Anyone out there taken a Viking River Cruise?
 

If so, can you share the pros and cons...we are considering it for spring, 09. We booked for a disasterous attempt with GCT....and it was a near riot....is Viking best.?

Can you elaborate on your misadventure with GCT as I'm looking at both Viking and GCT for a future trip. Would like to know what can go wrong.

There are several recent posts here on both companies for Russia river cruises. If you put Russia or Viking into the search box you will find them. Also check the cruise forum.

I am also interested to hear people's experiences. My husband and I are thinking about taking my mom and a couple of her friends to Europe in a couple years. We have been floating around the idea of a river cruise for part of the trip.

Hi clarsong; The company 'GCT' deals in volumn. MANY people love the company. However, there are many complaints against this company. They have a unsatisfactory rating from the Better Business Bureau from the Boston and Southern Maine area. You can check for yourself on bbb.org ENJOY IRIS

We have done several trips with GCT and one river cruise in Russia with Viking. GCT puts Viking to shame, the guides, social director and food left a lot to be desired on our Viking cruise.

The entire fiasco with GCT has been covered in other posts. In a nutshell, the rivers were flooding a few weeks before our trip (which we had left a deposit upon) and 6 of us who were travelling togehter called, individually and repetitively, several times ahead of the anticipated departure to see if the trip was still 'on' in light of the circumstances. We were told "not to worry, all is as planned, there are boats on the river as we speak".

When we got to Budapest we were told that the trip was off, we were taking a bus trip instead.!!!! Many of the people tried to go home, cancell, etc., but instead we were herded onto 4 busses and traipsed all over eastern Europe...Some of the folks were infirm, one guy actually blind, and we tried to call the office of GCT, only to be put on hold. ;; no one came to the phone nor returned our calls.


we protested when we got back to the states for deliberate subtrafuge and lies that they told us, and they didn't even attempt to collect the rest of our money....as was the case with other couples we talked to....their policies are deceptive, staff is incompetant, and they do not support their own tour operators when things go wrong.

all this has been covered in gruesome detail in the complaints against them....See BBB issues and why they have been thrown out of it. They you decide.