Viking river cruises

The Cruise Critic forums have a forum dedicated to river cruises. I suggest asking your questions there, where there should be many more readers familiar with Viking river cruise details. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/forum/115-river-cruising/

Try to be specific as to which cruise you will be taking.

While I haven’t done a Viking River Cruise( I’ve gone with another company) I have docked next to Viking and gone to similar locations. The walking tour groups I have seen have been around 20-30, and the coach excursions seem a little larger at around 40. This is pretty much an industry standard.

Your itinerary will show you the exact expected hours for each port stop. These, like all things cruising, can change depending on river conditions. My understanding is that at least some excursions are included and that might be why you aren’t seeing pricing. Someone with more Viking specific experience will chime in I am sure.

You might be able to get of a feel for how the River cruises work by going to you tube and searching for Viking River cruises and and the name of the river you will be on.

I have done a bunch of Viking river and ocean cruises. Carol’s comments are spot on. A couple of other points:

If you have booked the cruise, the arrival and departure times for each port may be on your invoice. it isn’t on the website. If you haven’t booked yet, or it’s not on the invoice, just call the Viking reservation number and they can tell you. In addition, depending on your travel schedule you may have free time the first day.

We have done both included and extra charge excursions. It depends on personal taste and budget. Some people don’t use Viking excursions at all. They book directly with a local provider. There is a small risk if you are delayed and miss the boat.

A numbers of times, after taking an excursion we stayed in town to explore on our own and went back to the ship later.

Hope this helps. enjoy your trip.

I have done one Viking and 2 Gate 1 river cruises. They were not very different IMHO.
For Viking you must sign up even for the included tours so they get an accurate head count. We did not realize that at first.
Each day you will get a iternary for the next day which will include the times the ship will depart from the port. As others said we did stay in town after the included tours and they were very clear in how to get back to the ship. On the rare days we were in Port for more than one night we were able to leave the ship to walk around as we wanted. There are instructions about late entry. On a side note we always research the ports ourselves so we can see in there are public trams sightseeing boats or trains that we can do on our own as Dad is older and less mobile. We love the cruises and am looking forward to our next one

We've only done one Viking river cruise, and only because it was discounted significantly. We signed up for all the included excursions, figuring there was nothing to lose if at the last minute we decided to opt out in favour of doing something on our own. I don't recall exactly what the added-cost excursions cost except that in our opinion they (like the pre- and post-cruise extensions) were overpriced for what they offered.

As for times getting on and off the ship on one's own it depends on the sailing schedule. As someone said, arriving back after the boat has sailed means arranging (and paying for) transportation to the next docking site. We also opted to take all our meals on board. We always prefer to travel self-guided and eat locally but as the on-board meals were paid-for we opted to maximize the value of the cost.

We did the Viking Rhine cruise from Basel to Amsterdam. That was about eight-ten years ago. We liked it very much and we have also taken one ocean cruise with them which we also liked. However, we mostly like to travel independently. We go to Europe twice a year. For the river cruise, we did every included tour. We did not pay for any of the extra tours. Sometimes the groups start out as 30-40, but often they are split into smaller groups when we met up with the guides. It is worthwhile to do the town walks because they are typically interesting, but also it gave us ideas for places we might want to circle back to.

For every town on the itinerary, I created a "fact sheet" and things to do that went beyond the included tours. We used every moment in every port to see the towns. We ate all our meals on the boat, we felt they did a good job. I felt the pricing of the Viking River extra excursions were ridiculous. I can't really remember what the prices were, maybe $100/each. IMO, that's where they really make their money. Often the extra excursions included a meal, like in a beer hall or winery. I felt like since everyone is paying for meals on the ship, that should be somewhat accounted for in the cost of the excursions, but I would say that doesn't happen. Even without doing the extra excursions, we felt we had plenty of option for things to do. For the Rhine cruise we felt we did a good job of "adequately" seeing the towns that we stopped at. That was less the case on the ocean cruise, but we expected that would happen.

Thank you to all who responded to my questions about Viking river cruises. Your information has been most helpful.

Our last Viking cruise was in 2023, the one out of Bordeaux. I agree with Jules that the prices for extra tours started around $100 and went up from there, depending how exclusive the tour. On our two previous cruises with Viking we were able to see the prices of all the additional tours just browsing online, but now it seems you have to get deeper in the reservation process. From the two previous cruises we learned to be aware of how much bus time was included in the additional tours ahead- you don’t want to spend more time on the bus than you get in a particular place.

Group size for included tours ran around 25 and they have started to run groups based on mobility. We had some excellent guides on the included tours for the Bordeaux cruise.

Great responses. I'll just add a couple of comments. We did the Viking Rhine cruise as well. I recommend you take the included tours and look closely at the optional excursions. You will see the cost of each optional one when you're booking. There's nothing to do on the boat so it was good for us to pay for the optional excursions to have something to do in the afternoon.

The way it went for us, is that the morning excursions were timed to get the group back to the boat for lunch, and the afternoon tours, to get back for dinner (unless the excursion included dinner).

The ship only holds about 200 passengers, and most go on the included excursions. So usually 3 buses, each with their own guides. There's not really much time to explore on your own. There was often one bus for the "slow-walkers" group. Note that the boat doesn't always dock in a central location - it could be in an industrial area far from the center of the town. So case, in that going out on your own requires some extra care to know how to get back. We did see one couple left behind as they didnt make it back in time.

As important are thr start and end stops. If its a major city then 1.5 days is noy adequate. Arrive early or fly home later. Be careful about the Viking extension packages. Tgey might be over priced and the hotel may not br ideal.

The extensions for the cruises are even more pricey. I advise arriving the departure city at least 2 days in advance. That gives you some time to see the city, and recover from your flight.

Yes. We booked our own extra days in Luzern (by rail from Basel) for less than a third of what the Viking package would have cost.