Viking on the Mississippi

[steamboats]

Whoever entered this data to Wikipedia...

 

 And I don´t think that "Viking Mississippi" will be the final name... Doesn´t fit into their name scheme

 

steamboats

[Host Jazzbeau]

8 hours ago, steamboats said:

Whoever entered this data to Wikipedia...

 

 And I don´t think that "Viking Mississippi" will be the final name... Doesn´t fit into their name scheme

 

steamboats

 

Yes, that's the problem with Wikipedia.  The information is accurate most of the time, but not always – and you don't get any sign of authorship to help judge.

 

On the other point:  Viking must be running out of Norse gods to name ships after, so for North America they should adopt a different pattern.  Maybe Native American gods?

[steamboats]

Mustn´t be a Nordic god... they´ve switched to Nordic names in general...

 

How about a Viking Pocahontas 😉 ?

 

steamboats

[Host Jazzbeau]

14 minutes ago, steamboats said:

Mustn´t be a Nordic god... they´ve switched to Nordic names in general...

 

How about a Viking Pocahontas 😉 ?

 

steamboats

 

So maybe you can explain about the gender of ships in Europe.  I had always been taught that all ships are female and referred to as 'she.'  But Ponant's ships are named after male explorers so they are all named 'Le ...' and I assume are called 'he.'  Viking's riverships are named after a mix of males and females (I assume) – so how are they called?

 

PS – your suggested name may be too political at the moment...

[steamboats]

@Host Jazzbeau here in Germany ships are female and referred as she... same for France

 

Anyway some companies do name them after famous men like Ponant.

 

Nicko Cruises in Germany refers to the World Explorer as "male" - but we refuse to write that and don´t write "der World Explorer" but "die World Explorer".

 

CMV has named the German ship Vasco da Gama (for TransOcean) but that ship is referred female. For the new ones they have chosen female explorers like Ida Pfeiffer.

 

There have been ships in the past with "male" names but anyway they were referred as female despite the name.

 

steamboats

Edited March 17, 2020 by steamboats

[BJR52001]

She's official.  Same length as the European boats.  Twice and wide and twice as high.  Larger than the American Queen.  Kind of splits the difference between the river and Ocean expiriences.  
 

https://www.cruisecritic.com/news/5234/

[bcorre2]

Build it and they will come.

Asked our TA to book us.

Time to move this to a CC Viking River Roll Call

Article seems to carry the name listed in Wikipedia forward. 🙂

The company's first vessel on U.S. waterways, Viking Mississippi, will operate voyages along the Lower and Upper Mississippi River, traveling from New Orleans to St. Paul, Minnesota when it debuts in the summer of 2022.

Edited March 31, 2020 by bcorre2

[Coral]

52 minutes ago, bcorre2 said:

Build it and they will come.

Asked our TA to book us.

Time to move this to a CC Viking River Roll Call

Article seems to carry the name listed in Wikipedia forward. 🙂

The company's first vessel on U.S. waterways, Viking Mississippi, will operate voyages along the Lower and Upper Mississippi River, traveling from New Orleans to St. Paul, Minnesota when it debuts in the summer of 2022.

You are going to laugh at me. I love where you live - I consider WA one of the most beautiful parts of the country.. I live in the Midwest and have driven about 2/3 of this route multiple times (not the Mississippi and Louisiana part). I just can't imagine cruising this area. Though I would love to do a small cruise in your state. :) I guess we desire something different than what we have. I hope you do a review when you return from your cruise.

[Coral]

26 minutes ago, Coral said:

You are going to laugh at me. I love where you live - I consider WA one of the most beautiful parts of the country.. I live in the Midwest and have driven about 2/3 of this route multiple times (not the Mississippi and Louisiana part). I just can't imagine cruising this area. Though I would love to do a small cruise in your state. :) I guess we desire something different than what we have. I hope you do a review when you return from your cruise.

My best friend lives in Mill Creek. I love your area!

[bcorre2]

Viking now has a Viking Mississippi tab on their Viking River Fleet page.

 

https://www.vikingrivercruises.com/ships/mississippi/viking-mississippi.html

 

 

[bcorre2]

18 hours ago, Coral said:

Though I would love to do a small cruise in your state. 🙂 I guess we desire something different than what we have My best friend lives in Mill Creek. I love your area!

