Day Seven–Viking Octantis

by | Oct 5, 2026 | Uncategorized

It is not often that we board a new kind of ship. We took our first ocean cruise in 1999 and our first river cruise in 2021. Since then, we've sailed on all kinds of ships, from small riverboats (American Cruise Line, with fewer than 200 passengers) to big ships (Royal Caribbean’s Allure of the Seas, with 6,500+ passengers). During that time, we have sailed on three basic types of ship: ocean, river, and just once on an expedition-type ship (Celebrity’s Flora in the Galapagos). So, when considering this Great Lakes Cruise, one of the big selling points was the chance to sail on an expedition ship again. And I have to say that so far, we are loving Viking Octantis.

If you aren’t a cruise fan, you may find this entire post a snooze. So I won’t blame you if you skip this one. Just sayin’. Come back tomorrow for a report on our last day in Milwaukee while onboard the ship. But if you are even a little interested in what I think is the most beautiful and best-designed ship we have ever sailed on, then by all means read on.

A few ship facts:

  • Octantis accommodates a maximum of 374 guests. Some ships show different numbers depending on how many people are in a stateroom, but since Octantis does not allow children under 18, it limits each stateroom to a maximum of two people, even the biggest suites.
  • Octantis is very thin, only 77 feet across. By contrast, Celebrity Solstice, which we sailed on to Alaska in June, is 121 feet across. On a ship, that makes a difference. In a few days, we will sail through the Welland Canal, which will take the ship to Toronto, then on to Montreal, QuĂ©bec City, and out to the Atlantic. A large cruise ship could not do that.
  • Octantis is four years old. That’s new by ship standards. And she is going into dry dock to keep her that new in just a month or so.
  • She has only seven decks (really eight, but the top deck is crew-only), so it is easy to go up and down.

Enough about facts and figures. Let’s look at the ship from the top down. Of course, her photo is at the top of this page. I took this yesterday when we stopped on Mackinac Island in upper Michigan. She was anchored just offshore, and I had to walk quite a ways to get this shot, so I hope you appreciate it ? 

Deck 6

As you can see from the deck diagram above, Deck 6 is pretty much an open deck. Lots of space to sit and catch some sun, or a great place to take photos. We were up there as we sailed out of Milwaukee. I should add that we were completely alone. Most people had gone to the bow for a sail-away celebration with live music and drinks, but we just wanted the photos, so the six of us were all by our lonesomes up there. Also, on Deck 6 are the BIG suites. The Owner’s Suite you see on the deck plan is more than 700 square feet and has its own private garden area. Seriously. The other suites on that deck are all over 500 square feet. I should point out that Octantis has no verandas/balconies. That would have made her too wide. Instead, you have large windows that open and take up almost the entire width of the stateroom. More about that below when we show you our stateroom.

Deck 5

This deck is completely public. No staterooms. From the front of the ship, my favorite place to sit while writing is the Explorer’s Lounge. Then you run into The Library, followed by The Living Room, a very nice and intimate meeting space, much like your living room at home. It is on two decks (4 and 5), and I am sitting in it right now as I write this. On the starboard side of the ship, you reach Mamsen’s next. This is one of my favorite places to eat breakfast. But I'll talk more about the food later, at the end of the cruise, in my roundup.

Moving aft, you run into the ship’s main restaurant, the World Cafe. Long-time cruisers may be surprised to learn that Octantis and her sister ship Polaris have no main dining room. We'll get to two specialty restaurants below, but the main place to eat is the World Cafe buffet. As I said, more about the food later on, but suffice it to say, it is an amazing buffet. An absolute plethora of choices.

At the aft end of the ship on deck five is the Aquavit Terrace, a very nice bar area that serves The Pools. They are interesting. When I say “The Pools,” you might think of more than one big swimming pool that you would find on a big cruise ship. There are three small ones (about the size of a large hot tub), and each is a different temperature. One is warm, one is cooler, and one is downright cold. Check out the photos; the pictures and captions explain everything.

