My wife and I booked an ocean cruise for our Christmas holiday and made sure it was long enough to also include New Year’s Eve, our anniversary. We were so excited!

We’ll, we were excited until we started trying to book our dining and excursions. I don’t know how Viking works it, but they open the booking at 11:00 PM eastern and I started up to be able to get good reservations. Dining reservations open one weekend and dining reservations open another weekend. Unfortunately, everything we really wanted was already booked as soon as the reservation window opened. I couldn’t get dinner reservations for our anniversary night or Christmas, and the one excursion that we really wanted was already full. The moment the booking window opened! I made reservations for other nights at absolutely terrible times because it’s all I could book.

On the following Monday when customer service was open I called to find out why I couldn’t get reservations. Guest services told me that they had dining openings for groups of 6 or more, but nothing for couples in the days I wanted. How can an adult cruise line not have openings for couples?!? The person at customer service said she thought she could get us better reservations but would have to cancel the reservations I had made. I agreed and she canceled everything but wasn’t able to find better times. She then said she would continue trying the next day and let me know what she was able to book. Unfortunately, the next day Viking closed the ability to make dinner reservations online, so we ended up with NO reservations at the specialty restaurants. None. How can customer service not know the booking window and leave us with no reservations? Read more