DougK

I think this is already happening. I've been tracking the Scenic Pearl, which left Basel on Wednesday for a Rhine/Moselle cruise to Amsterdam. It appears that they decided there was too much risk of being stranded upriver of the Rhine Gorge, so they cut short their upper Rhine stops, and hustled down the river a day early, spending an unscheduled day in Andernach. Of course, since I'm not on the ship, I have no idea what they did about their tours. I'm guessing they might have done longer bus trips to try to keep the original tours, or maybe they arranged different tours. I *think* they're now back on their regular itinerary for the rest of the cruise, but we'll have to see what the track shows for the next 10 days.

This is a little off-topic, and won't help the OP since I don't think Viking takes you to Triberg, but I would highly recommend Oli's Schnitzstuben in Triberg to anybody interested in cuckoo clocks. After Scenic cancelled our Rhine/Moselle cruise this spring, we decided to just do a land-based vacation in Europe instead, visiting some of the same areas. I was interested in getting a cuckoo clock from the Black Forest, so we spent a day in Triberg. It's a lovely town anyway, with Germany's highest waterfall (I think), and we also unexpectedly happened to be there on the day of a Tracht (traditional costume) parade. But the search for a cuckoo clock was the main reason for our visit, and I didn't come away disappointed. The big traffic goes to the House of 1000 Clocks, and that's certainly a fine place to look at a variety of clocks, and get an explanation of various options. But if you go just a little further up the street, there's a far less prominent store, where Oli and a couple of other people still hand carve their clocks. They may not be as glitzy as the factory-produced ones, and they cost somewhat more--but not outrageously so. The upside is that you get an individual piece, some of which are unlike clocks I've seen anywhere else. And some are literally unique designs, where you'll end up with a clock that nobody else has. I was lucky enough to find one of those that I fell in love with (picture attached). And it's extra special to meet and talk with the person who carved the clock and can tell you some of the back story...

Hmm... wonder why it took so long for you. Scenic cancelled our cruise (just a week before sailing) at the end of April, and we got the refund check about 6 weeks later, in early June. Certainly not fast, but not unreasonable. The 7 months it took you is definitely in the unreasonable category!

FWIW, I just received my refund check for my cancelled May 4 cruise. That's just a tad over 6 weeks from when I requested the refund. It's certainly not as quick as it could have been, but 6 weeks doesn't strike me as an unreasonably long time. I hope you receive your check as promptly.

Something strange is definitely happening with the transponders. It would appear that *two* ships have been reporting as the Pearl, starting on the 27th. The tracking showed that the Pearl came down the Rhine as expected on the 27th to Kehl, arriving around 6:00A, and then left around 1:30P (a normal stop), continuing on down the Rhine and stopping again at Rastatt around 7:00P (for the evening concert). But *also* on the 27th, it shows the Pearl suddenly appearing at about 8:00A around Düsseldorf and travelling up the Rhine, stopping in Cologne for the day, and coming close to Bonn past midnight. And just to complicate matters, the tracking site defaults to showing this phantom track on the map; you have to move the map to see the real track around Kehl and Rastatt showing up as well. On the 28th, it also shows the Pearl twice, once continuing down the Rhine from Rastatt, stopping at Mannheim, but also continuing up the Rhine from Bonn to Koblenz. I would say that one of the other Scenic ships accidentally switched their transponder to report as the Pearl, but that doesn't seem right, since none of the other ships in the area have disappeared. So I have no clue as to what ship is doing the phantom reporting, or what's going on. But it looks like the (real) Pearl is proceeding on the normal Romantic Rhine and Moselle itinerary.

I have found that the best site to track Scenic ships is http://www.anyoverip.de/scenic/index.php. You can either get an overview of where all Scenic ships are on a given day, or look at hour-by-hour (generally) tracking of any individual ship. To me, the best thing about the site is that it includes historical information on that tracking, going all the way back to 2014. It's a great way to get a rough idea about when and how long ships are in a given port on a particular itinerary, by looking at what they did on previous trips. Sure, there are variances due to river conditions, etc., but there's actually quite a bit of consistency--and shows that the cruise line *could* post estimated times rather than simply listing the dates for each city. Personally, for planning purposes, I find it a lot more useful to know that a ship is likely to be docked in town for 12 hours vs. stopping only long enough to disgorge passengers onto tour buses to be picked up later further down the river, and I really wish cruise lines would include such information in their brochures or online. In any event, the tracking is showing essentially no movement of the Jade since it arrived in Duisburg over two weeks ago.

I was scheduled to go on Scenic's Romantic Rhine and Moselle cruise, starting a week from tomorrow in Amsterdam. My travel agent just informed me that the cruise has been cancelled, and forwarded the letter from Scenic. The only options Scenic offers in the letter are rescheduling to two other cruises that would depart several weeks later. That absolutely doesn't fit in with our vacation timing. Not even a mention of the option for a refund; I (perhaps naively) assume that option exists, but am trying to find out. Very, very, very disappointed and pissed off!