Deck 4

Our stateroom is on deck four. The entire deck, except the very front, is staterooms. On deck four, there is also the lower level of the Explorer’s Lounge and a launderette. More about our stateroom below. Decks two, three and four all have launderettes (six washers/six dryers and an ironing board—this is crazy for a ship of 374 people when the Ocean ships have three washer/dryers for almost 1,000).Not only that but suites get free laundry done for them. 

Deck 3

Much like decks two and four, this deck is mostly staterooms, but it also has two interesting features. At the very front of the deck, you will find The Bow. Every ship has a bow. It’s the front of the ship. But on most ocean cruise ships, it is not always accessible. Usually it’s reserved for special occasions, like going through the Panama Canal or a glacier day in Alaska. But on Octantis, The Bow is always open. And right behind it is a really cool (or should I say warm) spot called The Shelter. This is mostly for those who go up on The Bow to look at the scenery and then need a place to get warm. Since this ship sails the Arctic in the summer and the Antarctic in the winter, this comes in handy. It’s a cool space—photos below. Midships is a tiny shop that sells Viking-branded merchandise, as well as the office of the “Travel Consultant,” who sells future cruises. I should add that this is the ONLY place on board where you can buy anything. Something I truly appreciate.

At the aft end of deck three is the upper entrance to the Aula. The Aula is the ship’s “theater.” I put that in quotes because there really aren’t any shows. And that’s OK because this is an expedition ship. Instead, there are scientific talks, port presentations and discussions of shore excursions. The room is amazing, with a huge screen that comes down from the ceiling in a most unusual way. When the screen is not down, the room is completely glass-enclosed, and the views are amazing. This is probably much more impressive in the Arctic or Antarctic. Here on the Great Lakes, we just see water. Lots of water. The Aula is two decks high, so you can enter either from deck three or deck two.

Deck 2

This deck is about half staterooms (forward) and half public (midships to aft). After the staterooms at the front, you run into Expedition Central, which focuses on shore excursions and expeditions off the ship. There is also a lot of science going on there, and they hold small-group talks from time to time. Then come the lifeboats (there are four lifeboats, and they each hold 160 people). Since there are 374 passengers and 260 crew members, they can easily accommodate everyone, and they are also used as tenders. I must say, they are the nicest tenders we have ever been on. So clean you could eat off the deck. Impressive.

Behind the lifeboat area are the spa and fitness centers. The spa has all the usual indoor pool amenities, including steam rooms, a snow shower room, saunas, and an indoor pool. There is NO CHARGE to use any of this. There is also a full-service spa where you can get anything from a haircut to a full-body massage. Past the spa is the lower level of The Aula, and beyond that is a deck area called the Finse Terrace. Just a nice place to relax outdoors, looking at the ship’s wake.

Deck 1

This is about half a service deck, which means that area is used for service and crew quarters. At the front of the ship is a small lounge called The Hide. It is called that because you can hide there and no one will find you. Seriously, it is very hard to find. There is only one way down there from deck two, and once you are down there, you are not sure where it is. There is a huge door that looks like it goes into a vault. It’s a cool space, and you can lean out over the windows to look down into the sea. They also use it at night for Expedition Tales, where different members of the Expedition Team tell stories of their adventures.

Midships on Deck 1 are the two specialty restaurants. One is Manfredi’s (an Italian-themed dining room), and the other is The Restaurant, which serves food similar to what you would find in the main dining room of most cruise ships. You need reservations for both of these venues, but eating there is free. We snagged two reservations for each, and at this point we have been to both once. We will go back to The Restaurant in a few nights, but after our experience at Manfredi’s we have decided to skip our other visit. More about that when I write about the food.

Then, all the way at the back of the ship, are The Laboratory and The Hanger. I have not seen them yet, as they are only open during presentations. But they both relate to the expedition side of things. The Hanger houses the ship’s Zodiac fleet, two Special Operations Boats, and two six-man submarines. Yes, submarines. I hope to include photos of these in a couple of days.

