We chose Viking cruises because of several options. One is that there are no children under the age of 18, it is a grown family cruise. We save our grandkid cruises for Disney cruises. Second is we want to take a river cruise with Viking and since we live in Florida, we thought we would try them out on an ocean cruise first. And we just thought the cruise was fantastic and met all of our expectations. We are definitely going to do a river cruise and we are also looking at several other ocean cruises.

We loved how everything is included! An included excursion in every port and they were all great! Our only complaint was at one of the stops, the buses provided were very tight quarters and hard to get in and out of, but no fault of Viking, this is the largest buses in that port city and a good thing too, anything larger would not have been able to get through the city streets. The beer and wine that is part of the cruise cost is not bad, but we wanted a bit of an upgrade to spirits as well as a bit nicer wine, so we bought the spirits package which is much cheaper than other cruise lines such as carnival. The entertainment was top notch, the singers, pianist, violinist, WOW! The only thing I might have added was maybe a play of some sort, but we enjoyed everything without it. The smaller size of the ship made it easy to get to know other passengers and crew members alike. And we liked that. There were history talks and forums for my husband and crafts and card games for me. We never lacked for something to do. The pools and hot tubs were great, especially being able to close the cover when we had rainy weather. The spa (Included!) was wonderful and included a snow grotto, weight room, and saunas in the dressing rooms. You could also pay for massages, pedicures, and hair salon as wanted. There was a walking track for the fitness buffs around the 2nd deck and plenty of quiet places to relax and read a book or work the crosswords or suduko puzzles provided each day. The cabin stewards were great too, they knew you and made sure your room was kept up just like you liked, all you had to do was ask and the bed got softer and the fridge was filled with your beverages. Ah, I want to go back now! It was so hard coming back to real life.