I was a newly minted 61-year old and my daugheter was nigh onto 40, and from the Viking River Cruise advertisements, we were expecting the passengers to be in the same age range. Imagine our surpise when they were more like in their 70's or higher! My daughter said she felt like she'd just step into the casting call for the movie "Cacoon"! Since we're were on the ship way too much do to cruising WAY too slow up the Elbe River and thus were spending tons of time with the other passengers, it did have a negative impact for us and our expectations. And since it was always communcal dining, you were always stuck listening about someone's recent ailments, what they did in high school (who cares?!), etc. And there's no room service, so it was either skip the meal or eat as fast as you could to escape.

The food, crew, excursions, rooms, etc. were all top notch - not a compliant there at all. The hotels were really nice and all of the airpost transferes were done really well.

Another thing we noticed is that on VRC's itinerary ads, they talk about you visitng various ports, but they never say how long you'll actually be at the port, and due to us being on the "slowboat to China", we were very dissapoiinted in how little time we had in the various cityies along the way. I'd rather have a speedier boat and stay longer in the variuos ports than vice versa! Read more