bfred

Hi gacruiser, glad you found the original post helpful.

 

Usually it doesn't make much difference which side you are on. You may be lashed next to another boat and not have much of a view. However, there was one place where we were very glad that we had a port-side cabin: Budapest. It seemed like all the cruise boats were moored facing upstream. Ours went past the mooring space, turned around, then docked with our bow facing west*. And since Viking has primo docking space right at the Chain Bridge, that meant that our port-side cabin had a beautiful view of the illuminated castle and other buildings on the heights of Buda.

 

You can see a similar view here if this link works:

 

http://www.bridgesofbudapest.com/content/pictures/budapest/buda_castle.jpg

 

We kept waiting for another boat to come alongside us and block our view, but it never happened. I don't know if we were just lucky, or if they don't "raft" the boats together there for some reason.

 

Still, this was just a nice-to-have. Your boat might dock in a different location or in a different direction, or might be hemmed in by another boat, so I wouldn't be too concerned if you can't get a cabin on the port side.

 

Regarding a detailed itinerary -- I'd have to go through my papers at home. But in general, the boat travels at night and docks near a city during the day. That is a gross over-simplification, and the biggest exception to this rule is when you go through the scenic Wauchau Valley. That occurs during the day and everybody is up on the sundeck, listening to the commentary by the cruise director and watching the beautiful castles, villages, and vineyards pass by. Does that help, or do you still want a day-by-day listing of daytime cruising periods?

 

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* Okay, technically at the Chain Bridge we were facing north, but the Danube flows in a general west-east direction, so when you're facing upstream, you're facing the direction that would take you back to Germany in the west.

coolerchick -- if you are at all self-confident about booking your own arrangements, then I would do so. I would only recommend booking transfers through the cruise line if you are first-time cruisers and very nervous about your ability to arrange things yourself, or don't have the time to do so. Having the cruise line do it is basically paying extra money to have somebody else do the work & worry for you. If you have money to burn and don't want to deal with it -- book through the cruise line. If you want to save a few bucks and have the time & self-confidence to make your own arrangements -- go for it.

Congrats on making your decision, Lised! Now sit back and enjoy the planning and the cruise itself, and do NOT have any second thoughts.

 

I look forward to reading your review when it's all over.

Hi Texkan,

 

We returned from the reverse trip (Nuremburg to Budapest) on the Viking Hlin a couple of weeks ago.

 

My comments are posted at:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2081331

LiseD: If you are feeling overwhelmed to the point of paralysis (and believe me, I well remember that feeling when we were selecting our first river cruise), I offer the following Simplified River Cruise Selection Strategy:

 

1. Take a coin.

2. Flip it.

3. Heads: Avalon; Tails: Viking

4. Flip it again.

5. Heads: 8-day Danube Cruise; Tails: 8-day Rhine Cruise

6. Try to book something based on these results.

 

If the cruise line doesn't work, switch to the other. If the river doesn't work, switch to the other.

 

I've narrowed it down to these choices because we have done both cruise lines and both rivers, and truly feel that you will be happy with any combination. There are other cruise lines, and other rivers, and longer and shorter itineraries, but for a first river cruise, I don't think you can go wrong with any of these choices.

 

Good luck!

I should also give kudos to our Concierge Radi -- at the beginning of the trip, she collected the paperwork from all of the Lufthansa passengers that had lost luggage (even the ones who did not book travel through Viking) and got on the phone and ensured that everybody's luggage had arrived and was sitting outside our cabin doors when we awoke the next morning.

How was the food on the plane? I have read different reviews.

 

The food on the Boston-Frankfurt flight was fine. Frankfurt-Nuremburg is such a short hop that they don't serve a meal, just a forgettable snack.

Rosethorn40: Lolotte gave you good info. I'll just add an extra comment or two.

 

Dress code for dinner. Everything says leave your formal wear at home (Yea!), but what is acceptable for dinner for men? Would my DH be okay wearing a shirt with a collar without a tie and nice pants? Or should he wear a tie and sport coat?

