AS this is my second Viking Cruise I had high expectations and once I got to St. Petersburg and on the boat everything was excellent. The Boat, the crew, the food, the drinks, the entertainment... it was all top notch. I'll get back to that later as I want to tell everyone about the hassles with booking flights. Viking offered 'free airfare' and I politely refused, but they insisted the free airfare was wonderful. I said I normally upgrade, and they told me that once an airline was assigned I would be able to upgrade with no problems.

So 30 days before our sailing date I called Viking and was told that I was assigned to Aeroflot and I could call them to upgrade or use the Viking partner link to do the upgrade online. I went to the Viking link page and guess what. Aeroflot was not even listed as a partner of Viking on that page. So I called Aeroflot and they said it would cost $385.00 per segment to upgrade, but only my travel agent, in this case Viking, could do it. So I called Viking back and said that Aeroflot had it all wrong and that they could not upgrade me. I called Aeroflot again and they confirmed everything I had been told earlier and I called Viking and they insisted they could not upgrade me.

Sooo.. I wrote a letter to Viking headquarters in Basel, Switzerland. They faxed my letter back to the California office of Viking and I received a call from the travel manager. She said in fact I could upgrade for $3800. So for a total of $7600 I could upgrade my flights. I politely said no and asked to cancel the trip. I was told there would be sever financial penalties and I pointed out that I was lied to when I booked. Guess I should have had Viking sign something. I grudgingly traveled with my nose up against the seat in front of me for 10 hours, cursing the trip, the cruise, the flight and Aeroflot. I was glad to arrive in Moscow to get the short hop to St. Petersburg. Read more