Deck A

This is about 90% of the service area. The medical team is stationed at the infirmary and on the lower level of The Hangar. This is also where you board tenders for excursions. Because we visit so many small ports, all our stops except Detroit are tender ports. That means we board a tender (lifeboat) and it takes us to shore.

Our Stateroom

We splurged on this trip and booked a Nordic Junior Suite. It is a really nice stateroom. As far as I am concerned, Viking’s ship and stateroom design are so far ahead of everyone else’s that it’s just not fair. The only comparable stateroom to what we have experienced with Viking is Celebrity’s Flora. That’s it. Below are some photos and above is a floor plan. The floor plan is a little off because they removed the table and replaced it with a desk, which makes more sense. It is a beautiful and very functional room, and I will say more in the photo captions.

If your ship doesn't come in, swim out to it.  —Jonathan Winters

 

Orkney in the Rain…and the Wind…and the Fog and our Stateroom

by | Jun 19, 2024 | Uncategorized

Yesterday, we were in Kirkwall in the Orkney Islands. To find us on a map, just look directly north of the mainland of Scotland, and there it is. So far, this was the worst weather on the trip. It wasn’t that it was pouring rain all day; it came and went periodically, just like we had experienced in the rest of Scotland. It was just that the skies never cleared. It was flat and ugly all day long.

This is our guide Derrick. Nice man but spoke quietly with a deep Scottish brogue. It took a lot of work to get his photo. I shot five photos of him and never smiled or looked up.

We did the Viking “included” shore excursion, which was a “panoramic” tour of the island. And you all know by now, this means a ride on a “luxury motor coach.” YEAH! At least today, we didn’t need the air at the back of the bus because the temps were low, and when we got out to take photos, we were happy to get back on to get warm. The tour around the island (done by our Kirkwall guide, Derrick-at right) was very nice, but it basically featured two stops. Both of these were to look at stones sticking out of the ground. We were told that the ancient runes were older than Stonehenge. Well, they may have been older, but not anywhere near as big or as awe-inspiring. When we visited Stonehenge a few years ago, I was amazed at how any men could have lifted those stones into position. Here on the Orkney Island, the stones were small enough for a couple of guys to have placed them.

There were two sets of them, and I got off the bus to take photos of the first ones we stopped at but then decided to skip the second because, by that time, it was really raining, they were much further from the bus, and they were out in what looked to be a very muddy field. Besides, we could see them from the bus, and they looked pretty much the same as the first group. And with the sky being totally gray, it was not a great photo-taking day. I will prove it to you and show you all my shots from that morning, and you tell me what you think. And please feel free to take a look at these on your phone. They just aren’t that good, proving my point that photography is all about light.

Sailing in, we knew it was going to be a flat day.
Stones…
…stones…
…and more stones.
The pier just before we left in the afternoon.

Orkney was pretty much a bust for me. Not their fault. The weather made the photography yucky, and the ship moored in an industrial port, which forced a shuttle ride into town. After our tour, we were back on board so I could try and make something out of the photos. Our sail-out was nice, though, and it got a little sunny, so I was lucky enough to get a few photos as we left from the aft deck of the World Cafe. Don’t forget; if you click the first shot, you can scroll through with your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE…don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…

That about covers Kirkwall and Orkney Island. Since it was a short one, I want to take a couple of minutes to show you where Kathleen and I are living right now—our stateroom on Venus. In our cruising life (more than 35), we have had many different staterooms on many different ships. We consider the three best to be the verandah stateroom we had on Celebrity’s Flora yacht in the Galapagos, the Neptune Suite we got upgraded into on Holland America’s Nieuw Statendam and this Penthouse Verandah stateroom on Viking Ocean. This stateroom is larger than your standard verandah stateroom, and we love the extra room.

When we were in the Med on Viking Sky, we had the same type of stateroom but on the other side of the ship. Then we had 5029, and this time, 5030. The on-board cruise specialist who sold us our cruise told us that this side had better views for this particular cruise. I’m not sure if that is true, but since it is the same stateroom, we are happy with it. Here are the pictures that I took to send to www.cruisedeckplans.com. If you are not familiar with that website, they have deck plans for every ocean-going cruise ship, along with reader-submitted photos of the interiors of staterooms. Check them out before you pick your stateroom.

