Viking Mars

Viking Mars was delivered at Ancona on May 12, 2022, the eighth ship in a series that by then had stopped changing, and christened a few days later at a private ceremony in Malta. There is no useful way to distinguish her hull from Viking Neptune’s or Viking Orion’s: same 47,800 tons, same 745 feet, same 465 verandas, same rooms in the same order. What separates her is a schedule that runs north and south rather than around the Mediterranean.

Three seasons, three continents

Her first year set the pattern and she has kept it. She opened in the Mediterranean, ran a fourteen-night repositioning from Barcelona to Bergen, spent the summer in Scandinavia, Iceland and the Baltic on twelve- and fourteen-night voyages, went back to the Mediterranean in the fall and then crossed to Australia and New Zealand for the winter.

The current schedule swaps the Pacific for the Atlantic and tightens the loop. Reykjavík is far and away her busiest departure port, with forty sailings, Iceland and Greenland circuits and the North Atlantic islands. Fort Lauderdale carries the winter, twenty-eight Caribbean departures, which makes her the only Viking ocean ship on this site working the Caribbean at all. Between the two seasons sit twelve departures from Montreal down the St. Lawrence and along the Canada and New England coast in the fall. Twelve nights is her median and fourteen the longest, so her working pattern is two-week runs with a change of hemisphere twice a year.

What that deployment asks of the ship

A 930-guest vessel is small enough to berth at Icelandic and Greenlandic ports that will not take a 4,000-passenger ship, and that is most of the argument for the northern half of her year. The main pool sits under a retractable roof, which is what makes a Viking ship usable off Greenland in June, and the Nordic Spa (thermal suite, saltwater pool, snow grotto, no supplement) is a room designed for exactly this weather.

The Caribbean half is a harder sell and worth being blunt about. Viking’s inclusions are built around going ashore and learning something, and a ship with no casino, no water slides, no children and a lecture program is a strange fit for a week of beaches. It works for people who want the Caribbean without the Caribbean cruise. It is not a good use of the fare if you want a resort.

Who she suits

Adults who would rather sail from Reykjavík than from anywhere warm, and who want a fourteen-night itinerary treated as a route rather than as filler. The included excursion in each port, the wine at meals, the Wi-Fi and the spa are all in the fare, and the practical benefit of 930 passengers is time, a small ship clears a gangway and a coach park fast.

She suits nobody under eighteen, because none are carried. She is wrong for anyone who wants nightlife, gambling or a show, and if you are picking between her and Viking Neptune on anything other than the itinerary, stop: they are the same ship, and Neptune only differs in having a hydrogen fuel cell you cannot see.