In early June, a Viking ship ran into a lock on the Danube near Regensburg. The lock was closed for a few weeks but finally opened. We set sail from Nurnberg to Budapest on June 28. We spent the first two days of the cruise on an industrial canal near Nurnberg. When it came time to set sail to Regensburg, we were told that the same lock was re-damaged and we could not sail. Whether the damaged lock was ever fixed or whether it was new damage, we were not told how severe the damage was and that it would reduce our river cruise to, mostly, a series of bus trips.
On the day we set sail to Regensburg, we sailed up to the first lock and stayed there in this same canal because the ship would not go through the initial lock since a lock further along was still damaged. Instead of sailing to Regensburg, we took a bus trip 2-hours each way. Aside from the inconvenience of sitting on a bus instead of sailing a river, we ended up losing 4 hours where we could have toured Regensburg instead of riding a bus. Viking kept telling us that the lock could be fixed at any time (probably to placate us), where I believe they were mostly certain that it would not be fixed in time for our vacation.
The next day, we were supposed to sail into Passau, where we had scheduled an all-day tour of Salzburg. Instead, since Passau was a 3-hour bus ride from the canal in Roth (near Nurnberg), they cancelled the Salzburg excursion and people went to Passau on a horrible bus ride that took about 5 hours to return back to Roth (on an ugly, industrial canal). Viking seemed to put a lot of emphasis on getting everyone back to the ship each day for lunch, instead of arranging us to get more time in these picturesque cities.
Response from VikingS, Community Team
The cabin was nothing extraordinary, but it was fine. The issue was the time spent on a bus.
We did the included excursion (tour of the castle) and it was very informative.
We did the walking tour of Regensburg. It was a lovely city, but we lost valuable time to enjoy the city because of having to take a bus to the city and back from the city.
We never got to Krems because of the issue with the broken lock so there was no tour.
We went on the walking tour for 2 hours and then spent the rest of the day on our own. We loved Vienna. The walking tour was informative, but relatively short.
We had to take a bus to get to Budapest. When we were dropped off at the castle, we went on our own and saw the city.