Walking in you enter that door.
Kingish…queen-size bed.
Full couch AND chair.
Great desk for me to work on.
Big TV with full dresser below.
A full shot of the bed…
…and the couch.
More couch and chair.
Closet space…
So much storage.
The safe is under the coffee pot.
Mini-bar. Everything is included and restocked every day.
Desk and chair.
Shower
Toilet and shower
Sink.
Storage in bath
Great size shower.

And that about covers it. If you have questions about the stateroom, please let me know. I can tell you that the difference in price between this and a regular verandah is about $500 for this cruise, and as far as we are concerned, it is worth every penny. Kathleen loves the space, the storage and the ability to have an “included” cocktail every night before dinner. I love that you get to reserve specialty dining and shore excursions about two weeks before about two-thirds of the rest of the passengers.

Tomorrow is a sea day. We are in Lerwick in the Shetland Islands today, and I have some great photos. I will be back with those tomorrow.

Wherever you go, no matter what the weather, always bring your own sunshine.  —Anthony J. D’Angelo

Vista Day 1–Embarkation and Our Stateroom

by | Oct 2, 2023 | Uncategorized

When last I wrote, we had just boarded Vista and been through a beautiful embarkation. When we left the hotel in three separate Ubers, we truly believed we would not be boarding until at least 1:30 or 2:00. But about halfway through our Uber ride (Kathleen, Jocelyn and I), my brother texted that they were letting anyone on and should they go through. We said to hang on; we would be right there. The cruise port was only a 10-minute drive from the hotel. But by the time we got there, the others had gone through and were waiting to board the ship.

We got in line (which was a little longer by then) and were also on board within ten minutes. The port of Montreal is the EXACT opposite of the port of Vancouver, where on our last cruise in May, embarkation had taken three hours and forty-five minutes (you can read about that fiasco here).

When we reached the inside of the ship, we were met by an officer who asked for our key cards (which came to us in a really cool little leatherette folder) so he could see where our muster stations were. We had already watched the video at home when we did our check-in and again a few days later when they sent another reminder (I think we got about five e-mail reminders to watch the video). The officer directed us to our muster station (we were in the main dining room), and we headed there immediately, got our key cards scanned and as far as Oceania was concerned, we were through with them until we sailed the next afternoon. We headed up to the buffet for lunch, where the rest of the gang was holding a table for seven for us, and we started to sample the amazing food that Oceania calls “the best at sea.” Just a note here. I could start going on and on about the food here, but I am going to do a complete post on the culinary glory that is Vista cuisine (at least so far).

Our stateroom–Concierge Verandah 9118

When we boarded, we were told that our suites would be ready by 2:00 p.m. and the rest of the staterooms soon after. But about halfway through lunch (close to 1:00), there was an announcement that suites (not us) were ready. We were in a Concierge verandah, and they announced that those would be available by 2:00 and the rest of the staterooms by 3:00. Lo and behold, at around 1:30, there was an announcement that our staterooms were ready. It was then I realized what had happened with our embarkation time, and what was now true about stateroom readiness was that Oceania was one smart cruise line. They were practicing one of the greatest marketing tools known to business: underpromise and over-deliver. Tell us things will be bad; we grumble a little and then be a hero by getting them done a lot better. It’s impressive to me and something I love to have happen. Should they not have been able to deliver early, they were fine. I had already grumbled.

But getting back to our stateroom, we are in Concierge Verandah 9118, which is aft of amidships on deck nine. We had read that the staterooms were pretty large, and our last stateroom on HAL’s Koningsdam was only 185 square feet, so we thought these would be much bigger at 250 square feet, but honestly, they don’t feel any bigger. Sadly, we have been spoiled by our last three major cruises. In July of 2021, our first cruise back after the pandemic shut down was on Celebrity’s Flora in the Galapagos. Those staterooms are HUGE—almost suite size (330 square feet). Then we were lucky enough to snag a Neptune Suite on HAL’s Nieuw Statendam, and they are even bigger (380 square feet). And last year, we did 21 nights on Viking Ocean in a Penthouse Veranda, and it was smaller than the Neptune but much larger than we are now (338 square feet).