 

I took a sports jacket and tie "just in case". I never once wore the tie. I wore the sports jacket once, when we attended an optional classical music excursion in Vienna. I was one of the few guys to do so. I never wore it to dinner, and saw only one or two others who ever did. I tended to change from shorts to khakis for dinner, and wore either decent short sleeve shirts, polo shirts, or (rarely) a long-sleeve button-down shirt. I was probably toward the high end of the scale. Many guys wore shorts to dinner; a lesser number wore t-shirts.

 

Tipping. Will Viking add gratuities to your bill like the big cruise lines do, or do they tell you the suggested amounts and you hand out envelopes the last day? How does that work for the wait staff? With open seating I would expect you get a different waiter each time, and it might be difficult to figure out who to give the envelope to, or do the waiters pool their tips?

Like Lolotte said, you get envelopes or can choose to add a tip to your account when you settle. These tips are pooled. You are welcome to slip extra cash to individual crew members that gave you exceptional service. Note that even though it's open seating, many people tended to gravitate toward the same tables every night, and therefore got the same serving staff.

 

Hope this is helpful.

The "sun deck" was closed for low bridges on the Avalon Impression also. However, it's a split level deck so you could still sit up top, forward, even for low bridges! Do you have that opportunity on Viking?

Yes, the Viking longships have seating in the bow. Lots of people took advantage of that while the sun deck was closed.

Yes, we were very fortunate. The cruises earlier in July had low water issues. The cruises just after ours encountered the broken lock, and are now facing high water issues. Such is the reality of river cruising, particularly on the Danube, where the river bottom is high, the bridges are low, and the locks are many. As somebody else said on another thread, "You just gotta go with the flow."

 

We were also very fortunate regarding the weather. I can't count the number of times that the weather forecast predicted rain and/or thunderstorms, and we ended up with good (or at least dry) weather.

Our Danube cruise was on the new Viking Hlin, which was making only its third sailing since its maiden voyage earlier in the month. Our embarkation point was Nuremburg, and our destination was Budapest. We did not include the optional extension in Prague prior to sailing. And although we did stay two extra nights in Budapest at the end of the cruise, we booked the accommodations ourselves. We also booked travel ourselves.

 

This was our second river cruise, so our expectations were maybe a little bit higher and a little more specific than first-time cruisers. However, we were generally very pleased with this trip and its excursions. There were only a few negatives, which I will leave until the end because they were far outweighed by the positives.

 

The Hlin had a terrific chef (Rainer) who seemed to love his work. When we congratulated him on his meals, he immediately deflected the praise and said "We have a great team here!", acknowledging the people who work in his group. That is the type of personality and attitude I like to see in any context.

 

Most of the staff we encountered were very pleasant and professional. One confided that he had worked for a number of other lines, both river and ocean, and he felt that Viking was the best.

 

The excursions were well organized, and our Program Director (Stein) and Concierge (Radi) were knowledgeable and helpful. The tour guides were generally very well-informed and professional. We signed up for more optional excursions than we had originally planned: the BMW factory tour is a must-see, and you should sign up early due to a limited number of slots. The classical music excursion in Vienna was enjoyable, and the Magyar Hungarian horse-riding demonstration was very different and surprisingly entertaining.

 

I should note that we were traveling with two other couples, and we feel very strongly about the following: if you are traveling with others, make a pact up front that you will NOT eat all of your meals together. Make an effort to meet others on your boat and sit at other tables at many or most meals. River cruises are small compared to ocean cruises, and if your whole group stakes out an entire table at every meal, you will miss a tremendous opportunity to meet other people. Another option is to sit at one of the long tables near the bow -- that way you are still at one table, but there are plenty of other spots for others to join you. On the other hand, it can be helpful to keep your gang together on the excursions so that you can take turns taking photos of each other.

 

Comparison to Avalon: I often seen questions here similar to "which is better: Avalon or Viking?" Having sailed with Avalon on their Rhine River cruise three years ago (see my review of that trip at http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1465203), I was looking forward to trying Viking and seeing how they stacked up against each other. So after trying a similar cruise on both of them, I can now categorically state: they're pretty much the same. You'll probably be happy with either of them. Because Viking is bigger, I believe that they are in a better position to handle low or high river levels and have sister ships staged on either side of a river blockage to continue a cruise. On the other hand, I think Avalon rooms now are a bit bigger, and they may have a "We try harder" attitude of a #2 competitor. They seemed a bit more organized when it came to greeting passengers returning from excursions, always greeting us with "welcome back" drinks and collecting shore cards efficiently. The food on Viking seemed a little better, though that is probably more a function of each ship's chef rather than the cruise line. However, there was one thing I missed from our Avalon cruise: Avalon tends (or at least tended in 2011) to market to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and UK as well as to the U.S. I love my fellow Americans dearly, but it was fun sharing an Avalon boat with English-speakers from all over the world. The Viking clientele seems to be 90% American. Not a big deal, but an interesting quirk.

