Sparky333

How cool that you had a front row seat on your deck watching the ship back in!

I'm curious to see what you guys ended up doing at this port as I don't think we'd repeat what we did last time there.

Glad they decorated the right cabin when they finally did it :p

Thanks for going to the trouble of checking on the Nachi Cocum site regarding lockers. We can always ask some other folks nearby to keep an eye out if there aren't lockers.

Nachi Cocum looks like a great choice if we make it to Cozumel again. I love that it limits the number of people and it looks very laid-back which appeals to me.

I'm wondering if there are lockers to stash valuables if we both wanted to go in the water at the same time. I've read other posters saying they never felt there was anything to worry about and that their items were safe just on the lounge chairs but I don't think I'd want to take a chance (not just there but anywhere in the world!) losing a credit card or camera, for ex.

Great review! We sailed the same week on the Silly last year so I'm enjoying reliving it through your posts.

After loving your Rhine Getaway review on the river cruise board I was so happy to come across this review on the X board.

Thanks for always going to such an effort with your detailed reviews and also thanks for including great pictures - they really help to tell the story.

Sounds great! It would be fun to stomp grapes...maybe that was a Vantage-only activity. We'll be there in July so a little different weather and grapes not ripe I guess:rolleyes:.

Well, I don't mean to be negative and hopefully this doesn't happen to anyone else, but last December we had the same situation sailing out of Ft. Laud. Got a last-minute email that we couldn't board until a certain time. So we waited until our scheduled time and took the hotel shuttle over - maybe 1:30 - and when we got there it was a zoo. There was a line stretching forever. I don't think everyone obeys the request to wait until a certain time so that the staggering can actually work.

To make it worse we could see a sign for a separate line for suites but the greeter (he had a Celebrity name tag but I think they work for the port not actually Celebrity?) would absolutely not let anyone go to that line but made us go to the very end of the loooooong line and you supposedly could then only divide off into the suite line when you got up to that point - which would've taken hrs.

I called X from the end of the forever-long line and they could do nothing of course. Don't know what I really expected but it was just such a bad situation - the expedited boarding was part of why we paid extra for that category of cabin and he was illogically not letting us get in the proper, way shorter line.

Finally another employee with a Celebrity name badge came through checking people's boarding passes and sending the suite guests up to the other line. That helped immensely but the hour we stood in the hot sun barely moving forward in that wrong line was very annoying!

OK, that probably never happened again after that date - just be prepared if you get herded to the wrong line to make sure you get up into the right one!

Thanks for your review. We'll be on the Douro next summer with Viking. I think, as you noticed, the ships being leased but not owned on certain rivers makes a difference. I'm sure Vantage is glad you're not holding the dismal dinners against them!

How great that you speak the language - I'm sure that's super rare for tourists in Portugal. I bet the locals loved you.

Like cormike1 I'd love to know more about the daily excursions along the river if you have a chance to write more.

Thank you!

Leslie

Thank you so much for posting - it sounds like a wonderful trip!

I feel for the poor Norwegians in their one outfit - at least it was a clean outfit each day for them!

Great attitude!! Have passport & credit card, will travel!

Thanks for posting - I'm looking forward to more :)

That stinks that your luggage was that late arriving to your cabin but at least it did arrive and wasn't left on the dock! Hard to imagine other travelers not noticing luggage that wasn't theirs in their cabin until midnight since those cabins are pretty small but maybe they were in the lounge until the wee hours. Anyway, fantastic it was located!

I've never seen that reservation situation in the dining room - didn't know that it was possible to reserve. It ended up being a good thing for you if you made friends with your new tablemates and laughing over it was a good way to handle it altho' I'm sure it was not a pleasant way to start your cruise.

Ukalady -- I'm a little late chiming in but I followed along as you blogged and loved reading your posts. Thank you so much for sharing! You've got a great writing style - I forget if you mentioned but are you a writer in your real life at home?

You gave so much good info and in such a fun format. The pictures within the posts are fabulous and are such a help in telling the story. The pastry-of-the-day pics in front of the local buildings was a really cute theme, too.

I hope you & your mom have another trip planned together -you seemed to be great companions and have a blast. Not all mothers and daughters traveling together can manage that! :p

BTW, your mom sounds like she was the life of the party - how fun!

We did the Celebrity excursion to Delos a few years ago. I remember when doing research on planning our own excursion I was advised that sometimes (often?) the seas can get very rough quickly which could delay a ferry returning and that for that reason alone we took the X tour rather than doing it on our own.

I usually do prefer DIY but in a few cases where missing the boat is a serious factor we've done the 'official' excursion.

Thanks for your reply Peter - I'm happy to know your group didn't experience noise problems.

I notice I spelled Douro wrong - oops - I think I must reverse the o & u 50% of the time for some reason. :o

Hi PeterMcG--

I'll be looking forward to your longer review of your cruise on the Viking Hemming - we're doing the Duoro next summer on the Viking Torgil.

I assume from what you've written already that there were no noise issues in your aquarium class cabin? We've booked the lowest level also after finding it perfectly acceptable on another Viking cruise. But recently someone was complaining about lots of noise issues keeping them from sleeping - not sure if the engine or other but they did not like being on the lowest level at all.

