Yorkshireoldlad

With restaurants it may say “Servicio incluido”. If so service is included and no further tip is necessary. If it doesn’t say that, then some Spaniards will leave a tip, others will not. It’s entirely optional and you won’t be chased by the waiter if you don’t. 5% to 10% is fairly normal. For cafes, leave the change up to the next euro, or a euro, if you want.

taxis generally no tip, although if they help you with your luggage a couple of euros is good.

General point is tipping is more optional and relaxed and based on individuals perception of standard of service and whether they habitually tip or not. Spaniards get a good minimum wage, so service staff don’t depend on tips in the way a lot of US staff do.

We had the same problem last Saturday. Looked to see bookings opened at 8.00pm GMT. (GMT is standard UK winter time). Only problem is that 8.00pm GMT is actually 9.00pm BST (British Summer Time), so when I went on at 8.10pm by my watch - 50 minutes before 8.00pm GMT) booking was already opened. Viking clearly hadn’t sorted out UK times as compared to whichever US timezone they calculate from.

still got the main excursion we wanted and “booked” it. Payment transferred to credit card authorisation app on my phone which I approved and went back to MVJ. It said payment approved and to close the window. When I did it then said payment failed. Did this again on both different platform (Windows v Mac) and different credit card. Eventually excursion sold out. Tried another one next morning and same happened. phoned Viking and they booked me the reserve excursion over phone. No explanation as to what happened or apology for their timing error. They had same timing error on the restaurant bookings the following week.

they have now updated availability and suggested that 1 space has opened up on the original excursion and did we want to change 1 person to that. I guess some couples might want to split excursions, but not us.

There are a lot of negative reviews about Viking River cruises on other sites as well - Trustpilot for example. What is very clear is that the average rating on all sites for Viking has fallen significantly since Covid. Some of that is down to the voucher  and vaccination requirement issues, but there are a lot more general poor reviews, often re situations where Viking could have been much more helpful, without really costing themselves any money. 

We went on the Grand European tour last autumn and counted ourselves as very lucky that we got through the Rhine Gorge on the ship - sailings before and a week later couldn’t get through and bussing was necessary. However, we had to do one ship change at Regensburg and that meant we ended on a ship with noticeably poorer service and crew experience than the original. If we had wanted to, we could have added to the poor reviews.
The problem Viking ( and other lines) have is that increasingly water levels are too high or too low to sail the entire route. This means a lot of cruises have an element of bussing. Add that to the crowded nature of the moorings where ships are tied up side by side and so you cannot use a balcony. You can see why passengers get upset. No cruise line wants to deter passengers, but the more this goes on and they don’t point out how often it happens, the more they will have bad press. This will put off those who research the cruises from booking and mean unsatisfied clients from those who do go.

Often they do not know until the cruise is underway whether they will get through. A couple of days rain can change the water level quickly. Once you are on board, however, they could make a much better job of explaining the situation to passengers and telling them what is likely to happen. We knew as we looked at the Rhine water levels on a website that showed forecast base on existing and likely rainfall. 

one other point - on the Grand European Cruise, the ship sails for around 4 to 5 days with the sun deck out of use - the bridges on the canal are so low even the ships bridge has to be on scissors and lowered for each bridge to get under the parapet. We knew that, but a lot of passengers didn’t and were upset about it. It’s a fact of that waterway and really should be made clear on the publicity and schedule for the cruise - but Viking hope people will simply accept it.

11 hours ago, AnotherWanderer said:

Yes all. That industrial dock is our current location, only now a third ship has pulled along side us so no one will have a view of anything but another stateroom. Lesson there is maybe don’t pay extra for a balcony. 
To be clear I am NOT upset with Viking because we cannot travel onward. They do not control the rain or the rivers.

I am disappointed that with this apparently being such a commen occurrence, not something that caught them by surprise, they have not come up with a better mooring solution than to just “warehouse” us like this.

 

It would maybe be easier to deal with if I hadn’t paid more for this view.

There are just too many river cruisers nowadays to all have enough prime mooring spots. At popular ports it is common to be docked two or three abreast. We were told on a Viking Douro cruise by someone that they always booked the cheaper cabins on bottom deck because of this and they used the sun deck. 
this is what we did for Russia in 2019 and sure enough at every port we would have had no balcony view, unless we lucky enough to be the outside ship and even then we would have had to have been on the correct side of the ship!

The only reason we booked a balcony this cruise was because I saw there would be a few days when the sun deck was closed due to the low bridges on the Main river.

If  it is any comfort, I am on the Rolf in Passau and my balcony view on middle deck is of the side of the pier, because of the low water level.

if you are going to Amsterdam you should find a few ports further on where there is no double mooring - but you may still find little views. For example in Nuremberg the mooring is in an industrial port area.

