VikingReviews of viking.com

For the last 4 years i have been praising Viking, not any more after some recent bad experiences. 1) Had to cancel a cruise 28 days prior to departure, no refund or credit for future cruise, checked a week before "cruise sold out", they got 2 fares for the one room. 2) A friend, a Vietnam war vetran had to have an emergency lower leg amputation 15 days prior to cruise date, no fefund, no credit for future, not able to transfer to another name, also checked prior to departure "sold out", no consideration for being a war vet. Viking have a dreadful attitude to giving credits/refunds, DONT EVER SAIL WITH THEM

My wife and I are currently traveling on a 14 day “ France’s finest” Viking cruise. So far It has not been the luxury that they claim in their commercials. Between the cruise, the airline tickets and other variable costs the cruise has cost us approximately $30,000. We expected the heights of luxury. We are seasoned cruisers with 15 cruises under our belt with ocean cruising. The food is less than gourmet and borders on unacceptable at times. The Wi-Fi aboard the ship takes forever to send a picture. I have screen capture proof that shows that it took over 30 minutes to send a picture to my daughter. Extremely underpowered! C’mon Viking, update your hardware! This 14 day cruise includes two different ships and in the first week on the Viking Buri ship we did not have hot water for showers and everyone on board had to take cold showers for almost the whole week. That issue was not fixed until the last day. Terrible! Employees are somewhat arrogant when confronted with any issues. During one of the discussions in the lounge area, the captain of the ship used an Asian accent to make a joke, and I thought it was unacceptable considering there were Asian customers on board. There are three meals per day and nothing in between so if you’re used to ocean, cruising and having the ability to grab a snack, forget it! One day when we were seated to have lunch I could not find anything on the menu that appealed to me so I settled for a hamburger! Nowhere in the description of the hamburger does it say that it is drenched with onion that has been soaked to some sort of gravy. I do not like onions. So I sent it back and they brought me another one. By that time everyone else, including my wife, were almost done with their lunch, so I just did not eat it. I did not think I would have to settle for a hamburger on our “luxury” cruise. After that, it seems like I was in trouble and they sent the concierge over to talk to me (in front of everyone) I felt like I was being treated like a child. The arrogance! Never again. My wife reminded me that one night there was an entrée on the dinner menu that she was very excited about trying. Dinner was served from 7 to 9. We arrived at 7:25 and most of the entrées were already unavailable and we had to settle for items that we had no interest in. There were less than 100 people on the boat, so it seems this was very poor planning. She was very let down. My wife has been an internal medicine physician for 26 years and this was a trip that was on her bucket list. I will say that the rooms were cleaned very well on a daily basis, and I gave five stars to the maid service. other than that I can’t really find many good things to say about Viking cruise line. My wife and I plan on taking at least one cruise per year including a world cruise in our retirement and it is very unlikely that we will consider Viking cruise lines when planning those trips.

Flight delay to NY so missed connecting flight to Amsterdam, and absolutely no communication from Viking to rearrange flights. Found out originally from the gate agent that they had rebooked us. We had upgraded to premium economy and it was not available on the multiple stop flight they had rebooked us on. Called Viking to complain and they said there was no other option. Received notice from Delta several hours later that we had been rebooked on a flight out of New York and again absolutely no communication from Viking about this, and we were still in Cincinnati so of course we were unable to make that connection. We ended up canceling. Horrible horrible experience! Never received a call, text,email from Viking about any of this. Just awful! Absolutely no communication.

Viking Cruises is a company which doesn't care about it's employees, in fact is breaking the human rights. The employees will never tell guests the truth. We all have to act happy. I won't go into details but they break the working contracts and the F&B/Hotel director is the one man ship, meaning he is the GOD which dictates and all of us are the sheep which can be slaughter anytime and their home office don't care, don't investigate and simply just follow this F&B Directors's orders with closed eyes. The memory of this job will haunt me forever. Shame on you Viking River Cruises. P.S. I worked on ocean cruise ships for 8.5 years, so I KNOW THE DIFFERENCE. There you have rights, same as the captain, not like here. SHAME SHAME SHAME VIKING RIVER CRUISES for the way you treat your employees...

