We commenced what was supposed to be our Viking Grand European river cruise from Budapest to Amsterdam with a Prague extension on 08/08/18. 3 days prior to the cruise departure from Budapest on 11/08/18, Viking emailed us advising that our planned overnight stay and sail away from Budapest as per the planned itinerary was changed due to low river levels. This was the start of our river cruise farce which I believe bordered on fraudulent behaviour by Viking. Namely, providing passengers with a vastly altered river cruise package holiday they knew they could not deliver according to their original product description and failing to advise passengers of the full extent of the impact and implications the river levels would have on their holiday.

Viking had been watching the river levels in Europe for over 6 weeks prior to our departure date. Europe had been experiencing an extremely dry and hot summer and river levels were very low, Viking knew this but chose not to disclose the full extent of the situation, the difficulties passengers would face and the full impact on the itinerary. Passengers were not provided with real time facts, stopping them from making informed decisions on their travel arrangements.

Our holiday commenced with a bus ride from Prague to Kormarno in Slovakia, not Budapest, to join our boat. This change to itinerary meant we never docked in Budapest overnight but were bused in for a coach drive by tour. From Budapest we were bused to Vienna to finally join our ship, the Bragi (we were actually booked on the Skadi). Viking had already repositioned some of their ships obviously to cover their bases and attempt to provide some extremely limited scenic cruising on some small parts of the Danube and Rhine. For the initial change we were offered a 25% reduction of the cruise portion on a future cruise but were also advised that we may have to do a ship swap later in the cruise. Read more