Viking Freya Review
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We recently took the Viking Romantic Danube cruise – it was the maiden voyage from Nuremburg to Budapest. We were picked up at the airport and delivered to the ship hassle free. I would like to start by warning there were several “issues” they blamed for being the maiden voyage, I would suggest not taking the 1st cruise of the season. There were no issues with the water level this time of year; however, I would have liked to sit more on the sun deck to enjoy the scenery. The temperatures got to the high 50’s – 60’s, but at 9am it was still only in the 30’s – which is too cold to enjoy the sundeck, also very cold for the included morning tours. Most of the trees & foliage were not budded out yet – still seemed like winter.
We have taken quite a few ocean cruises so my comparison is based on a larger cruise ship. As far as the Ship - the crew was excellent & the Program Director gave nightly “briefings” for the next day’s tours. However, the WiFi did not work for 2 days; there is a bar, but for non-drinkers there was no place where our group could sit at a table to play card games - as the only entertainment after dinner was piano music. On a few occasions they brought aboard some locals, and had a “game night” that lasted about 45 minutes. The Program Director gave a “narration” while we cruised thru the wine country - this could only be heard on the sundeck, once again too cold to be up there, even in the afternoons.
As for the food – even though there are only 200 guests, dinner still took 2+ hours & didn’t start until 7pm. I would like to suggest that they have 2 dinner seating’s. The food is “European style” – meaning my meat was served “very rare”, not to my taste; there seemed to be an issue to get it cooked well done, also not like an ocean cruise ship where you could order several appetizers - this confused our waiter who brought only soup OR salad. Breakfast had a good selection of items (eggs, cereal, fruits & breads); lunch was usually something characteristic to the area we were traveling.
Cabin Review
As far as the staterooms, we were at water level and our room had a very large window that looked out over the water. Our room was on the Port side, this was good because the ship docks facing “downstream” - the starboard side always had a view of the concrete walls. The size of the room was very good in comparison – but beware that the bathroom walls are entirely glass on all sides, this could be uncomfortable for someone traveling with a friend. The bed is 15" away from the shower wall or right next to it if twin beds. These are some issues we had concerning our room: the heated floor in the bathroom did not work for the first 2 days, the shower never got above “lukewarm”, 110V outlet only on (1) side of the bed, no alarm clock, the pillows were very “flat”, the lower level is colder as it is basically underwater, I tried using my curling iron in the room where the 110V outlets were by the TV – however, it never heated up, the volume on our TV did not work even at 100% volume, there were times when the safe would not open with our code (just had to keep trying over & over) and lastly the noise – we finally figured out it must be something with the plumbing because when the room above us flushed the toilet you could hear this horrible noise that sounded like a “chain or metal rope” being pulled across the railing, this even happened in the middle of the night & woke us up several times. We never heard footsteps above or noise from fellow passengers. We never felt any movement as the river was very calm.