My wife and I chose this cruise because it visited many of the locations in Australia that we had not visited before, plus we really looked forward to the Komodo dragon visits. The on shore organization was extremely good, professional and friendly. The initial check in process for quick. It was annoying that various pre-trip activities documented by Viking for Australia and Bali were not necessary - I hate my time being wasted!

The locations visited were a mixed bag of good and not so good. Unfortunately most of the really interesting on shore excursions had been sold out prior to them being available to us. So we booked private tours which were both canceled because of bad weather. For the Viking tours, town visits were not very exciting and somewhat repetitive. The stop at Thursday Island was a complete waste of our time, and the organization of the tenders was poor, which meant a lot of people had to wait in the hot blazing sun for a long period of time (we waited 45 minutes).

We were a little disappointed in the Komodo dragon visit. First the island we were taken to was changed to Rinca, and although we saw a small number of dragons, certainly not what we were hoping for. Read more