Uniworld S.S. Sphinx
Small river ship. Operated by Uniworld Boutique River Cruises (operated locally by Egypt-based partner).
Sailing, two sources checked 12 Sep 2026
Our view
Sphinx is the newest of the two Uniworld hulls and the inclusions are the most complete of any river ship in this collection, gratuities and internal flights included. The caveat Uniworld prints on its own ship page, that the amenities may differ from a company owned ship, is unusual enough that we would ask what it means before booking. The price is a package total and cannot be reduced to a nightly rate, so it does not compare directly with anything sold by the cabin.
Who it suits
- First visit to Egypt
- Travellers who want gratuities and internal flights inside one price
- Families with children from five upwards
- Guests who want a lift to the public decks
Who it does not suit
- Anyone who wants a cruise only price, the published figure is a per person package total covering seven ship nights and four Cairo hotel nights
- Wheelchair users, no stateroom or suite on this ship has wheelchair features and Nile moorings often mean stairs to street level
- Guests who want the sun deck without stairs, the lift does not reach it
- Anyone who took Super Ship to mean a Uniworld standard, Uniworld itself prints a caveat on this ship's page that its amenities may differ from a company owned ship
- Travellers who came for a small boat, this is 84 guests and 60 crew on five decks
- Service style
- Hotel service model inside a twelve day package, with Egyptologists for eight days, Cairo hotel nights, internal flights and all gratuities included.
- The cabin we would book
- One of the 22 suites. On a 42 cabin ship the suites are half the inventory, so the step up is the normal purchase here rather than an upgrade.
- Nearest alternative: Uniworld River Tosca
- The same programme, the same itinerary page and the same inclusions, sold on two hulls. Sphinx is the 2021 newbuild, River Tosca dates from 2009. Which one is cheaper changes from date to date, so check both before you choose. See its record →
Shown in the currency the operator published it in, on the basis the operator sells it on. We do not convert currencies and we do not divide a package total into a nightly rate, because both would produce a number nobody quoted. See how this compares on the rates page.
Identity · 3 of 4 on file
The vessel · 12 of 13 on file
How it operates · 8 of 9 on file
Price · 3 of 5 on file
Reputation · 2 of 3 on file
What we could not establish
Every empty cell above has a reason. These are the reasons for this vessel, written down at the time the record was made, including the places where published sources contradict each other.
No flag or registration is published for this vessel by Uniworld, CruiseMapper, Global Journeys or Fodor's, so the flag and registration remain unrecorded.
No refit year has been found. Uniworld's Quick Facts panel prints "Remodeled 0001", which is a null placeholder rather than a year. No source gives a refurbishment date for a ship that entered service in 2021, so the refit year remains unrecorded.
No award has been found for the S.S. Sphinx itself. Every entry on Uniworld's awards page is a line-level award for Uniworld Boutique River Cruises, so the awards field is left empty rather than filled with company awards.
The starting and top rates published on this record are per person, double occupancy totals for a 12-day programme that bundles 7 cruise nights, 4 Cairo hotel nights and two domestic flights. They are recorded under the per-cabin rate only because the rate vocabulary has no per-person package option. Readers should note that these figures do not represent a cabin price or a cruise-only price.
Cabin count has three published answers: 42 from Uniworld and from CruiseMapper's ship record, 44 from CruiseMapper's own cabins page, and 37 from Tripadvisor. This record uses 42 because the operator's four category counts sum to that figure and it matches 84 guests at double occupancy.
Cruise Critic and Fodor's both block automated retrieval. The accessibility sentence and the June-to-August season gap were read from search engine extracts of those pages rather than from the pages themselves, and both details should be confirmed by loading the pages directly in a browser.
Uniworld's own ship page carries the line "While the S.S. Sphinx is a beautiful and luxurious ship, its amenities may differ from those of a Uniworld-company-owned ship." This is an unusual statement for an operator to publish about a vessel it markets as a Super Ship.
The starting rate is not recorded. Uniworld publishes USD 6,349 per person on double occupancy for the full 12-day programme, which bundles Cairo hotel nights with cruise nights. It is not a per-cabin price, and the cruise-only night count is not stated, so the figure cannot be converted to one. Source: https://www.uniworld.com/us/river-cruise/egypt/nile/splendors-of-egypt-and-the-nile/2027-cairo-to-cairo/dates-and-prices. The River Tosca record was left empty for the same reason.
Recorded 12 September 2026. If you can settle any of these, tell us and we will correct the record in public.
Press, awards and guest reviews
What other people published about this vessel. These are not our claims and they are not our view. Where an entry was the source for a fact above, the note says so.
Press
Guest reviews
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