{"id":7485,"date":"2011-03-23T01:46:36","date_gmt":"2011-03-23T08:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/?p=7485"},"modified":"2011-03-23T01:46:36","modified_gmt":"2011-03-23T08:46:36","slug":"viking-river-cruise-new-ships","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=7485","title":{"rendered":"Viking Reflects River Cruise Boom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-7488\" href=\"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/2011\/03\/viking-river-cruise-new-ships\/viking-on-rhine\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7488\" title=\"Viking-on Rhine\" src=\"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Viking-on-Rhine.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"354\" \/><\/a>The first impression of river cruising tends to be that it&#8217;s expensive and you don&#8217;t get as much for your money. If that&#8217;s true, there are clearly many people who disagree, because river cruising is becoming wildly popular in Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Define wildly.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vikingrivercruises.com\/\">Viking River Cruises<\/a> this week unveiled plans for 10 more ships. They&#8217;re state-of-the-art. They have two-room suites and three-quarters of the rooms have balconies. <a rel=\"attachment wp-att-7497\" href=\"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/2011\/03\/viking-river-cruise-new-ships\/viking-veranda-stateroom-1-2\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7497\" title=\"Viking-Veranda Stateroom-1\" src=\"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Viking-Veranda-Stateroom-11-e1300848972305.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" \/><\/a>And four of them will be in service one year from right now, the rest by 2014.<\/p>\n<p>Viking&#8217;s news release encourages customers to visit its website to book passage, any time now. It&#8217;s a little confusing on the website, and the folks at Viking clearly want to talk to customers, but if we read it correctly, the price will be the same for the new ships (2012) \u2014 they&#8217;re called Longships \u2014 as it is for the current ones (2011). And whether we read it correctly or not, the cost is not what we anticipated.<\/p>\n<p>Define cost.<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s take one example of cruising on a Longship, using Viking&#8217;s most popular (five-country) itinerary:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Viking Odin, 15-day Grand European, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iamsterdam.com\/\">Amsterdam<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.budapestinfo.hu\/\">Budapest<\/a>, for $217 per day<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>To keep those prices in perspective, you also have to consider what&#8217;s included. Shore excursions, 13 of them on this cruise. At least some taxes. WiFi for your laptop. Wine with all dinners.<\/p>\n<p>Book early, and it&#8217;s even better. Early, by the way, means the end of this month. Viking has a 2-for-1 offer that also includes $500 off each airfare when booked through Viking, protection against port tax increases and fuel surcharges, airport transfers. The cost is $225 each per day (more in high season, May through October).<\/p>\n<p>The Longships hold just 190 passengers.<\/p>\n<p>Exclusivity does have its price.<a rel=\"attachment wp-att-7489\" href=\"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/2011\/03\/viking-river-cruise-new-ships\/viking-balconies\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7489\" title=\"Viking-Balconies\" src=\"http:\/\/cruisingdoneright.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/Viking-Balconies.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"650\" height=\"183\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The first impression of river cruising tends to be that it&#8217;s expensive and you don&#8217;t get as much for your money. If that&#8217;s true, there are clearly many people who disagree, because river cruising is becoming wildly popular in Europe. Define wildly. Okay, Viking River Cruises this week unveiled plans for 10 more ships. They&#8217;re&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/?p=7485\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Viking Reflects River Cruise Boom<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,32,19,15],"tags":[72,86,35,151,42,282],"class_list":["post-7485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cruise-industry-news","category-deals","category-ships","category-stories","tag-cruise-deals","tag-cruise-ships","tag-cruises","tag-new-cruise-ships","tag-river-cruises","tag-viking-river-cruises","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7485"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7485\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vitaluna.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}