jrkstl

("Are ya'll brothers? "Ah no, we are married"......"oh"...)

Ugh! Get that all of the time, but oddly not on our cruise last year :)

Jeff

I am in agreement about aquarium class...that is what we initially booked (and paid for) but due to shuffling of ships, we ended up with an upgrade to the balcony....and I wasn't going to turn it down!

Very nice! And of course I wouldn't turn that down either! Maybe we'll get lucky one day :D

Jeff

Hi Clay,

Really enjoyed reading your blog!

My partner and I really never had the desire to do a cruise, but then Viking commercials started to appear, and, well, we fell in love with the idea of a European river cruise. Once I saw the clean and contemporary interiors of the Viking Longships, I knew that it was for us :) We took our first cruise (of any kind) last year on the Danube with Viking, and enjoyed very much the entire experience!

What made this a better value for us was that we decided to do the main level stateroom (aquarium class, if you will), and took advantage of Viking's ridiculously cheap air fare specials. While not the cheapest trip by any means, it became a true option when you factored in the air fare deal and the fact that the trip was mostly all-inclusive. Also? We'll never pay the premium to upgrade the room since we really only slept there. For the "low end," these rooms are very nicely equipped and we never felt like we were missing anything.

We liked our Viking experience so much that we leave in 18 days for cruise #2 :D

id4elizabeth, oh well, I'm sure that you'll have a wonderful trip anyway :) Will have to follow your blog, as the Passage to Eastern Europe is on my radar as a possible trip. ENJOY!!

Greetings!

Unless there is an optional excursion that you feel is a must, I would wait until you were on the cruise to see how you felt. During our Danube cruise, there were seasonal optional excursions offered, but this was before they started using the MyVikingJourney.com website so none were booked in advance.

We are cruising again with Viking through Bordeaux in a few weeks, and we absolutely wanted to do the Camus Cognac tasting/blending tour so to be safe, we went ahead and booked it. There is another optional tour that we are potentially interested in, but we'll wait to see how we feel once on the cruise.

Jeff

Aside from walking to a subway, is there anything of interest within nearby walking distance of the boat - cafes? shopping? Is it easy to get a taxi from/to the boat?

We walked to The Prater and it was an easy mile-ish walk. Not much to see or do during the walk, but the mini-mart with the good price on Mozart chocolates was on the way :) There wasn't much to really see or do in the immediate docking area as it seemed to be mostly offices and residential. I would imagine taxis would be a breeze, but I'd check with the concierge, etc. for that. ENJOY!

id4elizabeth,

Please do! I'm hopeful that our Bordeaux cruise will be accompanied with the l'Occitane as well! It's a silly thing, but I now associate the Lemon Verbena fragrance with our previous Viking cruise.

Hi CharlieDog4,

We spent a day with Viking in Vienna during our "Romantic Danube" cruise in August of 2015, and I thought that I'd provide some details:

The morning excursion was after breakfast (around 9AM maybe?) and they offered us two different "included" tours - one was the regular panoramic tour mentioned in the itinerary, and we took the tour that focused more on the local Art Nouveau highlights (with a visit to the Belvedere Museum to see Gustav Klimt, etc.). Both tours lasted 3 ish hours, and we ended up back to the ship for lunch. A few of the people in our group were dropped off in the main part of Vienna so that they could stay in town. As stated prior, the subway is a short walk from the docking area, and obtained good reviews from other cruisers for ease of use, etc. We did not do the Schoenbrunn Palace optional tour as I wanted to spend the afternoon riding scary rides at The Prater :D

Regarding the Mozart concert - if I'm remembering correctly, they had an early dinner sitting for those attending the concert so that they could eat, then leave for the show.

Vienna was an incredible town, and we plan to go back very soon. Be sure to stock up on the Mozart chocolate marzipan candies that seem to be everywhere! I purchased a bag for about 3.50 Euro, and now regret that I didn't get more as they are much more $ here :(

Jeff

What's bothering me is that I swear I saw this on one of the sites a few days ago, but it's gone now. Maybe it was never really there.

Hi zitsky,

You might be thinking about how Viking describes what's included with the add on trips? For example, the 3 day Prague cruise extension that we took last year stated "3 nights at the Prague Hilton (or similar)" We actually stayed at the Sheraton in New Town, but we were quite happy with it.

Just a thought...

Jeff

We too have only been on one river cruise (Romantic Danube with Viking) and this took place in August of last year. We were also in aquarium class, which meant that the few times we rafted, it was a non-issue. Also wanted to point out that while we were parked frequently in some busy river ports (Vienna, Budapest, etc.) it never once felt over crowded. Can't wait for our next river cruise this June! :D

 

But gee, I sure don't like to hear about the lack of responsiveness from Viking.

 

Just thought that I'd add to the conversation to say that we're getting ready to take our second Viking cruise in June, and for both we used Viking air. The specials on RT airfare were fantastic, and made the trips much more affordable. Also? No issues with flight schedules, etc., and when I spoke with them before our trip last year, they were wonderful.

Carry on...

Jeff

Anyone else experienced this? Should I be trying to set up our own tour "just in case" Viking doesn't offer one?

 

TIA

Is there a tour of Bratislava mentioned in your basic itinerary? If so, I would imagine that you'll be fine. If our past Viking river cruise is any indication, everyone is selected at random, and is given a group number, etc. and then splits apart for your included tour.

Of course, now that they've added these as a selection (more or less) on the MyVikingJourney.com page, I'm not certain how this process will differ.

Jeff

I too wonder how they plan to handle the included excursions, since they want you to select these as well. Will these now be limited? What if you neglect to sign up, will you be told "no?"

Hopefully in the end, it won't be that big of a deal, but I would be really angry to find out if the optional tour that I really wanted to do was sold out months in advance.

Jeff

I think there might be some very unhappy people boarding Viking river boats this year.

I agree. This could be a big mess. I'm just glad that I paid attention to my email.

We are traveling on the Viking Bordeaux cruise in June, and also received the email regarding the MyVikingJourney.com website. I think that it's a good tool so that you can have a better look at the itinerary, etc. but there are definitely some limitations as well.

We have signed up and paid for the Camus Cognac optional tour via the website, as this is the one tour that we for sure wanted to do. I did this now, so that once onboard we didn't have to worry about it selling out. It's surprising to me to hear that some tours on your trip are already sold out...

I am in agreement with you, however that it seems more fair of them to do as they used to do, which is simply signing up once on the ship. On our Romantic Danube cruise last year, there were additional optional tours that we didn't know about, since some of them must be seasonal, etc.

The other oddity of the new MyVikingJournal.com website is that they ask you to sign up for the included tours as well. This seems very strange to me, and I'm not quite sure of the logic. I also noticed that two included tours on the Bordeaux cruise have a time conflict, so I was only able to sign us up for one of them. Hmmm...

I can see the value of the easy-to-access place to help you with trip details, planning, etc., but I wonder if this will cause more problems than it's worth?

Greetings!

We are booked on The Forseti for the June 4 Bordeaux cruise, and cannot wait! It's been fun and interesting reading the whole thread, and only helps the build anticipation :)

This will be our second cruise, and our second with Viking. We did the Romantic Danube itinerary last August (with the Prague extension) and loved it so much that less than a month after coming home we booked this one!

Thanks to all of the prior posters on this thread! Most helpful information!

Jeff