Cruising the Mississippi River on the Viking Mississippi

This is the first of a number of articles about the sights and cities along the Mississippi River from north to south. This whole area was a bit of a mystery to me – I had been to New Orleans a couple of times, but the rest of the area is too far to drive from my home and never very obvious what you would see if you flew to one of the cities. I know that sounds like I was dismissing a large swathe of the USA, but there are just some many other places to visit!

Missing out on a hidden discount?

We travelled with Viking for a number of years, booking the next cruise with the onboard tour consultant on the ships and on one occasion I asked him whether I could get a discount because we were not using a travel agent who would normally get commission. He squashed that idea but mentioned that it was possible to book on a cruise and then “move” the cruise to the travel agent of your choice and perhaps they would be willing to share their commission. And it worked – I have continued to book a cruise directly with Viking and then transferred it to my very helpful agent and he was willing to provide some extra shipboard credits for each cruise ever since. Read more about the process here!

My Review of the Viking Mississippi Cruise

So, we decided to sign up for one of Viking’s first cruises down the navigable length of the river on their new ship designed for this trip – the Viking Mississippi. This first article sets the scene with my thoughts about the cruise itself, the boat, and some general pieces of information that could be useful if you are ever thinking of taking the cruise. You could call it my review of the Viking Mississippi cruise. Then, I’ll follow up with articles about each of the places visited as we sailed south from St Paul in Minnesota to New Orleans in Louisiana.

The ship itself is much closer to the design of the Viking ocean ships than a river boat. Holding 360 passengers, it is a state-of-the-art vessel specifically designed for this river and able to navigate all the locks between New Orleans and St Paul. It has 5 decks with deck 1 being the Living Room, Explorer’s bar and main restaurant. Decks 2-4 has passenger cabins that are identical to those found on ocean ships and each has a balcony. Laundry facilities can be found on each of these decks.

We had a cabin on deck 2 about 3/4 of the way towards the stern and I have to admit that we could feel the vibrations of the propulsion system at night. It woke my wife up numerous times as we presumably navigated into a dock. The ship uses electric propulsion (said to be a bit like the whisks of a mixer) on both the stern and the sides of the boat and it could have been that that we felt. When we booked, many cabins were already taken, so if you can, avoid this area!

Deck 2 also has a viewing area which is almost identical to what you would find on a ocean ship. Deck 5 is the World Cafe with outdoor dining and loungers and then the “Infinity Pool” right at the stern of the vessel. This is hardly a swimming pool, being about 4 feet wide, but it felt pretty warm!

The Living Room is a combination of a stage, relaxing sofas, the library, games tables and coffee machines, and again is similarly designed to the areas of an ocean ship:

As you can see, it is large, but certainly not large enough for all the passengers to be present at once. Folding plastic chairs are added each afternoon for the lectures, port talks and evening entertainment. As is an occasional issue on other river boats, there are difficulties in having enough light for games or jigsaws, when the overall lighting is reduced for the shows. Large TVs around the lounge show any slides being used, so you can sit in the comfortable sofas and still listen and watch the lectures,

There is a walking path around the ship on deck 1 for exercise and seating in the front area with large glass panels allowing protection from the wind and the spray. However, as this couple was about to find out, the wash from one of the large barges moving upstream could be pretty dramatic:

Overall Service

As you would expect from Viking, service levels are high, but they are different to what you will find on other ships. Being a US ship, it has to be registered in the USA and only employ (as far as I know), US citizens on board. So, there is much more of a feeling that the staff on board are just there to complete their specific contract and there were people leaving and joining the team at each major city port. I can imagine that it is harder to get people to spend such a long time on board when there are so many other opportunities in the USA. Let me be clear that there were no issues with service – it was just different!

Meals were excellent in general, although pretty busy in both the Restaurant and the World Cafe. Tables for two are not as available as on the ships, and as my wife was having a hip replacement as soon as we returned home, we were very careful to avoid potential infection and so we ate at 7:30 each evening to be sure of getting a table on our own. Not very sociable, I know, but we did manage to avoid even a sniffle over the entire trip. Both the Restaurant and World Cafe were pretty (or very) noisy due to low ceiling height and the restricted size. It did get quite quiet around 8pm if you didn’t mind being the last ones in the Restaurant! I did find normal chatting to be difficult when the surrounding tables were occupied.