Hi Jerry -

I just saw where you said you were in groups of 45-48 people. I'm sad to see that. We went on Viking's Passage to Eastern Europe last fall and that was the size of our groups which I thought was too big. When I commented here to see if that seemed the norm many people replied that they had smaller groups (25 or 30) on other river cruiselines and then Viking replied to my post:

"Welcome home from your cruise — we’re happy to hear that overall you enjoyed your trip. Walking tours tend to have group sizes of approximately 20-25 people, although in certain cases groups may need to be a bit larger. All Viking itineraries also feature a variety of paces to choose from for walking tours, along with different excursion types, such as “extended tours” or “highlights only.” Unfortunately it sounds as though your particular sailing may have been met with some exceptions – and for that we do apologize. We’d liked to put you in touch with our Customer Relations team so we can learn more about your experience, work to make adjustments based on feedback, and answer any questions you may have. Please contact us directly"

We also did not have the option of being in a 'faster' or 'slower' paced group so I really hoped our particular cruise was an anomoly but it sounds like that large number might be the norm for Viking and maybe that reply was not quite accurate.

We have another Viking cruise booked for next summer (Portugal). Fingers crossed they break us into smaller groups on that one but if not it would probably cause us to try another company for future cruises where smaller groups are used.

Just wanted to thank you again for all of your time and effort sharing your trip with us. I feel like I've been there and now I don't need to actually do that itinerary myself ;)

Actually it has truly whet my appetite and the Rhine Getaway is at the top of my wish list.

Just wanted to chime in that I've been following along and loving your thorough review of your trip. Great pictures! I've been thinking the Viking Rhine Getaway might be a good choice for us and it's fantastic to see a preview.

The pictures of the war memorial sites you guys visited before the cruise were very moving - got me choked up - I'm sure being there in person is quite an experience.

Thanks for your efforts in putting this review together!

We were on Viking last fall and they definitely went somewhat into your ear - not quite like earbuds but not the over-the-ear foam version. They are shaped like a "C" that wraps around the top/back of your ear and the little bud part lines up with your ear canal. Not sure if you can envision that from my description :o

I would think you would definitely need to have an alternative though but maybe Viking provides a different style if that's necessary? Hopefully someone will post that can tell you about the size of the plug - my vague memory says it's that standard size but I'd hate to tell you wrong.

Thanks so much for posting your review. We'll be on that cruise but not until July 2015 so hopefully the dining room issues will be resolved by then. I was really surprised to hear about the service and imagine, as you said, it must've been an aberration. We've sailed on Viking twice before and not had any issues with the dining service. Maybe some growing pains on that new ship.

It was very good to hear there were so many other things that were positives - especially the quality of the excursions.

Thanks again for giving a review :)

Oh good for you! That sounds like a great itinerary and AMA will be wonderful I'm sure. To be honest I would've gone with them for our next river cruise based on the factors you mention and a few others but the price was just enough more than Viking's for a similar trip that I couldn't bring myself to make that leap.

Have a wonderful time :)

I thought of something I meant to say - you mentioned enjoying balconies. Just keep in mind in the mornings you might wake up to find yourself side by side with another ship and it would be very "cozy" on your balcony. Since this is your first river cruise you might not know that they tie up like that.

I found we didn't have that much downtime on the ship and I don't know that we'd have gotten much use of a balcony at all. When we booked only the lowest level was available which I worried might be odd since they're at the water line so a balcony wasn't an option. The bottom level cabin was perfectly fine - not damp or noisy from the engine or crew which I was concerned about. And just using the cabin to sleep in we didn't miss the bigger window or balcony. So for our next RC to Portugal I went ahead and booked an "aquarium class" cabin again and we'll hope to use the top deck for just hanging out.

Hi Cindy - sorry for the delayed reply - I was away for 2 weeks and just got back last night.

I think most people feel going Bucharest to Budapest is the preferred direction because it lets you end on a high note. When we booked that wasn't an option for the dates we were working with or we'd have done it that way.

I wonder if you do the Viking trip and end in Budapest - would you then go on to Prague on your own? That would be ending on a very high note, I love Prague!

I like traveling in hot weather so I'd rather go in July or August - even though it will be more crowded everywhere. Not sure about the water levels on that part of the Danube in those months. I guess that's pretty challenging to predict even if there's some kind of known pattern.

For that particular itinerary I would just use Viking's tours everywhere except possibly Budapest and Bucharest. You can do a lot on your own in Budapest and then the Viking tour would just be a little extra -- or if you also have a private guide there you could accomplish even more. In Bucharest we didn't have much free time and for the time we did have we hired a guide for the 2 of us and went outside of the city (not sure if I talked about this already in this thread or not).

Here's a link to my picasa album from our trip - hopefully it will work. Not sure what that error message you got means from the other link, maybe this will give an error also :o

If you have any questions I'll be happy to try to answer them. Have fun with your planning and have a wonderful cruise!

Leslie

Very embarrassed - I just looked and we did get $300 pp off our recent Viking booking. And I think I even posted something about that offer when we received the card in the mail that talked about it. :o

Riversanddale -- when you say "we get a nice discount for being prior customers" on Viking do you mean the $100 per passenger discount or something more than that?

We had a Cat E cabin on the Embla in the fall. It was the only category available when we booked and I was worried that it would feel damp (had that on a river cruise in China - awful feeling, sheets even felt damp when you got into bed). But we were very pleased with the room - it didn't have any feeling of being "underwater" - no dampness. Also no noise issues from plumbing or engine. We've intentionally booked that category for our next Viking cruise in Portugal.

Also as you you said, those cabins are a bit larger than the french balcony category. And since we mostly are in the cabin for changing and sleeping and spend the rest of the time on the ship in the public spaces we don't feel the need for a balcony.

So for us on the new ships aquarium class is fine -- not sure whether on older ships that would hold true or not.