This review is to voice our concerns about what I believe to be unethical and dishonest tactics of Viking River Cruise sales. We recently booked a Grand European river cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest. This was a last-minute booking. We booked our cruise only a few weeks before the cruise sailing date. The sales agent sold us this trip as listed in the brochure. It wasn’t until right before the trip that we found out about the problems with the river levels and that we would be transferring ships and spending hours on busses. We even called the sales agent that sold us the trip and ask about the river levels and were told not to worry, just a little rain and the river levels would be ok.

I do not blame Viking for the weather and if we would have been booked out for some time, I would have just thought our bad luck. But after we got to Amsterdam, we found out that the river conditions and boat transfers had been taking place before the date we booked our cruise. I believe Viking should have been straight forward and advised us of this river condition before we booked. The thing that drew us to this cruise was that we would not be packing, and unpacking and we would not be spending hours on buses. Also, two of the cities we were most interested in seeing were Vienna and Budapest, time spent at both cities was severely curtailed due to boat movement, remote docking locations and long bus rides. All total we had to transfer boats 3 times.

Again, I am not blaming Viking on the weather or the river levels, but they knew of these conditions at the time we booked our cruise, and nothing was said. We would have not booked this trip if we knew of the river conditions, but maybe that’s why Viking was not honest with us. Read more