Our 2nd Viking river cruise did not disappoint. The ship, on its second voyage, was shiny clean. we did have a few minor 'break in' issues. The safe wasn't working and TV seemed to have a mind of it's own. Both resolved after a day or so. Dining was excellent. Food selection and quality was top notch. As with our Rhine cruise, we found the wine selection to be good quality, and menu prices for all drinks to be fair and reasonable. We did not buy the beverage package, and wonder why anyone would. Our excursion guides were all entertaining and educational. Hearing some of their personal stories about life behind the now fallen iron curtain really helps ones appreciation of life as a US citizen. The only service issue we took exception to were the wine tasting activity. Really minor - the staff member pouring the wine really didn't know what a wine tasting is. we also had a service issue regarding our cabin as noted later in this review. With the exception of our cabin experience, this was a 5 star experience.

Why 2 stars? Our cabin experience was worse than awful. Let me be more specific. The cabin was great, except for noise. I'd give it a minus 5 stars because of the noise, if possible. I can tell you the most wonderful experience soon becomes a nightmare when you can't sleep for days on end.

We experienced and complained about how incredibly noisy the cabin was at night, on 3 different occasions. Impossible to sleep noisy. Sadly, and maybe in a demonstration of indifference or worse, after our cruise we learned that none of our noise complaints were logged. So when they told us engineers would and had checked our cabin, I'm left wondering if they really did. It's as if they knew there was a problem but didn't want any record of it. Apparently all they gave us was lip service. All night, every night we heard LOUD banging, scraping, swooshing and vacuuming sounds. Nearly ceaseless. My wife was able to get some sleep with ear plugs. Because of my tinnitus, earplugs are not a good option for me. Since we didn't spend a lot of time in the cabin during the day, it's hard for me to say if this was going on all the time, or just during the night. Read more