Overall, very good.

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Reviews: 15

Helpful Votes: 158

Review summary

Firstly, we chose the Veranda cabin. As it was the same size as the much more expensive deluxe Veranda cabin I could see no reason to pay extra. Admittedly, they got to choose dining in specialty restaurants before we did if you wanted to do that. And also they could choose, their excursions earlier. As I had no intention on buying any excursions through Viking, because of their exorbitant price, and they had to give us the included tour, I was perfectly happy to get the last choice, and all of them in honesty suited me perfectly. As for the specialty restaurant, I just walked on, went to the girl who did the bookings for the restaurants and got as many as I wanted. Sometimes they said they were booked out, but when I used the app I got more than enough. In fact, I cancelled some of my restaurant bookings because the restaurants had set menus and it became repetitive. The ship itself is beautiful, filled with books which is great. The staff seem to know what you like after a couple of days, so that’s quite amazing to me. The entertainment in the atrium was a pianist and a cello and violin player. They played classical music, 99% of the time. Now I don’t mind a bit of classical music, but 24 /seven did my head in…. call themselves the thinking man’s Cruise, so they assumed in that everybody would like classical music. As I said, a little bit goes along way. If they have a look at the age, demographic of the people on board, which, in our case was anything from 40 to about 80. Even the 60s and 70-year-old people would’ve been listening to Led Zeppelin, David Bowie, Deep Purple, Queen etc etc etc. I see no reason why they can’t find softer more contemporary music to play. It does not have to be classical. Upstairs, they had a gentleman who was singing and quite frankly I didn’t really like his voice. He did sing some more modern songs, but that actual area up. There didn’t really appeal to me. They did have four lovely young people who did shows every two or three nights. But mostly they were asked to sing songs from the 50s and 60s and Broadway musical songs. This might have something to do with the fact that out cruise, director and entertainment dude, absolutely loved musicals so that’s what we got stuck with. So if you’re thinking I didn’t enjoy myself you’d be wrong. I just did not like the music but there were so many things to like. I’m a vegetarian wasn’t overly fussed with the offerings for me on some nights. Other nights were perfectly fine. But as I said, I love the staff, I liked my cabin very much, I loved the atrium area where the cafe was and lots and lots of books there. I did like the movies at night in the pool area that was good. I like that there was movies on the TV so that if you went to bed early because you were tired, you could watch a movie. They did do an odd game of trivia occasionally and another game called Baggo. The included excursions were quite okay. In my opinion. I didn’t come here for an in-depth historical lecture, unlike some people who complained. I just want to be shown around some information given and the time for me to be able to wander around and do my own thing. There was plenty of time after the excursions to do whatever you wanted. in fact, I booked five extra excursions myself through a company called get your guide. They were fabulous and half the price of Vikings, Vikings, organisation on the ship was outstanding. They were there every step of the way, if you couldn’t find your way, or couldn’t find something they were there to help. I found by the end of the month I was just getting used to the flow of the ship, and finding that I was less bored because I was used to it. Would I go again? Yes, I probably would. I’d like there to be cruises that were a little less of one particular nationality, I did find some of the people extremely loud and a little bit rude to be honest to the staff. If not rude, I mean, blunt and sharp. This was a cruise for a month that we didn’t actually meet people other than the general chat during the day, but certainly none that we would hang out with on our holiday which is very unusual. But as I said, we found quite a few of different nationalities at all sort of hooked up and quite loudly. Sat around talking. Sometimes we had to move away, but they all seem to be having a good time. The food was pretty good sometimes a bit patchy, sometimes very repetitive, but it was okay. My attitude is if I don’t have to cook it and I don’t have to shop for it and I don’t have to clean up afterwards. Well then it’s pretty dam good.

Embarkation

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

Onboard Activities

Entertainment

Service and Staff

Ship Quality

Cabin / Stateroom

Ports of call

Leknes, Norway

Geiranger, Norway

Honningsvag, Norway

TROMSO, NORWAY

Oslo, Norway

Copenhagen, Denmark

Aalborg, Denmark

Warnemunde (Berlin), Germany

Edinburgh, Scotland

Mariehamn, Finland

Stockholm, Sweden

Gdynia (Gdansk), Poland

Ronne, Bornholm, Denmark

Greenwich (London), England

Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, Scotland

Lerwick, Shetland Islands, Scotland

Eidfjord, Norway

Bergen, Norway

Disembarkation