If you come to Vienna, seriously do not waste your time with this place, especially if you're mobility impaired at all. I went with a tour group for our final dinner and right away ran into problems. The extremely rude man in charge of "letting" our group in kept pushing me to go up the 42 steps (which was a miscount to begin with) even though I asked for the lift. His answer was the lift was "a really long walk" and that there were "only 42 steps" again at which point I insisted on the lift because when you have a disability, 42 steps is 42 too many. So one of the other gentleman there took us on this supposed "long" walk that was actually around the corner on the side of the building. The other man clearly just didn't either believe I needed the lift or didn't want to have to deal with it and therefore lied and tried to get me to take the steps. Either way, completely unacceptable treatment for somewhere you are a patron at.
As if that weren't bad enough, the kitchen was having issues so the dinner was served late and when it was, the food was terrible. Cold and inedible. My vegetarian dish consisted of cold peppers and hash brown like potatoes that probably would have been better down the road at McDonalds. My mom was the only one to not get her dessert and half of us didn't get coffee when someone else came in to announce us that the opera/orchestra performance was starting. Our Tour Director had to tell them they had to hold the performance for us. Which they did but we walked into a room full of scowling musicians and the other bus loads of tourists that were brought in who were mad we held up the performance. The musicians had on cheesy costumes, reminiscent of 1980s David's Bridal bridesmaids gowns for the women and the majority of them looked extremely bored.
The host we had raved about being treated like kings and queens which meant being crammed into a room to sit in chairs that looked like they had been sat in since 1850 and were extremely uncomfortable. They had a smattering of more cheesy ballet and opera mixed in with the orchestra. By the free champagne at intermission (where everyone crams into another small space and the only available restrooms are once again down the "42" steps) we had no interest in the second half. While we waited for the second half to finish, the performers proceeded to walk by us scowling every time they were done to make sure we knew they were appalled we didn't want to watch them anymore.
Please don't waste your money on this and if you're with a tour group, don't expect much or skip it if you can't. read more