Key takeaways
- One is fast, close and exposed. One is calm, sheltered and slower.
- That is the single thing the scheduled vessel cannot do at all.
- The RIB has a firm minimum of fourteen years and 140 cm.
- They suit different people, and saying so is only honest.
What each one is
Standing in Flam you have two ways onto the Naeroyfjord, and they are genuinely different products rather than two versions of the same one.
The scheduled vessel is a large modern passenger boat with a heated interior, big windows, open decks, seating, toilets and something to buy. It runs the length of the fjord on a timetable, carries a few hundred people, and takes around two hours in one direction between Flam and Gudvangen.
The RIB is a small open boat carrying about a dozen, in which everybody wears a thermal flotation suit and sits on a padded bench. It runs out into the fjord and returns to the same marina in two hours, and it spends that time alternating between speed and stopping.
Both cover the narrow, listed section. What differs is the distance between you and it.
What the small boat does better
Proximity, first and above everything. A shallow-draft boat can go in against the rock, into bays and up to the foot of a waterfall. The scheduled vessel cannot, and no amount of goodwill changes its draft.
Immediacy second. You are outside for the whole trip at water level with nothing between you and the fjord, no glass, no deck rail crowded three deep, no engine noise to talk over when it matters. The cold, the spray and the sound are part of it rather than filtered out.
Attention third. A dozen passengers means a guide who answers questions and a skipper who can stop for a goat, an eagle or a farm because somebody asked. That does not scale to three hundred people.
And it is a round trip. You come back to where you started, which suits anybody whose day is otherwise arranged around Flam.
Weather, oddly, is a fifth. A grey day flattens a wide view and a large vessel spends its time showing you wide views. Close in against wet rock with cloud on the tops, the small boat is arguably better in poor conditions than in sunshine.
A small boat dwarfed by the fjord wall
What the big boat does better
Comfort, plainly. You are warm, dry and seated, you can buy a coffee, use a proper toilet and move around, and none of that is trivial on a cold wet day in a landscape whose weather is famously uncooperative.
Access, second. There is no minimum age, no height limit and no restriction on pregnant passengers or people with limited mobility. A family with a seven-year-old and a grandparent has exactly one option on this fjord, and it is the scheduled boat.
Duration and direction, third. It carries you the full length one way to Gudvangen, which is genuinely useful if you are continuing towards Bergen or Voss rather than returning to Flam.
And for a certain kind of photography it is better: a stable platform, a high vantage point and time to compose, rather than a moving boat and a lens covered in spray.
Which suits whom
Take the RIB if you want to be close to the rock and the water, if the cold does not put you off, if you are travelling without young children, and if two hours of physical, noisy, exhilarating boat handling sounds like the whole point rather than something to endure.
Take the scheduled vessel if you have children under fourteen, if anyone in the group has a back or mobility problem, if you are pregnant, if you want to be warm, or if you are continuing to Gudvangen rather than coming back to Flam.
Take the scheduled vessel too if what you want is to sit quietly and look at a landscape for two hours. That is a completely legitimate way to experience this fjord and the small boat is worse at it.
The one thing not to do is book the RIB because it sounds more adventurous and then spend two hours cold and braced against a bench you did not expect.
Doing both, and the honest summary
It is possible and a few people do it, usually the scheduled boat one way and the RIB on another day. It is not a sensible use of a single day in Flam, because the two trips cover the same water and the second one loses its novelty.
If you only do one and cannot decide, the question that settles it is not which is better but how you feel about being cold and outside for two hours. Everything else follows from that answer.
And it is worth saying plainly: the scheduled cruise is not the consolation prize. It is a good trip on one of the most impressive stretches of water in Europe, and a large proportion of the people who take it would have hated the RIB.
This site sells the small boat. It would be dishonest to pretend it is the right boat for everybody, and pretending would not survive contact with a wet Tuesday in October.
One practical note for anyone still undecided at the marina: the scheduled boat runs on a published timetable and the RIB does not carry standby passengers in any useful number. If you are choosing on the day, the small boat is the one that will already be full.