I am only really concerned about the comparison to Viking Ocean because we are VERY loyal cruisers (as evidenced by our 20+ Celebrity cruises), and we are looking for our next cruise line to give our loyalty to, and the stateroom we are in now is just about the same daily price as the much larger one we had on Viking Sky. Not only was it larger and had about 3x the storage space (the worst part of our current stateroom) and about the same size bathroom. The shower is bigger, but not by enough that I noticed it. But where we have a tiny couch and the usual oval miniature coffee table today in 9118, on Viking, we had a full-size couch and coffee table plus plenty of room between the bed and a full-size dresser/desk. Let’s look at some room photos instead of continuing with the comparison. And I apologize for the fact that I took the pics after we had unpacked. I usually get them right away, but because Jocelyn was in a regular verandah stateroom, she came down to ours while Kathleen unpacked, and I walked around the ship taking photos.

BTW: No admonition on looking at these on a cell phone. Feel free. Not my best photography. And if you click the first one, they play as a slideshow. If you can’t read the captions, do the slideshow and if they are still cutoff, click the i in the circle.

Welcome to Concierge Verandah 9118
Right inside the door is a control panel with a card holder below that turns your electrical off and on.
The screen controls temperature (works well) and buttons for Do Not Disturb and Make Up the Room.
Looking in.
This is the view from the room back to our door. Large mirror on the right. Two hooks beyond that for coats. We also brought our own magnetic hooks.
Totally cramped left-hand side of the bed.
But with a full compliment of plugs including one USB A and C and a US electric socket as well as switches that controlled most of the lighting in the cabin.
Looking across the stateroom from the left-hand side. Tiny couch and table.
Two of us barely fit sitting next to each other.
The desk and chair are both so short my head can barely be seen in the mirror above when I am sitting down.
In front of left side of the bed is a small counter with water bottles and ice bucket. You can take the metal ones home with you at no charge.
Above that shelf is a cabinet that houses…
Two shelves and the safe. The safe is the biggest we have had at sea and my laptop and camera both fit inside.
Next to that is the closet. If it just had a few more shelves below the hanging area.
Below the shelf is a small fridge with complimentary soft drinks at our level of stateroom.
Here’s the bed.
The bathroom is quite big.
Lots of space.
Large shower.
Big Oceania mirror
And even more storage.
Our verandah which we haven’t used much yet.
But the very nice chairs do have cushions. Our verandah is larger than most verandah staterooms

A great feature of the stateroom that I almost forgot is the huge (for this size room) television. There are a lot of choices on this Smart-TV. Free movies, TV shows, A great bridge cam, two maps—one interactive, a music library, ship info and of course you can check your ship account as well.

One other thing that is kind of a pain. If you cruise, you know where your big suitcases go when you are done unpacking them—under your bed. You can’t slide large suitcases under these beds. They are too low. We were kind of worried about that until Mike told us that you could ask your stateroom attendant to put them under there for you. They have a special tool that lifts the beds. Sorry, but that’s poor planning on Oceania’s end. I mean, buy a bed that’s a little higher (like every other cruise line).

All in all, we feel like this Concierge Verandah stateroom is a poor value when compared to a similar-priced Penthouse Verandah stateroom on Viking Ocean. Score one for Viking. But that might be the only one. Stay tuned.

I have been black and blue in some spot, somewhere, almost all my life from too intimate contacts with my own furniture.
—Frank Lloyd Wright

 

 

 

Flora—What a ship!

by | Jul 17, 2021 | Uncategorized

Now that I have told you all about the cruise and the adventure and shown you the islands and the animals, it’s time to talk about the ship. I can honestly say, Flora is my favorite ship we have ever sailed on. She is also the smallest ship we have ever sailed on. But I wanted to give you a little bit of an idea what our overall accommodations were like and the public areas of the ship as well. First, as you can see above, she looks wonderful in the water. Almost like a private yacht…a BIG private yacht.

