In its short existence the Viking ocean cruise line has won a lot of praise and many awards. Going against the run of the mass-market lines, it has embraced a smaller scale – its medium-sized ships (48,000 tons) can take just 930 passengers each. There’s no nonsense with that being ‘lower berths only’, either – there are no ‘upper berths’ on a Viking Cruise ship, it’s just two people per cabin. And off course all cabins have a balcony.
So far, so typical for a luxury cruise line. What is not so typical is the way they’re expanding. They currently have 4 ships at sea – Viking Star launched the line in 2015, Viking Sea arrived in 2016, and was followed in turn by Viking Sky and Viking Sun in 2017. Viking Orion will join them in 2018, with a sixth ship, as yet unnamed, launching in 2019.
Within the last few days the line has confirmed a further four new ships, to be delivered in 2021, 2022 (two) and 2023, bringing the total to ten ships. Subject to small changes to detailed design points based on the experience gained from the early ships, all ten will be identical. Certainly they’ll all be the same size, have the same passenger capacity, and exude the same Scandinavian minimalist design.
It’s only fair to say that prices on them are above the mass-market average – it looks as if it’s at least £200 per person per night for a basic balcony cabin in mid-season. But for that money it looks as if you get a very interesting and high quality product. I have to admit, we’re tempted. I can’t see that we’d be able to do it every year – possibly just the once, in fact! – but sometime in the next few years Val will be joining me in retirement, and a cruise on a Viking Ocean ship would be an ideal way of marking the event. Up until now the fleet has been spread very thinly around the world, but as the number of ships grow so will the number of cruises in different locations. Watch this space…..
Tom's Cruise Blog 