Viking Reviews 315

Recently had a 2 week Med cruise from Venice to Barcelona on Viking Sea. On embarkation and while waiting for the room to be ready we opted for the ship familiarisation walk around. This was led by an individual who packed a 15 minute walk around into 90 minutes during which he used the word 'Viking' 100 times - all a bit much. The good stuff - Ship is spotless, you will not find a speck of dust anywhere. Cabin similarly kept in immaculate condition. The 'hotel' crew, particularly the Philippino contingent are excellent, polite and efficient. The ship is cool (in both senses) relaxing and comfortable. There is a relaxed and uncrowded atmosphere and plenty of quiet and comfortable places to relax in.
Room service meals available any time and breakfast in your cabin (sorry Stateroom) as you wish and at no extra charge.
Food quality though is generally good but varies a bit and for some reason they don't seem able prepare any sort of meat well. Chewy steaks, fish and even chicken is the norm. Maybe they are supplied with cheaper cuts. Overall the food tends to be rather bland, perhaps catering more for the American market. The food although acceptable would not come near UK 5 star status.
Shore trips are well organised as are embarkation and disembarkation, transfers etc.
In common with many cruise lines they tend to leave port late afternoon or early evening - not ideal in the Med. where towns are just coming alive after siesta time.
On board entertainment - A good Philippino band of the type experienced travellers will have seen in hotels worldwide. A pair playing classic music in the Atrium - good but boring. And so called Vocalists - terrible and best avoided.
There was a closing show which featured only the 'Cruise Director' singing. So awful it was embarrassing to witness. At the end of the trip the same Cruise Director led some of the key hotel staff on stage and flipped into cheerleader mode endlessly chanting 'Viking, Viking Viking .... and expecting the passengers to join in. A toe curlingly yuckie and cheap end to the cruise.
Maybe the Americans, who seemed to be the majority of passengers, like that kind of thing.
In summary then - ship great, service great, excursions good, food average, entertainment best avoided. Would I go with Viking again? Quite possibly.
p.s. Noticed several comments about onshore Viking booking and payment services, maybe based in various countries. My experience of buying the cruise in the UK was excellent with no problems.

Cabin type is directly related to if you will be able to go on excursions. The more expensive cabins get to pick first so by the time the less costing cabins can get excursions they are closed out. Even the excursions that are included and promised by Viking. Customer service is not any help as all they can do is type your concern and tell you to go on when your time is and get what ever is left and whatever you can. Very disappointing.

Viking is untrustworthy. Before I was able to board a cruise in Iceland, I had an accident, breaking my leg and requiring an emergency operation. We informed Viking immediately, as we had purchased drinks packages and several trips. While Viking say you can get a refund for these prior to embarkation, they say they will not provide any refund. I will be seeking legal redress.

The cruise company demands a full payment one year in advance of booking a cruise.

Customer service was atrocious.
During the initial booking they quoted a price of $1100 for trip cancellation insurance.
That fee was charged immediately and it came out to be $1700.A complete misquote by the Viking agent.
We wanted to upgrade our cabin to a higher category.
After confirming that ,we reviewed the document and discovered that the agent actually downgraded our stateroom category !
We decided to cancel our booking which is a year away!
We had to forfeit almost $2000 dollars as Viking does not refund the trip cancellation insurance even thought our trip would have been a year alter!!!
This is very unfair and predatory business practice.
Don't be taken in by the customers service rep on initial inquiry.They are very smooth talking and play the game well...

A luxury cruise experience that exceeded expectations. Staff were attentive and the itinerary was beautiful.

It all seemed so simple and well planned. This ship was beautiful, the food was great eveyday!

We booked our first cruise a couple years ago and loved it. I did not love that they put me on their spam email list without my consent, but most companies are scum in that particular way. However, this is a company of the ilk that ignores the "unsubscribe" link requests--you will get a page confirming you are unsubscribed, but you will keep receiving emails. When this happened a couple years ago, I had to call customer support and they put me on their email suppression list... which also suppressed non-marketing emails with important information about the cruise O booked. Foolishly, we decided to take another cruise with them, and now I'm stuck on their spam list again while they ignore unsubscribe requests.

