Booking #2530155
Booking #2530146
My family and I were thrilled when we learned that Uniworld was going to be doing a Generation cruise. We had always wanted to do a River Cruise in Europe but were restricted because we had children, and most River cruises do not allow Kids. Silly rule anyway. We finally had a cruise line and boat we could book and were so excited. For almost 2 years we counted down the days til we hopped on a plane and crossed the ocean for an adventure of a lifetime. Boy were we wrong.
Let me start by saying my family and I have been on probably 10+ cruises in our short lifetime and have had bad, good, and great experiences. The Uniworld experience was one of the worst. I had done my research and found Uniworld to be one of the best, if not the highest rated cruise line for our purposes so I felt confident in booking this trip for my family. As we departed the plane, collected our bags and found our Uniworld representative to take us to the bus, our excitement grew. We had traveled almost 15 hours and couldn't wait to get on the River Princess. As we drove into downtown Vienna, we were informed of a change of plans. Our cruise would be delayed a couple days because the water level in some parts on the Danube were low. Ughh. So the new plan was to stay in a hotel for 2 nights, then travel by bus(3-4 hours) to a future city port. Not what we signed up for. There was also no childrens programs that we expected with the Generations cruise in Vienna.
We finally arrive at the boat on day 3 only to learn that the boat would not be sailing for another 2 days. That's 4 of the 8 total days did not get to experience the boat. We also learned that our cruise would miss 3 of the small town ports we so wanted to explore. We would take more buses to backtrack the Danube to visit Passau. What a Disaster!
I will now just list the other disappointments with this trip as to not just ramble on:
1. Rooms are the smallest of any oat we have ever been on. Expected more for the price. Hair in sink when we first opened room. Room had an odor of sewage and we could hear every flush of other rooms toilets.
2. River Princess was severely understaffed and undertrained. Dinner took almost 2 1/2 hours to complete. The dining room staff did their best, just not enough staff to go around for a boat that was only 75% capacity.
3. Captain and his staff were not very friendly or helpful. Many times sitting at front desk on phones, paying no attention to travelers waiting patiently to ask questions. My wife once went to front desk to ask how far a bike ride it would be from the boat into town and was met with the reply from the Captain, " You can find it on google." Wow, not what we expected from the highest rated cruise line and from the Head of the Ship.
4. Viking Cruise line was in all the ports our ship seemed not to be able to get to.
There were some pros to the trip. Unranked staff were nice and pleasant. They were trying to do their best, just not enough of them. Food was pretty good. Overall ship was aged but still pretty in common areas.
I was wanting this trip to be a once in a lifetime vacation that my wife and children would always remember. A trip for the Generations!! Unfortunately it did not live up to the hype or expectations we had expected. Uniworld cruise line might never get past my generation for a repeat trip.
wrote to cruise line and never got a response
