Why Viking?

Our last post described how we chose to Sail the Drake Straight over the other option of Flying the Straight which opens up a much larger variety of potential cruise ship options.

There are a variety of large cruise lines like Royal Caribbean and Princess which you would have seen if you watched the VLOG’s in our previous post on Antarctica, but those ships do not offer any actual excursions ashore in Antarctica and thus were quickly taken off our list of options.

There are also a large number of travel companies and cruise lines that offer various different options to visit Antarctica ranging from small to large vessel and semi-affordable (nothing going to Antarctica on a small or mid size ship is cheap) to ultra luxury lines.

Examples include Hurtigruten, Abercrombie & Kent, Lindblad Expeditions - National Geographic,, Ponant, Quark, Atlas, Adventure-Life, Silversea Expedition, Seabourn Expedition, and Viking Expedition.

A few people different travel reviewers helped us settle on Viking that are listed, below, but a few key drivers are highlighted below. Viking is 18 and up. Viking has two mini subs. Viking’s toys are stowed away below deck, if you see the review of Seabourn they store the toys on the top. At the end we wanted a mid size ship for the Drake passage to have some options for bars and restaurants while still having some aspect of small ship feel and service. Viking Polaris also has the Hide which looks fun.

Great review of the Viking Polaris in Antarctica with lots of information on the ship itself, also great overall cruise reviewer in general.

Great review of the cruise experience itself with details on pre-arrival and such, very informative even if your not going to be sailing on Viking, and great coverage of the Antarctica experience itself.

Another review by Popular Cruising.

Well we hope that you enjoyed another post of how we chose Viking.