My husband and I have been on two river cruises and two ocean cruises with Viking. The included river cruise excursions were all excellent. The ocean ones were more mixed. I think a lot of the reason for that is that river cruise stops are more suited to walking tours and ocean cruise stops often are further from the sites so they go with more panoramic bus tours. On our second ocean cruise in Australia and New Zealand we did do a handful of included excursions, but paid the extra for optional excursions at most ports. We also took advantage of one third-party excursion through Viator, and were very happy we did. For our next cruise in Greece, we plan to go with a combination of included, optional, and third-party again, and mostly avoid the panoramic bus tours.