Let’s start with the staterooms. Here’s an iPhone pano shot of the bedroom part of our “suite.” Celebrity calls it a suite. Other cruise lines would call it a suite but to me a “suite” means you get more than one room. At the EB Hotel in Quito we had a suite…a bedroom, two bathrooms, a dressing room and a living room. That’s a suite. The really big “suites” on Flora are true suites.

Those suites have other rooms as well (living room, two bedrooms, two bathrooms). But we had a traditional verandah stateroom. That said, it was the LARGEST stateroom we have ever been in. It was even bigger than the suite we once had on Century. At more than 330 square feet with an 84 square foot verandah we had more than 400 square feet to ourselves. To give you something to compare, on our last cruise on Reflection to Mardi Gras our stateroom had 194 square feet with a 54 square foot verandah. We found it interesting (at least to us) that we are going to go from the largest stateroom we have ever had on a ship to one of the smallest we have had on our next cruise. In December we take a Viking River cruise to the Christmas Markets on the Danube. Our stateroom on that ship will only be 204 square feet with the verandah. We were very pleased with this one. I did a quick video tour of the stateroom and the bathroom (the largest and nicest we have ever sailed).

The ONLY complaint we had about the stateroom was the lack of places to charge electronics. This ship was built three years ago. It’s not like she was built in an era before we all carried numerous gadgets. But there were exactly FOUR electrical receptacles in the room (not counting one above the sink in the bathroom for shavers).  One of those was a European plug. I always have a converter but the receptacle was inverted so my adapter/converter would not work with it. That left us three. One at the desk and two in the wall next to one side of the bed. Except that the two next to the bed were vertical and VERY THIN! So thin that if you plugged any kind of adapter or charger in to one of them, you could not use the other. That is crazy. No USB plugs at all. They have those on other, older Celebrity ships.

I know what you are thinking…how many things can you have to charge? Well, we travel with the following: Kathleen has her iPhone, her iPad, her Kindle and her Apple Watch. I have my MacBook Pro, my iPad, my iPhone, my Apple Watch, my Nikon battery charger, my Kindle and my GoPro battery charger. Twelve items to charge with two plugs. That’s crazy. I certainly hope when they dry dock Flora in a few years, this is one of their big upgrades. It is needed.

The rest of the ship

Flora is beautiful from top to bottom. The best way for me to show you that is to add some pics and explain in the captions. So here you go:

A couple of the places on board that I don’t have pics of include The Boutique and Darwin’s Cove on Deck 3. The boutique has a few trinkets, magnets, shirts, jackets and postcards but they are very spendy. See my previous Q&A. Also on Deck 3 is a science lab where you can investigate things like geological samples from the islands under a microscope. As much as our interest in science was piqued while onboard, we never got there. One cool thing to do when you back from an excursion is to go to the Boutique and look through the windows as they bring the Zodiacs in and store them. It’s a really cool operation. Also on this deck is the infirmary, but let’s hope you never have to visit there. Decks 1 & 2 are either crew quarters or storage for the Zodiacs.

On Deck 7 forward there is the Observatory. It looks like a very quiet place to just relax and face forward on the ship. It is right over the Bridge, so it has great views but they play loud techno music in there so it is NOT peaceful at all. They need to turn it off or  change the music. On my first night while trying to find somewhere to write I found the music BLARING at 3:00 am.

Just above the Observatory is the Stargazing deck. DO NOT MISS THIS! We went up twice (cloudy other days…or we forgot) and it is worth the trip. They keep the area very dark and you would be amazed at the stars you can see when there is no light pollution from the ground. And your perch is right at the equator. You can see the Milky Way, the Southern Cross, the Big and Little Dipper and so much more.

This ship is amazing. We can’t wait to sail on her again. Other than my two very small complaints about the outlets and the techno music, it was about the best a ship can be.