Also be aware that they send an insane amount of postal junk mail. For the past two years, we have received several mailers from them every week (sometimes as many as 5 days in a single week). They could take a considerable amount off of their cabin prices if they cut their marketing budget to a more sane amount and would probably get better results (whatever sociopathic imbecile they have in marketing who thinks spamming people and sending more than a mailer a month doesn't hurt their image with prospective customers really ought to be fired).

My husband and I recently had an issue with Viking Cruise Line.

A representative suggested that we put a $50 deposit on a future cruise to hold our place and decide if we wanted to book the cruise. We decided not to take the cruise and unknown to us they used two cruise vouchers we had from them and applied it to the cruise we did not take without our permission or authorization. When we booked another cruise with them and attempted to use the vouchers, we were told by several representatives that they were applied to the cruise we did not take and could not be applied to our new cruise. So beware of Viking applying a voucher to a cruise you do not take.

This will be our last cruise with Viking and our friends as well.

Despite poor reviews and being totally overpriced we took the cruise down the Mississippi early this year. We did experience some of the negatives highlighted by other customers I.e. poor service, overpriced excursions and quite disinteresting ports (ports not the fault of Viking) but did have a good time and enjoyed the trip. However we did incur problems on arrival in Memphis-left in airport after a long flight as rep appeared late - and on departure in New Orleans where nobody helped us in arranging a taxi in to the city. Obviously fell in the too hard category- even thought we asked the day before departure and on day of departure, and we were left with no other option but to leave the ship and walk in to the city and hopefully find our own taxi - which thankfully we managed. New Orleans is not a place to just wander about lost and Viking frankly put our safety at risk. On arrival home we provided both polite and constructive feedback to Viking(twice) but after long delays this feedback was met with bland responses showing no customer awareness or empathy - our comments were just filed in the closed bin. We have sailed with Viking a number of times and had a great time but unfortunately increased prices have seen a fall in quality and certainly customer care which is sad and we would have to seriously consider booking in the future

Do yourself a huge favor and avoid Viking Cruises and their recommended partner, Trip Mate Insurance, at all costs! You’ll appreciate this advice when things go wrong, and rest assured, they will. You’ll encounter useless customer service where they simply send endless boilerplate “that’s our policy” excuses without addressing your specific issue. Viking Cruises and Trip Mate constantly avoided our repeated requests to communicate via email so they could avoid leaving a “paper trail” before finally communicating with us by email.

After 4 months of dealing with Viking Cruises/Trip Mate, they finally offered us only 30% of the $2000 vouchers. Viking cruises not only refused our reasonable counteroffers (60%) for a cash refund of their $2000 vouchers for the trip fiasco, Viking Cruises subsequently cancelled the vouchers they offered in the first place as compensation for the problems they caused!

We paid for our trip in cash and encountered a skipped port and a 24-hour delay getting home due to Viking’s ground transportation failure. Viking Cruise’s response was only useless vouchers for another hellish trip with Viking, which we declined because we will never travel with Viking Cruises again.

On top of that, it took over 4 months of extremely frustrating calls and emails just to finally be reimbursed by Viking’s recommended trip insurance partner, Trip Mate, for our documented, fully covered out-of-pocket expenses (hotel, meals, etc.) after paying $1,600 for trip insurance. Viking left us waiting on board the ship for 6 hours while numerous buses departed before finally transporting us to the airport after our flight departed. Viking had ample opportunity to get us to the airport on time for our flight but failed to do so, resulting in a 24-hour delay in getting our flight home. By finally reimbursing us for the costs of Vikings Cruise’s needless delay, Viking Cruises/Trip Mate acknowledges that it was their fault. No one should have to go through this just to be reimbursed for an insured trip.

