sbjornda

1. About 6-10 months prior to departure, I recommend phoning Scenic and spending some time with their air travel agents to go through all the options. I have found them to be quite helpful and flexible, within certain limits - e.g. they have preferred travel partner airlines. You might not get the most rock bottom price across all airlines, but they will help you get all the Scenic travel credits and the seating classes you want. If they're not able to assign a seat that early on, you'll get a flight booking number that you can then use to assign a seat directly with the airline closer to the travel date when that becomes available. 2. I've had no problem booking flights directly with Scenic and telling them I want to arrive a few days early. But if you want the transfer from the airport to the hotel, you need to use their recommended hotel. You'll need to decide how price-conscious you are; if their hotel is more expensive would you rather deal with your own airport transfer to save the money? (Another option is to transfer the booking to your own travel agent and let your travel agent figure out private airport transfer and pre-cruise tourism; just be aware that once you've transferred the booking you can't transfer it back to Scenic again and you'll have to go through your own travel agent for any changes.) 3. You will pre-book some of the Freechoice excursions via the Trip Personalizer web site (tp.scenicglobal.com) - that link should be somewhere in the emails you received. Others will be selected on-board; the Cruise Director will give a presentation of the options and you'll indicate your preferences on a paper form. 4. Full room service is only available for the upper-end suites; if you can't find the specific entitlement on Scenic's web site you can try emailing the "info" email address for your country and they'll usually get back to you within a few days, or you can of course phone them. In my experience in a Royal suite there is a room service menu as well as the option for the standard fare. You would have to order ahead of time (I forget the exact mechanism) and they would bring it to you shortly after the main restaurant service begins. Some other suites just have a morning coffee delivery service, which you pre-book by hanging a card on your doorknob the night before.

As long as you are back on board well before sailing time (at least a half an hour, to be safe), you can go exploring on your own. There have been a few times where we have had the opportunity to spend several hours hiking in the hills within walking distance of the ship - our Cruise Directors were not particularly helpful with that but some web searches quickly turned up opportunities. Sometimes kayaking is presented as an option. In flatter lands you may be able to make use of the company's on-board bicycles, if available. Scenic - and I presume other lines would be the same - publishes activity levels for their tours on a scale of 1 "Relaxed", 2 "Moderate", or 3 "Active". For example the 32km bike ride from Melk to Dürnstein is listed as a 3, and even though they are e-bikes one could choose either to take it slow and easy or to work harder and arrive at Dürnstein ahead of the pack in time to enjoy a beer.

From their web site (https://www.scenic.ca/about-us/scenic-club-loyalty) I'm pretty sure we got points for our land extension in 2019, in Switzerland, so the above info appears to be a change. That could add to the customer service rep's confusion. If you're just adding a day or few at their recommended hotel, there aren't any points, based on my 2019 experience in Amsterdam.

I believe so, and I think the details (e.g. points-per-day) are available on their web site, but to be certain you should contact them, either by phone or by email (if email they may take a few days to respond but in my experience they've never just ghosted me).

Three summer/fall cruises so far, no need for insect repellent, even hiking through the woods in the hills above Cochem and Rüdesheim and a walk in the Black Forest (not a lot of forest though). However, back in 1994 I stayed at a hostel in a small town about an hour outside of Munich and there were no screens on the windows and we were terribly bothered by mosquitos at night (month of August). It was a fairly rural area.

You are right. We did a cruise with Scenic that sailed both Rhine and Moselle in 2019, and there were fewer ships on the Moselle. The towns are smaller and less touristy. It was a great experience.

We did the Scenic 11 day cruise in July 2022 (with the Lisbon and Madrid extensions). It was different from our previous river cruises (Rhine and Danube), and I wasn't familiar with the language. I've got some fond memories now, though when we arrived back home I had the feeling that it was the weakest experience of our 3 river cruises - very good but not outstanding. But looking back at the photos and remembering the excursions, I'm glad I did it. Yes it was different from previous river cruises, and was paced more leisurely, but in hindsight it was worth it. It had a different "feel" to it that has taken me some time to fully appreciate. As others have pointed out, at many of the docks there's not much close by to where you are docked, but on those days the evening's on-board entertainment was quite sufficient. In Porto and one or two other places you'll find on-shore options. Most excursions were within an hour's bus ride of the dock. The ship's guides travelled with us and provided enjoyable commentary along the way, of history, geography, economics, culture, nature, etc. (The crew and staff were all from Portugal, which made for a more integrated experience than I found to be the case with the Rhine and Danube cruises.) Scenic uses their own buses, which are very clean and comfortable. There were one or two excursions every day except for a couple of "sailing days". We took their excursion to Vila Real and it really was a slice of small town life up in the hills; very charming and rustic (I chose to buy my souvenirs there). One of the guides had grown up near there in an even smaller farming community - so for her Vila Real was a large town 🙂. Especially there at Vila Real I felt that rural Portugal had a bit of the feel of "eastern Europe" - a bit run down, but clean and safe, very proud of their history and culture. We chose the bus tour to Salamanca despite regrets expressed by some on this board that it was a long bus ride, but I'm glad I went - I suppose it depends on how much you're interested in history and art; during our free time we visited the Art Deco / Art Nouveau museum which (lucky for us) was displaying all 100 of Dali's prints illustrating Dante's Divine Comedy; that was a major highlight of the trip for me. Salamanca was a long day, but we had several hours to wander after the guided portion so if you're in good shape and enjoy exploring an old, historic city, it's worth it. Or enjoying a coffee/beer in the Plaza Mayor, people-watching. The Côa Valley Archeological Park is worth it if you're interested in paleology. It was really well put together, very clean and modern. The actual rock carvings themselves are difficult to get to (several hours in an ATV), so the museum mostly displays copies, moulds, and rubbings. They do a good job of showing how this site compares to other paleological sites in Europe and around the world. We took their excursion to Aveira, south of Porto, for an example of a smaller seacost city. The guided portion was a canal cruise, in case you hadn't had enough water yet. 🙂 There was plenty of free time to browse shops afterwards. So yes, it's a different sort of cruise from the Rhine or Danube, more leisurely and charming. It took me some time and reflection to appreciate it more fully. Of course it didn't help that we were distracted by COVID and the horrible air travel experience of 2022 and lost luggage - but now that those painful memories have receded, it really was a nice little cruise.