BarkLessWagMore

we did not go inside the cathedral on the included tour. The tour ended at the astronomical clock and you could either stay in the main plaza area and explore on your own or take the bus back to the hotel which we did since we had booked the optional Hidden Treasures of Prague tour for that afternoon. If we could do it over again we would have stayed there and explored more on our own.

Have a great time!

G.M.T. you are taking the OP's comments too personally. I believe the point of the original post was the poorly executed ship swap and being moored in a less than desirable spot for 3 days. I am sure that area has much beauty and is a fine place to visit, but it is without dispute that their particular mooring location was poor. I can't speak for them but I do not intend on taking river cruises every year so when I take one I want it to be the experience I paid for, within reason based on things the cruise line can control. Water levels are a different matter but ship swaps should be Viking's time to shine given how many assets they have on the Danube.

Just my opinion but I think the OP's complaint is valid.

We did the Danube Dreams trip this past May (our first river cruise also) and we pre-booked our paid and included excursions mostly because that is our nature. I did not sense that the excursions on a day-to-day basis were full so I don't think you will miss out if you wait but pre-booking will ensure that you don't. I do think Avalon hopes you pre-book so that they know in advance if they need an extra guide for an active or a "gentle walker" group, for instance. I will say that one of our paid excursions to Schonbrunn Palace was overbooked but that was not the fault of Avalon. 5 passengers boarded the bus without having registered or paid. That was unfortunate because the group being too big did detract from the tour as we all did not fit in the room being described by the guide so we were always a room behind. Small problem though. The trip was fabulous and Avalon is an excellent company. We are planning our Rhine trip for next year now.

I predict you will have a great time.

I believe this topic has been discussed extensively in other threads. I will simply add that like you, we found Viking's Draconian payment policy to be not to our liking. This led me to explore their competition which led us to book a cruise on the Danube with Avalon. Small deposit at booking and payment in full 90 days before embarkation. Perfectly reasonable. We had an absolutely wonderful cruise and Avalon suits us very well. We will sail with them again I am sure. I might encourage you to look at other lines if they have a similar cruise.

We chose not to book with Viking solely because of their payment policy. It just rubbed me the wrong way and all of their competitors have much more reasonable policies. We instead booked with Avalon and could not have been happier with our decision. We recently returned from our Prague to Budapest trip and it was exactly what we were promised and then some. I would encourage you to look at all of your options. Viking has by far the most advertising but there are many lines that can provide a first-class trip for you.

56 minutes ago, G.M.T. said:

The Viking captain arrested in Budapest, was also involved in another Viking incident between Anterp and Gent lat year:

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48548023

I had not seen the CCTV footage until now. That is chilling.

We just finished our Avalon cruise yesterday from Prague to Budapest. At the final meeting/captain’s toast yesterday  the cruise director stated that Vienna was dealing with severe high water and traffic will be impacted greatly. We felt very fortunate to have the entire cruise go off as planned and the weather was mostly great too. What a beautiful part of our world. Best wishes to all those cruising this season. We hope your trips go as planned. And special thanks to G.M.T. And Notamermaid for all the great information they post here.

2 hours ago, amyr said:

Is there anything new on the Danube water levels?  Avalon has told us today that we won't be embarking Impression in Deggendorf but in Passau, so I'm wondering about the water levels between Passau and Regensberg.  Impression seems to have been off her scheduled itinerary this past week as well, at least if CruiseMapper is correct.

Was wondering the same thing. We are on the same cruise.

Well it is not too much TMI for me. I love your story and thank you for sharing with the CC family. Enjoy your cruise.

Ditto. Have a great cruise.

We were supposed to fly to Budapest on August 14 for two days before getting on the Avalon Impression for a cruise to Nuremberg and then finishing up with 3 days in Prague. On August 12, we received an email from Avalon advising that because of low water, they could not get the Impression to Budapest and would have to do the cruise on the smaller Avalon Luminary. They offered the option of continuing on the Luminary with a refund of $200.00 per person or cancelling the trip with a full refund. We chose to cancel the trip because we felt that a major portion might have to be by bus instead of ship, and we received a full refund to our credit card several days later.

 

I have been following the Progress of the Luminary on the cruisemapper website and it appears that the ship made it up to Vilshofen which is quite a way from Nuremberg, so I guess that many of the tours may have been by bus.

 

Because of the way that Avalon handled the situation and provided the option for a refund, we rebooked the same trip for late October. Although the weather may not be very warm then, hopefully the water levels will be higher. We were lucky that we booked air through them and were able to get a refund or we would have had to go on the original trip.

 

Best of luck on your trip.

Paul -- very interesting post. We were booked on the Impression sailing reverse from Nuremburg to Budapest after 3 days in Prague. We were called late Tuesday the 14th prior to our 8/20 flights. Significant itinerary changes and a smaller ship with smaller rooms. Scant details from customer service too. The probability of a glorified bus trip for half of the sail portion sealed it for us. Like you we ended up canceling and re-booking however we chose to book for next May. Unlike you we had booked our own flights and that has proven to be very costly as it was an extra $600 per person for next year's flights. Avalon has been mostly OK to deal with but once they had our decision that we were not still coming I feel they have put us to the bottom of the pile. Still waiting for the final credits on our flights that they promised. All in all we are out an additional $400 for next year's trip but it is one day shorter than this one would have been.

Disappointed but hoping for the trip as advertised next year. I really appreciate these forums as it really helped last week in making our decision under fairly stressful circumstances.