Really hard to describe our experience because it was a two-week cruise, and so many experiences. In summary, our sailing experience was good, on-board Guest Services was excellent, pre-sail experience was way below expected, included shore excursions were mostly on a bus driving through town, very few stops, with a guide. Extra cost excursions were better, but with up to 44 people and expensive.

Good Friends told us about the cruise, and other friends had taken an ocean cruise to the Baltic, so we decided to do this one.

Prepping for the cruise, primarily the procedure for selecting shore excursions was really bad. We were in the least expensive cabin (very adequate, clean and a large sliding glass door to the small veranda, even heated bathroom floor). This made us the last to be eligible for shore excursions, and we could sign up beginning 12:00 AM Pacific time. We were in New England when our time came, which meant 3:00 AM Eastern time. We found many of the included excursions and several of the extras were already sold out. We called Viking Customer Service, and each of the customer reps gave us a different explanation about how we could work around that. One common thread among the reps was that more expensive cabins have better privileges, much like on aircraft where first class passengers have better accommodations. My response was that being on a ship for 14 days is more like a hotel, where these types of privileges are not in place. They obviously were not trained well enough to do their job. Read more