I am kicking around the idea of taking this same trip in 2020 with my DH instead of Trish. Love her dearly but I spent most of the cruise wishing he were with me and how much he would enjoy it.
The cruise was pretty weak on evening entertainment but that doesn't hold much interest with us. If I hadn't spent most evenings in the Explorer's lounge with the lovely disboard people here while Trish had her nose in a book I would have been bored to tears but I'll have the DH to hang out with next time and that will be fine.
The food in the World Buffet, The Restaurant and Manfredi's was outstanding I could probably skip the Chef's Table. My husband has the palate of a 10 yr old boy so we would end up going to the buffet or getting room service. Room service was outstanding. The food is definitely a step or two above
DCL but the atmosphere wasn't as entertaining. The Silver Sea's package was an unbelievable bargain and room service would deliver glasses of wine at no charge. I expect they aren't used to passengers with fully functioning livers.
My big problem was with our excursions with Viking, beginning with the extra Pompeii excursion. It is labeled demanding and I have arthritis in my feet after years of being a pharmacist. I can easily walk miles but standing in one spot gets uncomfortable not to mention boring so I was a bit on the fence about it. I was surprised when we loaded the bus to find two of the guests using canes and several of the guests quite elderly and moving slowly. The tour moved so slowly it was a shuffle and we saw what I felt was a small percentage of Pompeii. The tour guide would often come to a stand still waiting for guests to catch up and several of the guests had to sit for a bit. I think it was the luck of the draw which bus you were on because I don't think others had the same problem. I think it would have been better if Viking had a separate excursion labeled "moderate" that the slower moving guests could enjoy. As soon as I boarded the ship I canceled all of the extra excursions except the ones in Venice and the cooking class. Viking immediately refunded those without penalty which was wonderful.
Another of our extra excursions also had issues. The Unraveling St. Mark's Square and Doge's Palace in Venice. We got to the theatre early and was placed in group number 8 and we waited. Then our number was called and we disembarked from the ship and we waited. Group 9 passed us by and left. We then got in line for the shuttle behind Group 10 members of whom got to the theatre long after we did but got better seats on the boat shuttle. We get to St. Mark's Square and there was some confusion about getting tickets into Doge's Palace and we waited. We finally got the tickets and we got in line and then we waited in line again, for awhile. We had left our room nearly two hours ago and had seen nothing but did a lot of waiting standing on my feet and I'd rather be walking. The tour inside Doge's Palace was meh but the guide upon leaving the large room did not make sure we were all together and a group of non-English speaking tourist cut off about a third of us. Unfortunately this happened during the walk through the prison and all of our headsets went dead, we were too far away from the guide who did not notice we were missing. So we heard nothing of Cassanova and what I thought would be the most interesting parts of the tour. The tour was over before anyone could get into the Basilica and some guests elected to stay and catch a later shuttle.
The cooking class, another extra excursion, had the feeling that it opened up the tour to more guests it was a bit more than they could comfortably handle. The big bus could not make it up to the school so there was a little walk but it was fine.
All of the excursions through Viking had that big box feeling of too many people being herded together moving at the pace of the slowest person which would have been fine for the included tours but was really unacceptable for the extras.
I've read TheMaxRebo's TR and am following khertz's TR and agree with everything they have said and it sounds like Kristy had a better Pompeii experience than we did. I had heard that others enjoyed the River Cruise excursions more and it would seem to me that a cruise line that is by nature a port intensive cruise line would have had better excursions. The best one we had was the private one organized by Cousin Orville.
What was everyone else's experiences with the Viking excursions? How were the ones in Croatia and Bari? If we do go we are definitely getting TheMaxRebo's and Cousin Orville's contacts for private tours but I don't like the idea of having to do that in every port.