7 hours ago, notamermaid said:

No I am afraid I do not. To be precise I need to say that the Main Danube Canal is officially up to just after Kelheim, not Regensburg. I have always assumed that the locks further downstream, i.e on the Danube up to and including Straubing would keep the level sufficiently high near and in Regensburg. The really shallow stretch is only considered to be between Straubing and Vilshofen where the Danube flows freely. I may be mistaken with the locks. Or Viking has logistical reasons for doing this, you may certainly be right there.

 

notamermaid

 

Thanks. I suspect that Viking have ships and passengers in Passau that have been there a couple of days, so need to get the passengers at least moving towards Amsterdam, so although we could have got to Regensburg, this is better overall for Viking.

9 hours ago, notamermaid said:

Ah, yes. That is the town called Bogen and near it is the Pfelling gauge station (orange marker, as Pfelling is officially low). Thank you for the info and have a good transition to the Rolf.

 

 

 

Update on Pfelling gauge: stable at the low level of 256cm.

 

notamermaid

 

Looking in detail, I have seen the Main-Danube canal goes as far as Regensburg. On the Viking Ve, we are in fact getting a transfer tomorrow to Passau and the Viking Rolf, after our walking tour of Nuremberg, so the Ve seems to be stopping at Nuremberg. I haven’t asked about Wednesday, when we should be at Regensburg, but  we must either be getting  buses from Passau or missing it out completely.

Doyou know if there is a technical reason why the Ve cannot continue to Regensburg tomorrow evening, for us to be transferred Wednesday after touring Regensburg , with less bussing? I assume as the canal continues to Regensburg there will be sufficient water up to there. I am wondering whether out transfer tomorrow is more to cater for cruises stuck in Passau with passengers needing to continue their cruise towards Amsterdam, and we are being transferred early to facilitate that? In other words is our transfer a day early to suit Viking overall, rather than necessary for our ship?

Copy of part of my post on Viking Grand European Tour thread, for those needing info on Danube water levels:-

Update from Viking Ve en route from Amsterdam to Budapest. Now on Main river. Everything excellent so far. On way to Bamburg this morning and due to arrive at lunchtime. However, notified today that the section of Danube between Regensburg and Passau is not passable. Around Bogan(?) there are no locks controlling river depth and water levels too low. Therefore we will have our normal tour in Regensburg tomorrow morning, go to a restaurant for lunch and then have a bus ride to Passau to join the Viking Rolf, which according to cruisemapper.com is already sat in Passau. 
After Passau currently fine according to our Cruise Director

1 hour ago, geekette said:

Cruisemapper.com. On the left, unselect all, then select Viking.  If you zoom in, it covers the map with ports, so I had to zoom out to get it clean enough to understand.

(I don't know how accurate the tracks are, TBH)

Thanks. Much appreciated.

2 minutes ago, geekette said:

That does look like an awful lot of sailing missing.

Pardon my lack of geographical knowledge, but where along the Rhine is this gorge?  And what's been missed is along where I've drawn the red line?

Those blue arrows are all the Viking ships along the Rhine, so at least they're sailing for now!

 

What software / app did you use to show just the Viking boats?  I can find an individual Viking cruiser using  vessel finder.com, but I haven’t found anything ( or at least anything free!) that would reproduce h what you have done..

7 hours ago, Host Jazzbeau said:

This should also be the answer to the many outraged posts lately "since the river levels have been so low for three weeks, why hasn't my cruise line cancelled my cruise three weeks hence?" – because, as we have just seen, one good thunderstorm system can get the ships back to sailing for a while and your cruise may not involve any itinerary change at all.  [not aimed at anyone in particular...]

Very true - but it’s human nature to worry, especially when you’ve spent so much money. We’re doing A to Budapest, leaving A on 30th August and I’ve been looking anxiously at water levels. We can cancel up to day before and get a full credit, but really don’t want to as this is the rebooking of a Caribbean cruise, that was itself the rebooking of a China trip with Viking. We really want to get away now and as Viking gave us incentives each time the previous cruises got cancelled, we are taking the view that even with some disruption, we have got a good value. Hopefully though the latest forecasts for the Rhine over the next 14 days are accurate and this would mean no ship changes on Rhine. ( It also helps as we are coming from England, so no long expensive transatlantic flights to factor in.)

All the river cruise companies are on a hiding to nothing. If they don’t contact customers, they get asked why, but if they do, a lot of passengers who haven’t been checking will suddenly ask questions and consider cancelling, so the cancellation guarantees such as ours could now cost them a lot, just as they are trying to get back on their feet.

On 8/16/2022 at 3:42 AM, RDVIK2016 said:

"Kaub at 31 cm" doesn't mean that the river is 12.2 inches deep in the navigation channel.  When then Pegel scale is at 31cm then the channel is 143 cm deep.  Some ships to have draughts less than 1.4m so can get by depending on a couple of other factors. 

 

Can I ask - is this a straight ratio conversion? What I mean is, if the Kaub doubles to 62cm, does the channel depth also double - to 286cm, or is it more complicated than that?

thanks