We have been on five cruises before - Celebrity, Princess, Cunard and Norwegian. None of them compare to Viking (although Cunard is close). This cruise was pretty much flawless in every way you can imagine. Embarkation was smooth and painless and they let us on the ship and into our room hours before we expected. The food was universally great, there was always lots of it, and the specialty restaurants were all very good. We bought a beverage package and for us that was a good investment. But their policy of providing drinks with meals was very liberally applied, and if you limited your drinking to meals you probably wouldn't need that package.

The talks about upcoming ports were very informative, and the included tours - we took most of them - were very good. Brian, their Cruise Director, was not only a splendid presenter and full of great information....he's also a very talented singer!

The ship was generally spotless and I had a very hard time finding any rust. That was not true on every other ship we have ever been on. Rust is a continuing problem on ships and leaves a bad impression about overall ship maintenance (I did four years in the Navy) but the Viking people seem to have defeated it. Read more