Viking Cruises 🚢
Not going to go into too many details here, but this doamin is to access the details of our cruises:
- Viking River Cruises
- Viking Ocean Cruises
In the Viking River Cruise space, I stated "If we ever take a
non-Viking River Cruise, I may need to change the name of this page and subdomain..." Well, guess what?!!? We took a
non-Viking River Cruise.
Well, I guess maybe it would be better to say we took a Viking non-River Cruise.
And hence I created a new subdomain: VOC.
Though the "O" stands for "Ocean", not all the cruises take place on an ocean but on an "ocean-class ship".
But then the question is raised "What is the different between the River ships and the Ocean shios?"
Originally, this was going to just be a bullet list, but while setting this up, I decided to make it a comparison table.
| Category / Class | River | Ocean |
|---|---|---|
| Travel locations | Rivers | Oceans and seas |
| Travel focus | Destination | Ship |
| Ship capacity | ≤190 | ≤990 |
| Decks | 3 (typically) or 2 |
9 |
| Room size | 135 sq ft and up |
288 sq ft and up |
| Room Verandas | About a third to half the rooms have one | Every room has one |
| Restaurant(s) | 1 |
6: The Restaurant World Café Manfredi's The Chef's Table Wintergarden Memsen's (not pictured) |
|
Food availability: - Breakfast - Lunch - Dinner - Other |
6:00 - 9:00 menu and buffet 1:00 - ~2:30 menu, one seating 7:00 - ~8:30 menu, one seating 24 / 7 snack station; room service (for a fee) |
6:30 - 10:00 menu (The Restaurant), and buffet (World Café) 11:00 - 3:00 buffet (World Café) 6:00 - 9:00 menu (The Restaurant), and buffet (World Café) Mamsen's, Manfredi's, Chef's Table, Pool Grill, Wintergarden (daily 4:00 tea), Living Room snacks, 24 / 7 room service (included) |
| Bar(s) | 1 in the 1 lounge |
5 bars in various areas with one defined lounge (the bar next to the Star Theater is likely only open when the theater is) |
| Lounges | 1 lounge |
The primary 2-story
Explorer's Lounge
on the 7th deck fore |
| Live Entertainment | Lounge pianist (daily), occasional guest entertainment | Atrium duo (daily) Atrium pianist (daily) Theater performances (frequently) Explorer's Lounge guitarist (frequently - and not pictured) |
| Laundry | For a fee | Self-serve for free |
| Sundeck | Includes a shuffleboard, and or a large chess set, and an herb garden | Full sun deck, PLUS a sports deck with shuffleboard, a putting green, lawn bowling, and table tennis |
| Other amenities | Only the River of Gold ship has a small pool |
- Full spa - Exercise gym - Hair and Nail salon - Star Theater - Two small cinemas - Infinity pool and hot tub - Retractable roof covered pool - Hot tubs (1 next to the Inifinity pool the other next to the main pool) - Torshavn "night club" / lounge |
We have been asked, more than once: "Which is better, oceans or rivers?"
It isn't a case of one is better than the other. While talking to The Husband (IYKYK), I made the comment that
the rivers seem to be more about the destinations whereas the oceans are more about the ship. He agreed.
The ocean ports tend to be a little further away - sometimes the ship is anchored and passengers take a tender to shore - and
there is more time spent on the ship. Usually excursions ended by lunch or early afternoon with the ability for guests to easily
only do one a day, whereas on the rivers guests could typically do a morning excursion AND an afternoon one too.
There is far more to eat on the oceans, with much more time to do so. The breakfast times are about the same. However,
the oceans have lunch available starting at 11:30 through 2:30 (rather than a full single seating at 1:00). And dinner
starts at 5:45 (maybe earlier, somewhere) and runs until 9:00 in the main dining rooms (rather than just a full seating
at 7:00). The Wintergarden has daily tea at 4:00. And Mamsens has a "midnight snack" available between 10:00 and midnight.
Even the Living Room bar had a small display case with fancy snacks in it including cookies, muffins, pastries [in the monring]
or fancy open face sandwiches [in the afternoon] including shrimp salad and roast beef.
There is plenty more to do on the oceans too, such as some sports on the sport deck, the pools (plural), and the
Star Theater shows.
Right at the end of typing up the second VRC, we stumbled upon information regarding Viking referrals.
(I mention this because I want to emphasize that the referral information was added after the fact and at the end of typing this up, and not that this was typed up due to a potential for some sort of referral). Anyway...