Complaint Review: Viking River Cruises

I am a repeat customer to Viking River Cruises.  However, based on my recent Viking Danube Waltz cruise from Aug 5-12, I will from now on, highly recommend ABV (anyone but Viking).   Evidently, many Viking cruises this summer are affected by low water which means long bus trips instead of cruising and hotel accommodations in many places.   This is NOT my issue with Viking, although they could have told us sooner than by the email received late evening before travel.  My issue is poor customer service, 4 nights in substandard hotel accommodations,  poor food choices in hotels, non-working toilets and limited food offerings on the ship, missed ports of call, and no responses from Viking in spite of numerous emails. 

Viking customer service was non-existent during our travel to our embarkation point, Budapest.   For our party of 3, 2 were elderly and paid for business class Viking travel service.  Once in Europe, we had 2 plane cancellations, one in Munich and one in Warsaw where we were diverted.   Out of all the numbers and emails Viking gave us, including our ship, NO ONE ANSWERED.   I had to personally arrange for travel changes.  Viking numbers were all U.S.,  only manned during Pacific Time!   Once in Budapest, late on the night of Day 1, with all of our bags lost somewhere in transit, there was no Viking representative to help us.  

Our hotel accommodations in Budapest (Corinthia Hotel) was too far away from the tourist area and the Danube river to walk.  No shuttle service was offered.    We found out later, we were overflow, as most other Viking Legend passengers were in Viking’s base of operations, the Intercontinental, right on the river in the tourist area.  Instead of good Viking ship meals, we were fed in a public tourist restaurant for lunch and our hotel for dinner.  Both meals offered 1 choice and they were the same (chicken breast with mashed potatoes).   

We spent 3 nights on our ship, and except for a 6 hour cruise in the middle of the night between 9 PM and 3AM from Bratislava (embarkation point) and Vienna, we were docked between ships in Vienna.   We never cruised AT ALL on the Danube in the daylight.  

Due to an electrical generator issue,  the kitchen could not offer menu choices at breakfast and limited offerings for meals.  Toilets didn’t  flush frequently, and we had to traipse over to sister ships to use theirs.  We were bused hours over autobahns to get to our included tours.   We were stuck an entire morning on the boat without being able to leave because they thought they would fix it at any moment.    We missed Linz, an entire port of call.   Instead, we were told to pack and we spent another 2 nights of our 7 night trip, bused 3 hours to our end point to a last minute hotel 30 miles away from Passau. 

Our room was over 90 degrees F, with no AC, no fan and one of two windows bolted shut.   We never slept for the 2 nights we were there.  We asked for another room immediately, both at reception and with our Viking reps.   No other rooms were available.  

The last night, a note was slipped under our door giving us the standard low water offer, 25% off a future cruise along with a 25% refund off of the cruise portion.   I have written 6 times to TellUs@Viking.com with 3 responses promising to contact me when I returned home.   It has been 2 weeks.   

Please don’t waste your valuable vacation time or spend your money with Viking!