Have cruised with Viking River cruises on many occasions and on large ocean liners. We wanted to try out the smaller ships on a short cruise before committing to a longer one. It lived up and surpassed all our expectations and we can hardly wait to go again. How nice to have your snacks replenished every day as well as soft drinks in addition to having a single-serve hot drink machine in the cabin. Likewise, as on the river cruises the wine and beer with lunch and dinner and the bottled water when going ashore make Viking a great value in every case. The shore excursions that are included in the price of the tour were excellent especially for ports one may not have visited which was our case. The optional tours looked interesting but since we were on our first trip to these ports we stuck with the basic included tours. In Algiers there were tours of WWII sites which would be on our agenda were we to ever visit there again.
I would not think this ship would appeal to families with very young children. I believe Viking is geared more to an adult population.
One last thing, embarkation is a breeze.
The cabins are in a word elegantly Scandinavian. Larger than what we've had on big ships.
Great city tour with a great guide. Loved visiting the cathedral here, too.
There are great dining options and the specialty dining room just require a reservation and is not an extra charge. It took us a few days to realize that the long line outside the dining room didn't mean you'd have to wait a long time--our loss. We did miss the ability to sit at tables with other people as we have found that to be an enjoyable experience and a chance to meet interesting people you would probably not meet otherwise. The gelato was a hit every day!
The cabin I thought was more spacious than on the larger ships.
The cruise director was the best we've ever had and we've had some good ones. Her solo program was a not-to-be-missed evening. She really has some pipes and let them rip on her arias.
I really think Viking offers the best bargain for the money. Yes there may be some issues with not being able to book additional shore excursions with the included tour but on our cruise several ports did offer a chance for additional tours. The included tours were generous in length but I was disappointed in our visit to Carthage--the only negative to the entire trip and partly that was the guide.
Can't wait to get on another Viking ship either river or ocean.