Viking Kvasir Review

4.0 / 5.0
212 reviews

Excellent holiday, excellent ship - but here's some stuff you ought to know

Review for Europe River Cruise on Viking Kvasir
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Hurricane2C
10+ Cruises • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Jul 2018

We took the 'reverse direction' Rhine Cruise from Basel to Amsterdam, with a two-day pre-cruise extension in Lucerne. The transfer from Zurich airport on Wednesday 9 July to the excellent Art Deco Hotel Montana in Lucerne went smoothly (effectively a private transfer with just four of us in the people-carrier) and we had a terrific lake-view room with balcony. The breakfasts on the terrace overlooking the lake were excellent. Viking's pre-cruise information simply stated 'you have a transfer arranged for Wednesday 11 July', with no indication of the time of day. We had assumed a late morning transfer, in time for a leisurely boarding of the Kvasir and a first lunch on the ship. Not so! We did not leave Lucerne until around 4p.m., which meant arrival at the ship at about 5.30p.m., a hurried first 'meet and greet' and then practically straight into dinner with no real time to change and freshen-up. The reason for the late departure is almost certainly so that Viking can 'encourage' you to sign-up for their optional 149 Euros each cable-car trip on the third day in Lucerne. We didn't - but as it turned out this did give us time to get up and down Mount Pilatus independently (three and a half hours, including walking to/from the Lucerne railway and bus station). That trip - the one to do - cost us something over 70 Euros each. The resident Viking representative had implied that a lot longer is required for Pilatus, but this is not the case at all if you just want to go up and down. The hotel had provided us with a card which gave us free bus and rail travel in and around Lucerne - something else that had not been made clear by Viking in advance (all of the city's hotels do this) - and this effectively discounted the cost of the Pilatus trip. The real 'must do' recommendation is to take a lake trip on one of the paddle-steamers. Top tip: buy the ticket in advance (over the internet, or even from the ticket office up to 24 hours before departure) for a 60% saving on the usual price for a full three hour afternoon trip all over the lake ('The Best Of Lake Lucerne'). We paid just £16 each, which was a real bargain.

I am not going to say a lot about the ship, since plenty of other reviews cover this very adequately. Suffice to say the stateroom (French Balcony) and the food were uniformly excellent. Likewise, the 'included tours', which were well-organised with excellent guides. For British readers of this review, if your perception (as had been ours) is that you will find mostly British fellow-passengers, this is unlikely to be the case. I would estimate that around 70% of the passengers on our cruise were from America. Not a problem at all, but just something to be aware of. Something else- which is covered in the ‘smallprint’ - is the likelihood at least some of the time of having another longship 'double-docked' next to you. This is not great, especially if you have paid top-dollar for a veranda stateroom and then find that rather than looking out at a (potentially) nice view, you are looking straight into a next-door ship's stateroom, about three feet away. A special mention must go to our 'Cruise Director' (Sharon), who knew her stuff inside out and backwards and everything went extremely smoothly. The one REALLY BIG disappointment for us (and asking around afterwards, apparently for a lot of other passengers) was the themed 'German Evening' buffet on the Sunday evening when the ship had moored at Koblenz after the highlight scenic-cruising through the Middle Rhine. This was IN LIEU of the usual a-la-carte dinner and apart from comprising the to be expected German food, also featured some overly-noisy 'entertainment'. As far as I am aware, Viking had made no mention in their cruise literature of their intention to turn one evening's dinner over to a themed buffet - so be warned! True, it is still possible to order from the restricted 'always available' food-options - but sadly we were partially overlooked in that request and accordingly missed-out on dinner that evening.

A couple of other things. Saturday evening's arrival at Rudesheim (around 5p.m.) really meant insufficient time to walk into the town, explore a little and walk back in time for dinner at 7p.m. I'm not sure why Viking cannot arrange for dinner to be later (say 8p.m.) on that evening? Perhaps it's because they are hoping that you will have signed-up for the (expensive) 'optional' tours which took in restaurants ashore. The tipping regime is also worthy of comment. The system is fair enough - and it is entirely discretionary - but we chose to pay (very close to the 'recommended amount') by cash using their unmarked envelopes and in consequence Viking have absolutely no idea whether we 'tipped' or not. Those who paid by credit card would be immediately known to Viking through their final on-board account and - cynically - this could possibly be used by Viking as a tool to make 'special offers' available, which will not be the case for us. It seems to me that since the end-of-cruise questionnaires carry a barcode to identify the cabin and passengers, then the 'tipping envelopes' could be similarly so marked. My recommendation is to pay by credit card. The departure from Amsterdam went well and - because we had quite a late flight back to Heathrow - we had the opportunity to explore Amsterdam in the morning, including a canal trip. We were able to return to the ship and have lunch on board, so in the end we did get our full quota of lunches, despite having missed out on arrival day. We were the only passengers travelling to the airport at that time of day and had an excellent private-limousine arranged for us. This was a full three-and-a-half hours before expected take-off (far too long in our view) and unfortunately the flight was then also delayed, so that was all a bit frustrating! Despite the 'niggles', the Viking longship experience can be thoroughly recommended.

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