This was our first Viking cruise, but NOT our first river cruise (we did Avalon on the Rhine in 2013). In my opinion, Viking compares very poorly to Avalon for a variety of reasons: the cabins on the Tor are smaller, the staff was far less friendly (other than one waiter and Sorin the Program Director, he was funny!), the food was mediocre at best, very limited variety especially with lunch. Tours seemed disorganized. Information was lacking, especially with limited overhead announcements. The sundeck was closed down for a majority of the time. The same wines were offered every day, other than when they FINALLY gave us something different on the last day.

We also were among those that had to be bussed to another port as the Tor could not sail through at Passau. So we were disappointed that we had to re-pack everything, bus to the next port, unpack again, etc. We didn't really lose any tour time, but the 2nd ship the Viking Var was FAR worse than the Tor. Staff on the Var were really not friendly at all. We were told there was Wifi access in every cabin, yet our cabin 212 had NO wifi on the Var, forcing me to have to go down to the lobby and use that, and that even was slow. The first night on the Var we were fed the very SAME meal we had the night before on the Tor.

Our group of 4 couples were very disappointed with Viking. While I will "never say never", I have no desire to sail Viking ever again until less maybe if it was totally free (unlikely). Avalon is FAR better with food, staff, and organization!