Coral,

We've both been in WA area for 70+ years and seen it all. WA, OR, ID & Canada. Sailed, boated and camped with our family and friends through out. Wonderful and easily accessible from our home. Built family homes in Bothell 5 mi South. Sold the ranch and downsized when we became empty nesters in 2004 and moved to Mill Creek. Love it here in our Condo-Home. Haven't been to the Heartland so looking forward to starting with the Viking St. Louis to St. Paul trip first (7th Viking River/Ocean Cruise) in 2022 and maybe follow-up with their New Orleans to Memphis in 2023. Just had our June 15 Douro River Cruise cancelled and rebooking for 2021.

Would suggest any of the American Cruise Lines Pacific NW trips with Puget Sound or Grand at the top of our list. Columbia/Snake Rivers also great! Looking forward to visiting the Heartland and the Mississippi with Viking. 

Safe travels,

Bob & Margie

[Coral]

2 hours ago, bcorre2 said:

Coral,

We've both been in WA area for 70+ years and seen it all. WA, OR, ID & Canada. Sailed, boated and camped with our family and friends through out. Wonderful and easily accessible from our home. Built family homes in Bothell 5 mi South. Sold the ranch and downsized when we became empty nesters in 2004 and moved to Mill Creek. Love it here in our Condo-Home. Haven't been to the Heartland so looking forward to starting with the Viking St. Louis to St. Paul trip first (7th Viking River/Ocean Cruise) in 2022 and maybe follow-up with their New Orleans to Memphis in 2023. Just had our June 15 Douro River Cruise cancelled and rebooking for 2021.

Would suggest any of the American Cruise Lines Pacific NW trips with Puget Sound or Grand at the top of our list. Columbia/Snake Rivers also great! Looking forward to visiting the Heartland and the Mississippi with Viking. 

Safe travels,

Bob & Margie

 

My friend's house used to have a Bothell address, now it is a Mill Creek address. One time when I went up there - they took me up to Deception Pass for what we thought was a boat ride. We ended up seeing a ton of orcas! We also went to Mukilteo and Whidbey Island. On a previous trip, I had been to the Port Orchard/Bremerton area. I loved that area and would love to move there. Just wish it wasn't so expensive! I would love to do that cruise.

 

Sorry about your Douro river cruise being canceled. I had a Transatlantic/Europe cruise cancelled :( . I hope next year is a great cruising year. Hope you like the heartland! It is different from where you live. You will find a lot of friendly people here.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Coral

[Citymom92]

Excellent article about Vikings intention to start cruising on the Mississippi in the coming years. I also never knew why more upscale lines were staying away from US - now I know it’s because of the requirement that ships be US made and staffed. Very interesting. https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2020/04/06/viking-bets-on-new-smaller-us-river-cruises-to-help-them-survive-amid-coronavirus-woes

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[steamboats]

Wow, this article.... sorry, but Viking is not more upscale and the ships for the Mississippi river system are twice the size than those on the Rhine/Main/Danube which hold 200 pax instead of almost 400.  While the American Queen holds up to 400 passengers all other river cruise ships in the US are smaller.

 

The Viking ships have a modern Nordic design... while the competitors do focus on the "old steamboating times". But that doesn´t make Viking more upscale.

 

And the crew working on the US rivers wouldn´t call the Passenger Vessel Services Act "antiquated U.S. boating laws" but as law to protect US jobs. BTW the vessel must be US owned too. Viking had problems to find a ship yard able to build passenger overnight vessels. Their first thought was... let them build in Germany and ship them to the US. Now they finally found a shipyard which also will stay the owner and charter the boats out to Viking.

 

It is pretty hard to find licensed nautical staff for the US rivers (even harder than here in Europe). The tow boat companies have lots of openings. And it´s even harder to find staff for the hotel department. American Cruise Line is basically working with college students who get a basic training and work as servers, cabins attendants and deck crew (same person!).

 

American Queen Steamboat Company had quite a hard time in the beginning as the service crew (they promised to hire mainly from Memphis) did not have the needed experience. Especially in the dining room they had a lot of problems. And quite a few people quit after a short time onboard.

