daryllafferty

21 hours ago, Small is better said:

Hi Cool Cruiser, 

We traveled on the Viking Sea in December 2018 on the Caribbean to the Amazon. I am sorry I didn't get a chance to write a full review.

Most of the included excursions were not great. Beware of the word Panorama. It means they just drive past the sights. The Boi Bumba show in Parintins, Brazil was the exception. It was a colorful display of singing and dancing with Brazilian flair. However, the excursions that we paid extra for were good to very good. My favorites were being in the water with pink dolphins in the Rio Negro (a tributary of the Amazon) and visiting and dancing with the indigenous people in their village in the rain forest. I also enjoyed hunting for caiman in the dark in small boats. I did get tired of being told AGAIN how rubber was made. But, that is probably because I signed up for so many excursions. I don't expect to be back in Amazonia again so I signed up for everything. In Belem, the Panorama was disappointing but the walking tour that I paid for was interesting. This is a very depressed part of the world that doesn't get a lot of tourist ships. Sometimes, things were a little rough. Distances to points of interest were an issue also. We had long boat rides to the dolphins and the indigenous people's village.

We had to conserve water while on the Amazon river. The ship normally treats sea water without problem but evidently that muddy river water was a problem. The launderettes were closed during that period.

<snip>

We are very glad we made the trip!

 

I had pictured the trip up the Amazon like an adventure movie with green walls of jungle on both sides and tropical birds and animals occasionally seen or heard.  Are parts of it anything like this?  Or are the banks of the river pretty much all cleared, farmed and settled?

Does the ship stay mostly in the middle of the river, or is it sometimes close enough to the banks to see things?

4 hours ago, LadyImpactOhio said:

Haha. You’re not supposed to use that word here. 

Oops!

Next time I'll know...

Thanks for the tip.  I assume the other social website is Facebook...

There haven't been any comments posted here for over a year.  I would like to hear reviews of the more recent cruises up the Amazon.  Did Viking fix some of the problems?

We are scheduled on the Star for November 29, but if we don't hear that things have improved we may change our mind.

We are booked into 6018 on the Star, and I see that it is right below the corridor leading into Mamsen's and the explorer lounge.

We can probably switch to 6019 (the "helpful" agent had us in there first then thought we would have better views on the starboard side of the ship).  6019 looks like it is under cabins instead of a corridor, and might be a better choice.

Anyone have any experience in this cabin?

We had a Viking "Mini-Suite" on a river cruise, and liked it a lot.  The suite was partitioned with a hard wall and a door giving us two separate rooms.  Very nice so one person could stay up and read or watch TV while the other slept.

We are planning on taking the Caribbean-to-Amazon cruise on the Viking Star later this year, and though the Penthouse Junior Suite has "Suite" in the name, I can see that it is really just one room with a curtain.

On the one hand, it's nice that the curtain can be opened and give a very spacious feel to the room.  But on the other hand, it's not a hard wall. 

It seems that the curtain is the main difference between the Penthouse Veranda and the Penthouse Junior Suite (besides being slightly larger), and if the curtain doesn't do the trick, it might not be worth the upgrade.

How well does the curtain work when closed?  Does it insulate from sound and light?  Has anyone traveled in both kinds of suite (River cruise Mini-suite and Ocean Penthouse Junior suite), and can compare for us?