We just returned on September 26, 2015 from our first Viking River Cruise on the Romantic Danube sailing. After many ocean cruise we wanted to try a river cruise on the Danube river with Viking River Cruises starting in Budapest and ending in Nuremberg. Started on the Viking Njord and ended up on Viking Freya after mid cruise transfer due to low river levels.

Overall a good experience as we saw a lot of beautiful scenery on this cruise. Viking does a nice job with their room accommodations, dining, and tours. It is certainly a lot more expensive than we are use too on ocean cruises but with only 180 some passengers you have fewer guest to spread the cost among. With unlimited free beer and wines at lunch and dinner, it was definitely a happy river boat.

Because of the low rainfall this summer, the Danube river has for the last several months and more to months yet to come, been plagued by lower water levels keeping the Viking river boats from completely going to all their scheduled ports on the itinerary without interruption. As an alternative, Viking is using buses to move passengers from your original ship to another similar Viking ship thus necessitating an additional backing and unpacking. The bus ride for ours was a couple of hours from Passau to Regensburg where the river level was too low for our ship to pass. We talked to Viking River Cruises two days before our departure because of all the Refugee reports in many of the cities we would be visiting. They assured us everything was fine but no mention of low river levels and need to change ships mid voyage. We are disappointed the Viking River Cruise company was not more honest about this. Read more