Viking does great cruises and we enjoyed ours a lot, but there was one thing that bothered us. We paid extra to have a suite with balconies, but several times during the 8-day cruise we had other ships docked right alongside us, making the balconies useless and blocking the view when we were in port.

Our only other comment is about the cabin. We did back-to-back cruises (Viking calls that a "Butterfly" reservation), so it was hard not to compare the two ships and two cruises. We took the Rhine cruise on the Tialfi first and then the Rhone cruise on the Heimdal four days later. This is a review of the Rhone cruise on the Heimdal. The Heimdal is about four years older than the Tialfi. There were noticeable differences between the two ships due mainly to the age difference. Viking made numerous improvements to the cabins in the newer ship. Some of the design changes should be brought into the older ship when it is renovated, like more closet space and storage and a medicine cabinet in the bathroom. The newer design was fantastic, especially in comparison to the older design.

The older ship, the Heimdal, also had a minor wastewater problem in that the cabin smelled a little of sewer for parts of the first couple of days. Read more