Viking has 5 sizes of cabin – arguably 6 if you differentiate between ES1 and ES2 which are different sizes. Veranda and Deluxe Veranda are physically the same, but the DV has a fridge that’s restocked with soft drinks. Net up is Penthouse Veranda, larger and with a fridge that is restocked daily with alcohol, then Penthouse Junior Suites – bigger still – and lastly the Explorer Suites which are multi room and really quite large. Finally there is a single Owner’s Suite, which is the size of an apartment.

Apart from size, the different cabin grades also have a few perks, for example reservations for shore excursions opens earlier for more expensive grades, as do bookings for specialty restaurants.

We stayed in an ES2 grade cabin on our prior cruise, and while we quite enjoyed the large wraparound deck, we didn’t feel it was anywhere near valuable enough to justify the price premium charged.

So what did we like about the PV cabin? Everything! There’s plenty of hanging space opposite the bathroom, and more drawers than we could fill. There are drawers in the closet, drawers in the credenza under the TV, and more drawers in the vanity under the mirror.

We loved having a “landing zone” under the TV to drop stuff when we came in, and the long table top under the mirror housed an illuminated makeup mirror under a lift up top, with more storage inside, and a perfect spot for our charger for phones, cameras, and tablets.

There’s lots of room to walk past the end of the bed, and good room each side for access. The couch and table provides an excellent spot for one of you to site and chill while the other takes a tiny amount longer to get ready, just in case that’s your situation 😉

There are two versions of PV cabin, those with sliding door and those with hinged – we had the latter. We licked the hinged arrangement because it provides a nice large window next to the couch, and there’s no risk of the door sliding open or closed with a bang. Others definitely feel differently 🙂

We were spoiled by the wraparound balcony we’d had on our Bermuda cruise in the ES2 suite, but the PV balcony is plenty big enough for two to sit and enjoy the views.

One of the benefits on the PV grade cabin is that the fridge is restocked daily. There will be 4 mini bottles of spirits, a bottle of Champagne, two beers and 4 sodas. You can ask your room steward to change the composition, so for example we asked for only Coke Zero as soda.

Cabin walls on cruise ships are all metal, so magnets work well as a way to provide hooks to hang hats/clothes or, as we did, for clips top hold excursion tickets! We liked being able to see everything we had to look forward to laid out in order like this. On our very first excursion the couple ahead of us still had their wad of tickets in the envelope in which we received them. The tickets are in order, but split for each person, meaning that you must riffle through them to find the second person’s ticket after finding the other at the front of the “deck”. The other couple managed to drop all their tickets which created even more delay as they tried to sort out what they had. We preferred our system.