The Viking and Trip Mate contracts, which you must accept, allows Viking to avoid any and all responsibility when things go wrong, even when it is 100% their fault. Viking Cruises and Trip Mate will only spend more time denying your legitimate claims than resolving the issues they caused and for which you paid trip insurance. Think long and hard before you book with Viking and/or their Trip Mate racket.

I went on an Alaska cruise Anchorage to Vancouver. It was very interesting for an urban person.HOWEVER, be advised the risk of covid and influenza is significant. I got covid On the last 3 days of the cruise. My neighbor got covid 2 weeks before on a Rhine Viking cruise. Apparently the risk of covid is not prevented by 2024 covid injections or previous covid infections. This was my 5th infection. Also on the Alaska cruises the covid infection rate is much higher going from Anchorage to Vancouver, because of the 60 mile bus ride from anchorage to the boat boarding at Seward. I would recommend a covid booster immediately before the cruise, covid test kits, which cost 100 Dollars in the ship medical clinic a thermometer and a supply of Paloxavid. And going from Vancouver to Anchorage. Staff was great. Many people were quite fragile. Admired their courage

I did not have the opportunity to turn in my survey for this river cruise on the Skirnir, as I was scrambling to figure out how to get to the Frankfurt Airport from Nuremburg. We were to fly a Lufthansa connecter from Nuremburg to Frankfort which was booked through Viking. Lufthansa cancelled the flight, the night before at 5 pm local time.

Our initial flight was a business class flight on TAP Portugal from Miami to Lisbon booked through Viking. Don’t ever fly that airline. Both my wife and my speakers didn’t work on the plane. We tried to get the business class cabin staff to help us., but they just said – “plug it in there” and ignored us. They were all basically “absent” during the entire flight. That was not business class. The Lisbon to Geneva flight was OK

On the pre-cruise trip the Royal Plaza Hotel in Montreux was good. The Viking reps were good. Interlaken was great, along with Victoria Jungfrau Hotel, and Top of Europe Tour. Lucerne was nice.

I was taken back when we got to the ship in Bassel. The port was – at best – an industrial ghetto. That theme was prominent throughout the cruise. Ports (docking areas) were beyond disappointing. Only Frankfurt and Wurzburg were decent. We were expecting small towns where we could just jump off the ship and spend our own time. And we expected that at least at some ports we wouldn’t leave until 10 pm or so. No such luck. This was worse than ocean cruises and we had expected - better than ocean cruise.

Let’s face it – the cabin was a glorified closet. The food was very good. Above that of ocean cruises. The problem was – small variety/selection, no “snacks at anytime” options. Little food available. Dining room staff was excellent. Robin and Cherie especially. They were very good with the passengers.

We paid a lot of money for the vacation and admittedly I was disappointed. I have received much more value and variety on European Ocean Cruises from other companies for less money. My opinion may be much different than your average passenger. I am 63 and the other passengers were mostly 75 to 80. What disappoints me, may be fine to those passengers.

The river cruise its self was fine , staff were great and a great service .However Viking arranged our flights i was told it was direct flights . Once we paid we were given connection flights . First flight was OK. 2nd flight ww got denied flight with KLM had to wait hrs for next one . On the way home we had a standby flight so for 8 hrs we didn't know if we would be getting home . We did however it felt like we spent 2 days in airports for a 3 hr flight . My 2nd time with Viking never again . They book the cheapest flights and the after care not good . I'm not impressed for the money I paid . If you book a river cruise don't bother with a balcony they park other boats next to them, so glad I booked a inside room. I have contacted my travel agents regarding our flights still no contact from Viking . Once they get your money they don't care . Its a shame as I enjoyed my last ocean cruise i will not be booking with them again or recommending them.

The flights for our river cruise on the Viking Aegir last week were so poorly scheduled that we are still in transit! Our total travel time will be 28 hours from Budapest to Phoenix when we arrive later this evening. Our arrival flight from Phoenix to Munich was also poorly scheduled, making it several hours longer than necessary. With a reservation made 10 months in advance, there was no excuse for this poor customer service.

