ST. PAUL, Minns. — Richard and Jean Pletcher hoped to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in style. In April 2020, the Eagan couple paid $18,800 to reserve a luxury cruise from St. Paul to New Orleans, which would have been their sixth voyage with Viking, an international cruise giant based in Switzerland.
Then earlier in September, just four days before the first trip of the Viking Mississippi from the Mississippi River’s headwaters to its gulf, the company informed them by mail their reservation had been canceled. The 386-passenger ship, custom-built for the river, departed St. Paul’s Lambert’s Landing as planned, but the Pletchers were not aboard it. There was worse news to come.
“I called immediately and was given very little information, only that we could reschedule for the trip during 2023 or 2024 with a 110 percent credit,” said Richard Pletcher, who is in his 70s. “When I called just to inquire about this, I was told the first available trip was actually in 2025, because everything earlier was fully booked.”
In other words, “Viking wanted to keep our money for three more years, after already having it for almost two years,” said Pletcher, who instead demanded a full refund. “Asking for our understanding, loyalty and continued support. Needless to say, my response did not include any of these qualities.”
The Pletchers aren’t the only couple who have been bumped from Viking’s new Mississippi River cruises at the last minute.
Passengers from across the country say they’ve received letters from the cruise company informing them their reservation, paid for more than two years in advance, had been canceled just days ahead of departure. The letters offered limited explanation except to say that the company wants to ensure its voyages are top quality, and challenging circumstances mean that the Viking Mississippi must sail at reduced capacity.
Entire boat trips planned from St. Paul in July and August were canceled this summer, and interior work aboard the ship has apparently continued right through the first departure from St. Paul toward St. Louis, Missouri on Sept. 3.
It’s unclear how many reservations have been terminated with days to spare, but a Facebook community page created by a ticket holder on July 1 — “Viking Mississippi Cruise” — has drawn dozens of comments, many of them from worried or unhappy reservation-holders. Others said their trips were roughly half full, carrying about 200 passengers.
Calls to Viking for comment were not returned.
Whether the company is primarily struggling with the national labor shortage, delayed staff trainings or physical considerations such as supply chain issues impacting particular staterooms remains unclear. Passengers have said their consolation letter or on-board experience seems to raise the possibility of all three.
“We are currently on this ship,” wrote passenger Dean Siddons on the Facebook page, during a trip to St. Paul on Sept. 15. “There are numerous ship repair/maintenance people onboard and they are taking up rooms. There are also some Viking people here to do staff training, and some other Viking people with unknown functions that are not crew. None of these would normally be on the ship. So some of the rooms are unavailable for these reasons.”
Viking, which had once planned to debut its new cruise ship in 2017, delayed the launch five years while it worked through federal regulatory challenges under the Jones Act, otherwise known as the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. The law requires vessels traveling between U.S. ports to carry U.S. crews and to be U.S.-owned, U.S.-registered and U.S.-built.
Even after appeasing the U.S. Maritime Administration by leasing a charter from Louisiana-based Edison Chouest, Viking had to deal with federals appeals filed by competing cruise companies. Some media outlets along the river corridor have pointed to likely supply chain challenges.
“As you may be aware, due to circumstances beyond our control, construction of the custom-built Viking Mississippi was delayed, impacting the ship’s delivery date and the preparations necessary to welcome guests on board,” reads a Sept. 8 letter from Viking to a California-based passenger who opted for a full refund.
“The ship has now begun sailing with her first guests, but we are still putting the finishing touches on the overall experience and refining the itinerary,” the letter continues. “On your scheduled departure, we must operate at a reduced capacity as we continue to ramp up service. Unfortunately, this means that some staterooms need to be cancelled, and we are contacting you today because yours is among them.”
Bumped customers have been offered full refunds or vouchers equivalent to 110 percent of what they’ve already paid so they can book at later dates. Passengers have called the latter easier said than done as trips fill up years in advance. The prospect of waiting until 2025 to board a Viking cruise strikes some elderly passengers as iffy, if not unlikely given their age.
“When I inquired about how we go about rescheduling a trip in the future, if we even want to, the response was to check every day and maybe there would be a cancellation,” Richard Pletcher said. “They wouldn’t even monitor cancellations and put us first in line to consider whether we could fill the vacancy.”
Catherine Frohnert and her husband, both in their 80s, booked their Viking trip on the Mississippi River in 2019 and paid for it in early 2020, only to learn this month their reservation from New Orleans to St. Paul had been canceled. Frohnert, a world traveler in her 80s who is Irish by birth but has lived in the U.S. most of her life, had planned to fly to New Orleans and travel back to Minnesota by water for what she assumed would be her final voyage. Rescheduling a trip three years from now sounds unlikely to her.
“I was looking forward to it. I read all the books of Mark Twain,” said Frohnert, a former St. Paul resident who now lives in Rochester, Minnesota. “Over the 56 years we’ve lived in America, mostly Minnesota, we have traveled to over 85 countries.”
“The only thing left that we wanted to do was to sail up the Mississippi,” she continued. “The price has shot up quite a bit from what we paid. If you go on Facebook, there are many people who were dumped. I’ve done Viking cruises on the Danube, the Rhine, and this was my last wish for travel. I was angry last Wednesday.”
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