 

Now for some of the negatives:

 

1. The Viking booklet gives you a direct telephone number to your ship in case your plane is late or you have some other problem. The number for the Hlin did not work in Nuremburg, where several passengers had flight delays and lost luggage due to Lufthansa. ( I could write a two page scathing review about Lufthansa incompetence.) We ended up calling the Viking 800 number in the U.S. to get squared away.

 

2. The sun deck was closed for the first few days of our trip, due to the low bridges on the river. However, this is beyond Viking's control, and all river cruise lines are subject to this limitation on this part of the Danube.

 

3. The in-room television service had some drawbacks: the GPS was not real-time (Avalon's was); the bow cam often seemed to randomly point in directions rather than straight ahead, rendering it useless; all service was turned off starting the evening of our last night aboard; and trip photos never seemed to be updated after our first stop in Regensburg. Kind of disappointing, but then again, on a river cruise you really shouldn't be spending much time watching TV.

 

4. Internet service is abysmal. Again, this is not unique to Viking. River boats link to the Internet through a low-bandwidth satellite connection, and it just doesn't handle the sort of apps that we are accustomed to: forget Skype or FaceTime, and don't plan to upload lots of mutli-megabyte photos to your grandkids or to your Facebook account. At best you can check/send your e-mail, and maybe send a few reduced-sized photo files. To make sure that you have best possible connection, try to take your laptop/iPad/smart-phone to a location near the wheelhouse, either on the sun deck or near the lounge near the front of the bar. Once you have four or five bars of wireless connection, you'll have the best chance of making the most of the limited satellite uplink.

 

5. The "bump". -- Sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 PM on July 24, we were cruising down the Main-Danube canal when the Hlin experienced a sudden bump. It wasn't enough to make me lose my balance, but it was jolting and surprising. If you have ever been in a boat when it hits a dock a little faster or harder than planned, then you know the feeling. My wife looked out our sliding door on port side (we were near the stern) and noted a fast-moving commercial barge moving in the opposite direction, very near to us. I stepped into the hall, and noted a crewman moving up our hall toward the stern with a concerned expression and an urgent pace. The next time we looked out the window, we noted that we were dead in the water. No announcement was made, and later, one fellow passenger said that a crew member told him that we had hit the wake of the fast-moving barge. We started moving again, and nothing else was said. A couple of days later, we were side-by-side another cruise line's ship in a lock, and I was having a conversation with one of their passengers. He said, "I heard you had an accident". Startled, I replied "We felt a bump a couple of night's ago, but we didn't hear about any accident." He replied, "We did." Later that day (or maybe the next), our Program Director announced that our Captain had "left the boat to begin his vacation" and that a new Captain was now on-board. This was presented very casually, implying that this was all as-planned. It struck us as very odd that the Captain of a new ship would depart unannounced for a vacation in the middle of a cruise, and we started to suspect that we were being given a bunch of horse manure. I tried searching the Internet for some kind of news explaining these events, and at the end of the cruise, when I had a solid Internet connection in our hotel in Budapest, I finally found some info. Google the following terms and you will find the same information:

 

hlin Berching apollon

 

I understand that cruise lines need to be careful about the information that they pass on to their customers, both to minimize concern and to control liability exposure. However, I do not like dishonesty. I hope Viking will re-examine their policies regarding what information they share with their guests. Things like this will always come out sooner or later -- better to get ahead of it and control the news candidly.

 

Again, though, I emphasize that the negatives above were all far-outweighed by the positive aspects of the trip. I would not hesitate to recommend Viking in general or the Hlin specifically to anybody considering a European river cruise.

 

If there's anything above that I can expand on, post a question and I'll try to respond.