Not a fan of large ship cruises. Have been on numerous river and small ship/yacht cruises and always enjoyed those. Viking does a good job on its river cruises so we decided to try their new medium size venue. We were very pleasantly surprised at almost all aspects of this experience.

The ship is absolutely beautiful and extremely well conceived. There were many places where we could find quiet and solitude (when desired) . Never felt like we were burdened with masses of people or movements. With many restaurants and reservation opportunities we never felt we were in a "mess hall" situation. The general ship layout ,along with the elimination of gambling and other big cruise ship activities served to remove the somewhat rouckus nature of some of the passengers as experienced on large ship cruises. The on ship entertainment was also excellent, limited in viewer size, and well suited to the general ship attitude.The service staff was the best we have ever experienced in our many years of traveling.

The only somewhat negative comment had to do with the off ship tours. Unlike small ship cruises where there may be one bus going to a shore site a mid size ship had 3 buses of passengers. These buses traveled together to all points of on shore sights and adventures. In almost every group there is always one who is ever on time and holds back the others. In one bus this may or may not be the case and is easily addressed. With 3 busses the odds go up of this happening and 100plus others are affected. Missing part of a tour is not fun because of basic inconsideration. I do not know the answer to this in large multi bus movement tours other than to let each bus operate as a single unit Read more