Diet options were not handled very well – food was sometimes marked as being gluten-free, but asking the kitchen staff didn’t often get much of a response. You also don’t provide your room number as you go to the Restaurant and so each meal required a new explanation to the waiter, which we eventually solved by trying to sit in the same area each evening.

The menu is very similar to a ship – the standard items every day – steak, salmon etc., a set of locally based choices and then a broader range of new dishes to choose from for each meal. Breakfast and lunch are self-service in the Restaurant as well as the World Cafe for all meals. As usual, wine and beer are included for all meals, and in whatever quantity you can handle!

Entertainment

There are enrichment presentations, mainly in the afternoons, the port and excursion talks, future cruise opportunities, talks by the staff – the pilot was particularly interesting about the trials and tribulations of sailing the Mississippi. For many locations, a local speaker or entertainer joined the ship for the evening and then departed the next day. These ranged for experts in local history or geography to comedy entertainers, local musicians and one man who seemed to have memorized major sections of the books of Mark Twain and was able to tell his stories exactly as the author would have narrated them if audio books had been available at the time!

Overall, all of these were great – you could watch live from your room (no recordings available though) if you couldn’t find a seat in the Living Room or just wanted to relax after a long day ashore.

The overall journey down the Mississippi

We were traveling from North to South during a period of historic low water levels on the Mississippi River, particularly in the Lower Mississippi region below St Louis. The Upper Mississippi has numerous locks and so the water level can be controlled by how much water is allowed to flow south. But as soon as we passed St Louis, there were enormous sandbanks at the sides of the river with a much narrower and shallower navigable passage.

The ships and barges need 9 feet of water and so sometimes passing each other was problematic. Ships traveling downstream have the right of way, which meant that we kept good time on the journey, but I believe the cruise prior to us was delayed by a day because of having to wait to allow the downstream barges to pass through. On the final days, I understand from the Pilot that barges moving upstream were being grouped into a convoy and then the downstream barges stopped to allow at least some movement.

Docking here by the side of the river had one big advantage though – I was able to get off and walk along the sand by the river and capture a great sunset illuminating the ship before we departed that night:

One thing to be aware of – there is relatively little to see as you sail down the river. Especially in the lower areas, the river is wide and with the banks built up into levees to avoid flooding, you basically see the river and the banks. If you are lucky, you see wildlife as well – I saw two large flocks of American White Pelicans sitting on the sand:

It has to be said that a lot of the sailing takes place at night, although there is one day at “sea”, but during the daytime sailing there were barges to be seen but little else.

The other thing to mention here which surprised me – Viking uses their own branded coaches for everything from airport transfers, shuttles to the downtown areas of some cities, and, of course, the various excursions. The coaches and their drivers basically follow the ship – driving down to the next port so that they are ready for that day’s excursions. The drivers were excellent, and some could tell a pretty good story themselves!

Overall Impressions of the Cruise

I think I will wait until I complete my set of articles before finally answering the question – was it worth it? It is an expensive cruise and some of the towns don’t have very much to see. In that sense, it is nothing like a European river cruise. Having said that, there were many interesting places that I had never visited before, and probably would never have traveled to see them.

Daily Itinerary

As I write each article about the places visited, I’ll add the links here.

Day 1-2: St Paul and Red Wing, Minnesota

Day 3: La Crosse, Wisconsin

Day 4: Dubuque, Iowa

Day 5: Davenport, Iowa

Day 6: Burlington, Iowa

Day 7: Hannibal, Missouri

Day 8: St Louis, Missouri

Day 9: A day “at sea”

Day 10: Memphis, Tennessee

Day 11: Greenville, Mississippi

Day 12: Vicksburg, Mississippi

Day 13: Natchez, Mississippi

Day 14: Baton Rouge, Louisiana and the Atchafalaya Basin Airboat tour

Day 15: New Orleans, Louisiana and Final Thoughts