Has anyone done a China River Cruise? Are the two main vendors - Viking and Victoria? Would appreciate any experience you have or any comparisons you can make between the two lines (or any others).
Thanks so much.

We used the third vendor - Regal China Cruises - on the Empress Sheena nearly four years ago. I have heard from others (but don't know from personal experience) Viking and Victoria are as good if not better. We chose the Regal China as we had very little flexibility around our departure date. They were the only one of the three with a sailing date that worked.

We went for the scenery, not for the boat. Cabins were about 140 sq feet with two lower bunks (couldn't push them together). The passenger mix was 1/2 Chinese citizens and 1/2 Western (mostly expats on holiday). The scenery was spectacular and we learned a lot from taking that trip. Glad we did it, have no inclination to repeat it.

Breakfast was by far the best meal. All food was buffet style, with both Western and Chinese cuisine. It was average with a few dishes simply awful. Nothing was a standout on the buffet. We enjoyed our table mates - a couple from the UK and a couple from San Francisco whose parents had emigrated to the US many years ago.

We took the sailing from Chongqing to Wuhan. That went through what's still visible of the Three Gorges and through the new dam. Side trips were included - we got off the ship for an hour or two once or twice a day. We didn't have the flexibility of simply stretching our legs. We either went on the tour or stayed on the boat.

This was a three or four night sailing. It was long enough to enjoy the scenery and short enough to make the overall experience good. A seven day sailing sounds too long to me - better to use the days to fly to Guilan and enjoy the Li River area and/or Chengdu (once it's had time to recover from the earthquake) to see the pandas and enjoy the considerable variety of things to see in those areas.

Cheers, Anne

We are cruising on the Yangzi Explorer in October. It has only 62 cabins all with balconies. Here is a link to a fact sheet but I have a better one at home I will try to post.

http://www.abercrombiekent.com.au/luxury-travel/orient/documents/yangzi-fact-sheet.pdf

Thank you both for the information. It looks like such a fascinating trip. We'll do more investigating.

I would suggest that you look at Victoria very carefully (and cautiously). Except for the suites at the front of the boat, the cabins are very small. They recently added balconies, by just hanging them off the sides of the boat. We had a fantastic cruise upriver on Victoria III before the dam was finished and loved every moment of it. But we'd splurged and booked one of the forward Shangra La suites. As there were no occupants in the similar suite across the hall, we had sole use of the enormous bow terrace which was the width of the boat. Our several day cruise through the Three Gorges was one of our great travel memories.

Unless you like very compact digs, you should likely consider one of the suites on Victoria or one of the cabins on Yangzi Explorer. That looks like a beautiful and spacious boat. I think that Viking's cabins are a lot bigger than those on the Victoria boats, as well.

In any event, a cruise on the Yantze is a very special trip.