I chose this cruise because - late at night - I received an email from a travel meetup group with the famous Russian church spires (church of the spilled blood) - saying - come with us to Russia!. I called that morning and signed up - seriously, that short of a decision.
I had always wanted to go to Russia - my grandparents are from there - and I was going to be on the Volga River - turns out that my grandparents were from about 300 miles away from the cruise. I also liked that we would have rooms with balconies.
First off - this isn't like a typical high cost cruise - it's of modest cost. However, I much preferred to hear the local Russian singers (there was a musician who played that Russian guitar-ish instrument and she was amazing) - and see Russian dancers - we were very much steeped into the culture.
I liked the cabin. The bathrooms are large (for a cruise ship) - They had an odd set up where you had to have your room key in the holder for the lights to work - so a few times the bathroom light didn't work until I remembered. The rooms are clean - and I loved having the balcony - we found that we could disconnect the walls between the balconies and go from room to room