Hi Bonnie,
Our travel agent also sends her customers on the other lines you mentioned, as well as traveling on them and Viking herself. She also has never had an unhappy cruiser.
On our September cruise we were told that Viking is building 3 more "longships." The Viking Europe is to be retired at the end of this season, and I expect the others in this class will also be retired as soon as there are longship replacements.
The new ships have mostly French balconies and suites. In fact the one that they will be using for their new Portuguese tour is almost all French balconies and suites with only a total of 8 cabins that are not. It is smaller than the other long ships with a passenger capacity of only 124.
Despite their payment policy, we continue to cruise with them because as past cruisers we have gotten substantial discounts in addition to the "past cruisers discount." I would guess that the other cruise companies do the same to get repeat cruisers. Obviously we like the way we have been treated or we would not be return cruisers. Their handling of my complaints about Marseille knocked our socks off.
Sue
