My mother and I had our Grand European Tour split between two ships. We were originally supposed to be on the Kvasir from Budapest to Amsterdam, but right before we were leaving our pre-cruise in Prague, we got an email from Viking stating that we were going to board the Idi instead when we got to Budapest. Unfortunately none of the Viking staff in Prague were aware of the change. That's apparently not unusual according to Viking staff. This lack of communication between Viking Administration and their customers and staff is one big negative against the Viking brand. It caused confusion and created a number of really disgruntled passengers for the bus trip to Budapest. The reason we were given, once we were on board the Idi, was that because earlier in the summer high water prevented the ships from going the full length of the cruise, so passengers changed ships and the ships went back. Our cruise was when Viking was going to revert back to the original schedules in order to be able to go on their winter cruises correctly. We were finally given this news by the amazing Program Director who was parachuted into our cruise to deal with unhappy passengers and he converted just about everyone into a happy camper. The Idi staff did the rest. As other reviewers have said, if you have the same cabin on a ship that is the same age and identical in every way, there should be no problem. We finally exchanged ships in Nuremberg and it was as seamless as promised. We left our baggage on the Idi, went on our tour of Nuremberg and returned to the same cabin on the Kvasir.

A note about older longships: we were docked at one point, tethered to a Viking Longship that was a couple of years old and I noticed that it was a little ragged around the edges. The wood stairs were kind of worn and there was quite a lived-in quality to it. It was perhaps this particular ship, but we were also tethered to this year's ships and last year's ships that looked in excellent condition.

The glitch: On every cruise there is a glitch. On ours, it was an accident of a barge that ran into a bridge ahead of us and which prevented us from getting to Regensburg. We docked at an industrial site and were bused to Regensburg. We returned to the dock after the tour and the next morning, when we were supposed to have arrived in Nuremberg to switch ships, we had to take a bus to Nuremberg. The ride was under an hour and we went on our tour then were driven to the Kvasir and our bags were already in our cabins. The Kvasir passengers had their tour and were driven to where the Idi was docked to continue their trip to Budapest while we went on to Amsterdam. I must admit that Viking staff handled this unfortunate situation with expertise and know-how. Read more