We did Viking Rhine in September from Basel to Amsterdam with a ship swap and adjusted itinerary to Brussels/Antwerp. if I had to do it over again I would have taken the 100% and personally, I'll never go on a river cruise again. The marketing gives you the assumption that you'll be constantly sailing through picturesque quaint river villages and scenery, which is absolutely not the case, even without the low water diversion. That being said, we were never offered a 100% future credit in September, so my assumption is you have to call to fight for that option and TBD if they're still honoring it.
I'll preface my "review" of the changes with a few caveats. We are not Viking's ideal customers. My husband & I were taking my grandma on this cruise to fulfill her bucket list. We have stayed in quaint villages along the Rhine in the past and spend our summers living in Europe, plan our own trips, aren't into group tours and prioritize natural beauty & authentic, quaint experiences.
*I had to spend 30 minutes on a chat with Viking the night before our cruise trying to figure out what dock our cruise was departing from since they use 3 different places in Basel (15 minutes apart from each other). Their communication was basically non existent leading up to our cruise and if you don't book all your transfers through Viking, they are very unhelpful.
*The ship swap happening a few nights in meant we could never really get "settled" before we had to pack up again. The bus ride that was (according to Viking) supposed to be a 4.5 hour ride was 7.5 hours. The bathroom was broken on our bus and the "Luxembourg guide" they got us revealed she'd never been there before while giving us our "tour"...
*Many of the stops required a 30+ minute bus ride to get to our destinations and we always docked in shipping yards next to junk piles and shipping containers. We spent $300 on taxis to see destinations because we didn't want to be on a bus every morning at 8 am and were glad we didn't splurge for a balcony, as we never sailed during the day through anything but very smelly shipping yards.
*The onboard entertainment was a guy playing piano over a recorded track piped into the speakers so it didn't even sound live, one "cooking" class where the chef spent literally 10 minutes showing us how to make a flatbread, one good musician trio that came on board one night, one sales talk about future cruise opportunities, an every night 45 minute logistics talk during cocktail hour to explain what bus you had to get on the next morning at 8 am to go see the places we thought we were sailing to and the 20 minute talk on the last night during cocktail hour about how much everyone on board deserved extra tips. I honestly felt like I spent a week on a floating timeshare sales meeting.
*The boat was very nice. The food was okay. The staff was good for the most part, but a couple waiters were complacent and rude to multiple cruisers on board and the main front desk woman had a really bad attitude, which we also heard from multiple other cruisers.
The whole experience felt extremely overpriced and disappointing. Part of this was mother nature, part of it was the nature of the the Rhine/Senne rivers and part of it was Viking. We got the 60% voucher but TBD if we'll use it, as any of the other destinations we're interested in are around double the price of the Rhine. Not sure we're that interested in using a 60% credit to still have to spend $20,000 to go on another cruise.
