My husband and I are very seasoned travelers and had high expectations after watching Viking commercials and reading Cruise Critic reviews, most of which painted the Grand European tour and Viking as the trip of a lifetime. We booked a category B balcony cabin and arrived in Budapest full of anticipation for what we expected to be a high end, luxury river cruise. We were terribly disappointed.

We fully understand that weather and river levels are totally beyond the control of anyone and so were prepared to accept variances with regard to the cruise departure point, schedule and even change of ship. Our first inkling that this was not a "high end" cruiseline was when speaking to some other cruise line passengers on board a flight from Frankfurt to Budapest who advised us that they had been contacted by their cruiseline days prior to departure advising them that due to low river levels, they would not depart from Budapest and as such if they decided to cancel, would be given a full refund. If, however, they elected to continue the cruise, they would be given a 50% credit toward a future cruise. Not so with Viking. We were not at any point told we would not be sailing from Budapest. We received an email prior to departing Canada, telling us that at some point during the cruise we would be changing ships and to meet in Budapest at the Sofitel Hotel Budapest on the scheduled departure day where we would be given further details.

Luckily, we arrived in Budapest three days prior to the scheduled departure of our ship. This enabled us to tour this beautiful city at our leisure, which we did, both on the Hop On Hop Off and by private tour which we booked through our hotel. On our scheduled departure day, we took a taxi to the Sofitel and signed in with the Viking representative. We were told we could enjoy a cold lunch while we waited to board buses. We were not told at that point where we were being bused to. Lunch consisted of stale sandwiches and coffee in the basement of the hotel. We waited a couple of hours and then boarded one of Viking's buses for the two hour trip to Komarom. At this point our expectations were still high and we enjoyed the scenery as we passed through the country side to this small Hingarian village. The Viking Vidar was docked at the side of the Danube river where we had to walk along a muddy road to board. Initially, we were supposed to board the Lofn but were told we would "probably" have to change ships in Neuremburg where the Lofn would be waiting. Read more