Viking EIR Rhine river tour April 2025. Communication was terrible. We booked a pre-cruise extension and after traveling all night we were told we had to wait 7 hours before our hotel room would be ready. For this we were given a voucher for 1 free cup of coffee from the hotel. Once on the ship the food was poor in both flavor and selection. Out of a 7 night cruise i only had 2 dinners that I considered good. One night I selected chocolate cake with cherries for desert and the "cake" was the size of a domino. Literally 1 bite and it was gone. The included excursions were overall a waste of time. On the first one in Kinderdijk the group I was in wanted to see windmills. Instead we were shown pictures of windmills and only in the last few minutes of our tour did we actually get to a windmill. From my experience a Viking River cruise is not worth the money, not even close!! This trip was the worst vacation ever.

2 x customer that plans on switching cruise lines. They have the audacity to send me countless brochures. 2 for 1 air fare they say. Complete bs. They are discounted according to Viking yet they advertise as 2 for 1. Same with there bookings. Complete garbage and bad tactics. Never again!

I wish I had read reviews before booking. I booked an 8 day river cruise about 2 years in advance. A group of friends decided to book the same cruise. The Romantic Danube. Oct. 11, 2026. We were talking recently and I mentioned spending extra time in Budapest and they said no the trip starts in Germany, in short we realized that they didn't book the same cruise as I did. They booked same date, same tour name, but apparently there are two boats going in opposite directions. I immediately called, being 18 months out and was told not to worry, the cruise my friends are on is available, same cabin category, everything is fine OH BUT we can't honor the price you booked, OH NO, we can however charge you $1500 per person more to make the change. I spoke to the agent, calmly and nicely, and did the same with a supervisor only to be told sorry, nothing we can do. The lack of customer service is deplorable. I'm so disappointed in this company but if I had read reviews first, I would have seen they are terrible. I admit and agree it was not their fault, but sometimes innocent mistakes happen, and so why not earn a forever fan by helping out in logical simple ways? What a difference that would make. I won't travel with them and I'm hoping I can talk my friends into cancelling too.

I went to Antarctica with Viking and can honestly say it was the most memorable vacation my travel companion and I have ever taken. The ship was beautiful, destination/activities were incredible, and the staff was second to none. Highly recommend.

I applied for this company and fortunately didn't get hired. The amount of negative reviews received from this company is despicable and I didn't know this prior to interviewing with them. I interviewed with an Andres Suarez, who didn't speak English clearly enough for me to understand him throughout the interview, nor did I get impeccable mannerisms from his interview style, so this was the first red flag. Second red flag was when I was interview bombed/bullied about the session being recorded for quality and training purposes, leaving me with no choice but to proceed, and when a second person, a woman, joined my interview without prior knowledge or consent, and with whom Mr. Suarez announced right before my interview would be joining us. This lack of transparency is highly unprofessional and unacceptable. I should have been previously notified that there would be two people meeting with me. Those people also should have properly introduced themselves, and gave small introductions of their roles with Viking Cruises considering there's enough time to do so within twenty five minutes. I know nothing of the role titles that either of these two people hold, or how long they've been with the company etc. etc. Not only did this gesture turn me completely off, but when it became the woman's turn to interview me, she went directly into interrogating me with impromtu waitress questions about food and drink items on an imaginary menu, that totally caught me off gaurd, as this approach was entirely unecessary, and did not align with the expectations of a professional interview setting. Today I can't even recall her name or what her job position is at Viking because she never properly introduced herself. Fortunately I failed this mystery woman's interrogation questions, because she wasn't dressed professional enough for me, her look did not match at all Viking's supposed "impeccable grooming standards"(messy hair up in a high bun no!), her video quality was poor, her video lacked proper lighting, and her background was filled with a lot of distraction. No thank you. You both did me a HUGE favor and it's not being employed with either of you. Thank you so much!

Well, listened to the ad. When the CEO gives his spiel about about being kind and wanting to help. Asked about a job but heard nothing. So much for that. Was that genuine or just to give a warm fuzzy glow?