Absolutely fantastic in every respect. I cannot find a fault. We enjoyed the superb Amsterdam to Budapest River cruise. There was one ship change due to low water but that really was not a problem. The beauty of this particular cruise line is that they have so many ships on the Rhine and Danube they can easily facilitate a ship change if the water is too high or too low. Not every river cruise line can do this, which is why we chose Viking. We did a post cruise extension at the Hilton hotel in Budapest which is excellent, in the centre of the castle district and convenient for all the sites and nice restaurants and coffee shops. We considered it all excellent value for money and will most certainly be taking another Viking cruise. The attention to detail, cleanliness, excellent quality of food, friendly, attentive staff, thoughtful additional extras provided and inclusive daily tours and wine, beer and soft drinks also included with meals really was all fantastic. The majority of passengers are American 60+, we found that a very pleasant change as they were all very friendly and chatty. I would highly recommend you take the ‘pre-cruise’ extension stay as you really don’t want to get caught up in any delays before your cruise. Even coming from England, we suffered a six hour airport delay. Read all the information provided in case the Viking rep is not there to meet you on arrival at the airport. There is a procedure if the rep isn’t there, to go to the ‘meeting place’ which in our case, was at Amsterdam airport, wait for half an hour to see if the rep arrives and then take a taxi to either your cruise ship or hotel you’re staying in. Viking will reimburse you at the ship’s reception. You should also ring the Viking emergency helpline which was swiftly answered in our case by Lily, who told us exactly what to do. Viking do need to tighten up the meet and greet on arrival at Amsterdam airport, many of the passengers are 60+ and not being met when you are expecting to be is a bit alarming, even for us! I would also suggest that you pack half and half in your suitcases and take an emergency set of clothes plus all medicines in your hand luggage as one guest’s suitcases did not arrive for the entire cruise. The outside restaurant on the ship the Aquavit is popular, but you will find in the course of a two week cruise ample opportunity to eat there for lunch or supper. The air conditioning may give you cruise cough so take some lozenges. We set off 9th Sept 2023. *The cruise director Alec was phenomenal by the way. Money well spent.

Third time cruise with Viking and hands down the worst travel experience we've ever encountered, particularly for the first class price we paid. Ship generators failed, stuck in port, no A/C in many rooms and common spaces, the repairs were never fully completed aside form maneuvering after 36hrs of delay. Long bus rides and abbreviated stops due to the issue with poor to no A/C on buses. The ship even left and forgot about passengers out on a VIKING excursion at one point. This was an all inclusive purchase through Viking even with First Class airfare. Even the seat with United Airlines Polaris failed on the return 13hr trip from Amsterdam to San Francisco. Viking has refused to offer an apology, take ownership and make it right aside from offering a blanket email to passengers for $500 off a future cruise. When you pay for a meal and they miss the mark, do you get a voucher to come back or do they take care of you there and then AND offer for you to come back to make amends? Not VIKING, they take your $17000 blame anyone else or don't engage you at all and offer you a pittance of a voucher that has a 1 year shelf life for an overpriced fare to begin with. United says Viking has to address the refund, VIKING says UNITED...everything was paid through Viking using their services and staff but they refuse to take any ownership and engage or to even apologize. It's quite telling of a companies ethos and management when they are challenged. Every company looks good when things are right, it's how you respond during adversity and when you fail is what shows your true ethos. Viking is a failure and poor value and experience on every mark.

Buyer Beware if Considering a Viking Cruise! I had the same experience as others who have written reviews about Viking. We booked a river cruise for 2024 and were told that the cost was all inclusive and we were getting additional benefits for airfare, on board amenities, etc, but it is all untrue. When I realized this, I cancelled our trip and we lost $2,000 deposit, even though the trip is over 9 months from now. I spoke to a senior member of their sales team asking if she could at least give me 50% of the deposit back. She was dismissive and rude and essentially told me "this happens all the time." Don't be a sucker like I was and make sure you read the fine print on the contract (because of course they won't tell you) and always put charges on your credit card so you have a least some level of recourse.

I left a review some time ago based on our experience during covid which wasn’t great. Had to move booking three times. Unhelpful staff on the phone. We seriously considered just letting them keep our deposit as we had no faith in travelling with them after reading awful reviews BUT we decided to go and have just returned from our river cruise Avignon to Lyon on board Viking Heimdal and thoroughly enjoyed the experience. We arrived too late for the first included tour (again due to admin not advising us our flight arrived too late ) but we went on all the other included tours during our week. Lots of interesting places to see. Wonderful organisation by all the ship staff. Waiters were excellent. I’m gluten free and I was immediately located by Filipe the maitre’d on the Heimdal. Every time I entered the dining room he came to explain what I could eat, what they could adapt etc. nothing was too much trouble. All the other waiting staff were courteous and efficient and very friendly. Our room on the second deck was very small but extremely clean and we did have everything we needed.( I knew that river cruise ships have smaller rooms.). We had good quality wine with lunch and dinner, cocktails in the lounge regularly during briefings as well as canapés. Really we were very well taken care of. The organisation of trips and arrivals and departures was excellent. I have had better food on sea cruises but overall the standard was good. Our fellow passengers were very amiable and most were seasoned Viking customers. So, I will draw a line under our treatment by booking staff during covid and will probably book Viking again! Maybe not too far in advance as the hefty up front deposit isn’t easily reimbursed under any circumstances. That would still be my hesitation about trusting Viking.