i have been toying with a mid December one (last minute), but wonder if that will be too cold and dark.
We went with Ama with a land start in Prague and ended in Budapest. We stayed on a few extra days in Budapest and took a train back to Vienna and stayed a few days and flew home. We could have added on the land portion of Budapest through Ama but did it on our own.
We had 7 young adults in our family group and there was another family with 2 college students. The river cruise was great for a multi generational trip.The crew was all young Eastern European and our kids enjoyed getting to know them. Ama has bikes on every boat which is nice for a younger person.
We have friends who have done many Viking river cruises and they have commented that the food was hit and miss depending on the chef. Have another friend who tried Viking twice and switched to Uniworld as he felt the food was better.
I booked a July trip last week. Danube Waltz with a friend from my teaching days and her mother. I’m going as a single, so I got the cheapest cabin since I had to pay double. I’m excited to have some friends to travel with. Our friendship is solid enough that we can share time or spin off on our own with no hurt feelings and her mom is delightful. I think it will be so much more enjoyable to have friends to be at my table for meals and not have to do the new acquaintance chitchat all the time. I’m looking forward to meeting new people and seeing new things, but I know from years of being on my own at professional conferences that not having anyone you know on a trip can be a little exhausting. Would love to hear from anyone who has done a Danube cruise as some of the stops overlap. Ours goes from Budapest through Vienna and ends at Passau.
We’re pretty sure we’re going to do a Globus escorted tour of New Zealand then take a couple of days in Sydney on our own on the way home. I wanted to go to the Great Barrier Reef but adding that in skyrocketed cost, added destinations that weren’t on our wish list, plus we likely would have been there during the rainy/stinger season. We want to see Sydney, have to connect through there on the way back anyway, and can use HHonors points and get a free hotel stay.
Now I just have to get husband to commit so that at least we can put down a deposit.
We just did a Viking Ocean cruise in Italy. Full capacity is a little over 900 guests. It never felt super crowded, the lines at meals were never long, and you could generally get a seat or a spot on the deck wherever you wanted.
Except for one, that had a bit of challenge with English, the tour guides were generally good to great. We did a mix of the included tours (free) and then paid for a few.
The ship was beautiful and the staff very nice. Food was generally good, especially in the speciality restaurants although even the buffet had interesting choices. Not sure I am a cruise convert however. It was great to only unpack once, to have all of the ship (including a very nice spa) for our use, have all meals available, and be treated exceptionally well. However, having to be back on the ship by around 4 to 4:30 felt early and there was not a lot to do at night (games, reading, hanging out). Another down side is price. We did a week on our own prior to the cruise and it was slightly more than half the cost of the cruise. We were lucky that the trains worked well, although a strike was set for the evening of the day we took the train which would have caused a major problem.
We did not use Viking for the flights as we have a lot of miles on a particular airline. We were able to get non-stop flight while our friends had one stop each going home (booked with Viking). Not sure if you can pay more for a non-stop.
We did the Grand European (in the opposite direction) but it was five years ago. At Passau we did a Salzburg day trip. At Melk we did a winery tour. Vienna was lovely. We chose to see a Mozart and Strauss concert and the Schonbrunn Palace and then had a bit of a walkaround and saw and went up into the belfry of St. Stephen’s. Budapest is beautiful and it was our last stop. On the Buda side is Castle Hill and the Matthias Church. On the Pest side, we walked up to another cathedral and I think it was another St. Stephen’s, LOL, and also saw The Dohány Street Synagogue, largest synagogue in Europe. The city is so very pretty and magical at night by the river.
After absolutely loving our 2 Viking river cruises, we’re doing Alaska with Viking Ocean next year. We’ll probably do another river cruise at some point,as we purchased vouchers after the last river cruise (you pay $200 pp, and get $400 towards a future cruise, and they don’t expire).
This is my trip in just under 1 year from now - Amsterdam to Budapeste with a precruise in Amsterdam and a post cruise in Prague. Getting excited every time I read more folks reviews!
We did Amsterdam in the golden age excursion through Viking. We throughly enjoyed it, our guide was really good. If it interests you, I recommend a having a guided tour of the museums that you want to visit. And make sure to time getting your tickets for the Anne Frank house. They are the hardest tickets to get. The Van Gogh museum needs advanced purchased tickets as they were sold out when we went.
From an Amsterdam visitor FB group I knew that for Anne Frank tickets go Fast! Got up in the middle of the night to book. From Google -
“ Tickets for the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam become available for purchase on the Anne Frank House website every Tuesday at 10 AM CEST for a visit six weeks later. For example, if you want to visit on March 21, tickets will go on sale on February 7. If there are no tickets available for a specific date, the museum is sold out and there is no waiting list”
We booked with the intro info session, harder to get. Either way, I suggest watching “A Small Light” streaming series.
We booked 9am tickets for Rijksmuseum (HUGE, did not have tour guide but appreciated having the audio/video guide). Next day we had 9am tickets for Van Gogh. Later in the trip in Florence we had tourguides for museums (partly to get skip the line benefit), and definitely that can be helpful for getting the most out of museum experience.
Processed my payment for July cruise from Budapest to Passau today. Maybe not the route I would have picked, but I am tagging along with a friend & her mom and this was their choice. So glad to have this bucket list trip to look forward to in 2025 as I am approaching next year with lots of trepidation.
I’ve learned a fair amount here and from a Danube Facebook group. Most of the current FB discussion is revolving around Christmas markets and staying warm, but I am going to be looking for tips on surviving travel during the warmest time of the year!
My Viking River Cruise is in October 25 but had to pay 16 months in advance! Crazy when you think how much interest you could be making on that money that they are now making! Hope you come back and update us…I’m very excited and planning another trip now to Italy, I think maybe on Windstar from Barcelona to Venice and hits Croatia on the upstream from the bottom of Italy.
