Viking Cruises Reviews

Viking Air Plus - division of Viking Cruise that arranges flights to meet the beginning/end of Viking Cruises - AVOID.

While Viking Cruises are excellent they are seriously let down by their Viking Air Plus, their in-house travel agent.

1) An aggressive, testy Viking Air Plus customer rep very reluctantly answered questions about options while arranging our trip, only wanted us to BUY before she had clarified what is included in the product, seemed unsure about package basics, and made it clear we were taking up her valuable time. She took 5+ working days to answer a simple email question (re: emergency numbers) - making for an extremely and unnecessarily stressful experience.
She also failed to add our Frequent Flyer points correctly to the airline booking. We only found out about this failure when we returned and did not see the points in our Am Air account. Am Air then informed us it was too late to add points after the flight had already happened.

Viking is an otherwise great cruise company that was severely let down by their agent/they need to train agents to a standard.

2) Viking needs to find an air partner that also has any level of customer service (American Air lost luggage on direct flights - twice in one round trip journey! - and 2 months later still have not compensated. Unhelpful boarding staff, stewards and telephone service agents.)

Dealing with missing air points and lost luggage for MONTHS after an otherwise excellent trip, leaves a disappointing taste in the mouth.

See my recent review 'Book at Your Peril'

Viking have come back to us reinstated our cruise and added a Beverage Package and £100 each on board spending.
Thank you Viking Cruises

June 4, 2022 Viking Octantis Great Lake Cruise -Milw. to Toronto. Much confusion right from the beginning. Told we needed a negative Covid test to be taken not more than 3 days pre boarding. We took 4 tests to be sure the results would be on time and Viking didn't even ask to see the negative result. A big part of the reason we took this cruise were the 6 man subs onboard. We were told, onboard, that the subs could not be used on our cruise since the US would not allow them to be used in US waters. Nothing was said about why Viking didn't use them in Canadian waters. They were featured very heavily in advertising for this ship. They were used on the cruise in which travel writers were passengers. Since the subs would not be used on this cruise, we were glad to get seats on the Special Operation Boat....however our reservation and the one following ours, were cancelled since the crew had difficulty getting the SOB back onboard the ship. Another disappointment. The lab was supposed to allow passengers the opportunity to participate in some clinical work. That didn't happen, either. We did get an informative lecture in the lab by Dr. Roz., but not what was promised in their advertising. We didn't expect a lot of entertainment, but the Entertainment Director did not join our cruise until the next to last day. On the plus side, the staff was awesome..the food was, too, especially in the buffet area. The cabin was very comfortable, but the 'Balcony Cabins' had no balconies...they had a floor to ceiling window which opened up halfway. The ports were new to us and we enjoyed the tours. Also, the lectures were interesting but the theater had stadium seating and no railings..none..I did complain to Viking and they offered me a $500 pp voucher....
less than 10% of what I paid for this 7 day cruise.
This was our 5th or 6th Viking cruise and the first since the covid pandemic. It cost us a great deal of money but we regret having taken it and did not get our money's worth.