First of all let me say that the ship is Beautiful. The staff was wonderful and couldn't have been more friendly. The food was amazing. The Chef "I'm sorry I can't remember his name" was always about checking on the guests.

My only hold back on giving this a higher rating is that Viking still has some kinks to work out as far as ports, equipment, and boarding vessels for expeditions. Some of the ports were not much. Beautiful place to hike but not much more. There were problems with the submarines which really limited the chance to go on one. The "Jones" law in US waters didn't help. On 2 expeditions we were standing in the landing area with full gear on for over 1/2 hour. One expedition had a medical emergency while on one of the Islands. They had to call for the Zodiac to return and left with the individual and another passenger that was a doctor. This left the others waiting for more zodiacs to come retrieve them. We heard they were on the dock for 1 1/2 hours with no communication, water or food other than what they had brought for the hike. Hopefully the man was ok. They could not tell us due to "HIPPA" Due to all of the issues we got to go the zodiac twice, the special ops once, which wasn't enough and the submarine once. Some people that wanted to go on it did not get the opportunity. Every time we went to the lab there was nothing going on this was partially due to schedule conflicts with our expeditions.

The cabin was wonderful but I do prefer to have a balcony. Even with the Nordic balcony "window" I didn't feel like I was outside. The shade is a drop down so you have to raise it look out at all "in tracks" and you can not have the window open if the shade is down. So no sleeping with it open unless you don't mind the sun coming in first thing. Read more