 

NCLA (Pride of America in Hawai´i) has the same problem finding well trained staff which stays onboard.

 

steamboats

[bcorre2]

TA booked Viking Mississippi for 2022 & 2023.

Have moved to Viking (non NCLA) River Roll Calls

Safe travels

[Coral]

On 4/7/2020 at 12:31 AM, steamboats said:

Wow, this article.... sorry, but Viking is not more upscale and the ships for the Mississippi river system are twice the size than those on the Rhine/Main/Danube which hold 200 pax instead of almost 400.  While the American Queen holds up to 400 passengers all other river cruise ships in the US are smaller.

Your knowledge of European river cruises has always impressed me. I had no idea you also knew the US market. Quite impressive!

[Host Jazzbeau]

So to Viking's credit, they have solved the hurdles of 'US built ships' and 'US owned ships.'  Let's see how they deal with the 'US staffed ships' requirement.  I agree that NCLA has not solved this problem [we had a suite and our butler, while a very nice young American woman, had clearly no idea what a real butler does].

[steamboats]

5 hours ago, Coral said:

Your knowledge of European river cruises has always impressed me. I had no idea you also knew the US market. Quite impressive!

 

Coral, although I´m German living in Germany my first river cruise was back in 1995 on the Ohio river onboard the Delta Queen ;-).

 

steamboats

[steamboats]

@Host Jazzbeau When American Queen Steamboat Company started out they chose Memphis as home port and promised to hire staff mainly from Memphis. Most of the new staff had no experiences in hospitality. And the start was... sort of bumpy... many of the new crew left as they didn´t get along with the working conditions.

 

ACL hired college students and trained them. But all of them worked in different areas (deck and hotel). So in the morning some served lunch while others did deck duties. Before lunchtime the deck crew went up and made the cabins.... It was really interesting but most of them only stayed for a couple of months.

 

There´s also a big shortage in pilots on the Mississippi river and its tributaries.

 

So hireing crew and pilots will be a big task.

 

steamboats

[bcorre2]

Viking sells out Mississippi River cabins for October 2022 cruise

As I said, "Build it and they will come"

 

https://www.thetelegraph.com/news/article/Viking-sells-out-cabins-for-October-2022-cruise-15211116.php

Edited April 21, 2020 by bcorre2
update content

[Phillygirl3]

Well, I never thought of myself as being a miser when it comes to spending on a cruise, river or ocean, but when I received the email regarding the Mississippi River cruises, I thought that they were rather pricey.  Some were more expensive than some 15 day cruises we have taken to Europe and we are talking about air inclusion, where I never saw anything in the information that indicated that air was included.  Love Viking, love my country but paying $10,000+ per person is something that I am not prepared to do unless reviews are outstanding once the cruises begin.

Can't wait to hear the feedback from cruisers who do decide to go with Viking on the Mississippi or any other river in the US.

[steamboats]

I checked prices for an Upper Miss cruise. Viking was more than 5 k, American Cruise Lines was 4 k (on the America, the newer ship was 5 k), American Queen Steamboat Company was 2.5 k. All of them offer pretty much the same value.

 

steamboats

[Peachypooh]

We have taken numerous ocean cruises but have never taken a river cruise. I see that the Viking

Mississippi is being built and one of their 2023 itineraries is round trip out of New Orleans.

I am very interested in this as it would mean not having to travel overseas and since I am from the US

there would be no language barrier, etc. Is there anything I would need to know before booking this?

Has anyone looked into this river cruise? Thanks.

[sharkster77]

We cruised the Rhine last year, spending 2 days pre-trip in Amsterdam and 2 days post trip in Lucerne.

 

No language barrier anywhere, so that is really a non-factor.

 

Being wary of flying internationally, a different thing altogether.

 

Although other countries are doing a better job with the pandemic than we (USA) are.  Borders may be not be open to  Americans as soon as they open to others.

[Roz]

Peachy, other cruise lines are currently sailing the Mississippi and have been for years, so you don't have to wait until 2023 unless you have your heart set on Viking.  I've never experienced a language barrier on my 3 European river cruises.  Are you afraid of not being able to communicate in port?  Flights overseas are a real drag so I get that.