CastleCritic

Been thinking on this one for a little while. Ive done 4 cruises all with AMAwaterways and each certainly had days that were high walking and days that we're certainly less so. You're certainly going to get a LOT of time walking no matter what cruise you are on but it may be at a relaxed pace. EACH day (pretty much) the main excursion will have an "active" group that covers more ground and takes less rest stops than the "normal groups", maybe does some part of the excursion on foot that everyone else does in a bus/van (conversely there is an "easy" group that walks less takes more breaks and sometimes has minibuses for long road friendly segments). pretty much any AMAwaterways cruise that does Strasbourg France will have this (but this is also nearly an all day stop anyway where you can go to or from the ship to the city center via bus every hour on the hour and explore the area on your own). There WILL be some days with an actual hike usually uphill to a castle or overlook or some kind but these are usually of the 90min-2 hour kind these are not going to be all day trips. Some of the days will also have bike tours, often this is just local to the normal tour, but notably on the Main cruise I did last year they did a 30 mile ride between ...I want to say Rudesheim and Mainz (the ship relocating between the two while everyone was off on excursions)..but this is very much an exception. Of the four cruises Ive done two with my mother (who has reduced mobility but can do a normal excursion) and Ive tended to stick with her unless there was a good reason to split up for the day. The other two I did alone and will ALWAYS take the active option and sometime split off and do my own thing if the time allows Things that stick out keep in mind Ive yet to do a bike tour which are offered on about half of the days. cruise 1 Amsterdam-Basel Rhine and Moselle. (keep in mind this was 11 days) Cochem, everyone did a town walk then the end destination was reichsburg castle...almost everyone got there in a van, the active group walked Bernkastel hike up to castle ruins then through the woods back to town. Rudesheim, hike through vineyards Ludwisgshafen(just a port) I want to say the Heidelburg all day excursion had an active option that did more walking to/from the castle (though this is reached by an inclined railway/furnicular) Strasbourg this time I did the normal tour and I can tell you from having done the "active" version.2 years later there were some major differences plus again this town is available all day for exploration on your own. Breisach, didnt do it but there is a Black Forest hike listed. this is true for at least one other stop Cruise2 Vilshofen->Budapest (danube) Passau, hike up to the castle instead of doing the city tour Linz (just where we docked). did the normal (active) walk in Salzburg then during free time hiked/furnicular'd up to the castle Weissenkirchen/Durnstein was a hike scheduled up to castle ruins that was rained out...I still tried and didnt make it there before running out of time...this was not an easy climb...at least the way I was going. Vienna we basically had all day though it would have been using city transit rather than AMA provided transport to get off the ship (we did a later afternoon trip to schonbrunn palace that has a LOT of area to walk around if you choose I made it back to the bus with about 30 seconds to spare) Bratislava...lists a castle hike..didnt go because we didnt do this stop due to it being a changed/wine cruise itinerary Budapest...we were on our feet all day hike up to the castle then walked around the city for the rest of the day then back to the ship..probably 3 or so miles in that last segment alone people gave up on more sightseeing in fact. Cruise 3 Basel to Nuremburg (rhein and Main this one also looks a little different itinerary now) This cruise had a lot of two things 1. the ship leaving us and repositioning and us having to catch up with it 2. the ship not staying in ports for long even when we were on it. Strasbourg...this time I did the active walk and we spent nearly 2 hours covering area on foot I hadn't seen..I wont wont say this was all awesome ancient do not miss...no it wasnt..part of it was walking through residential areas but it was worth it. Speyer...this was pretty much all walking tours leaving from the ship with no buses Mainz...as said above this one was notable for the trip I didnt make which was a 20 mile bike ride from Rudesheim to Mainz looking at the list this was repeated the next day from Miltenberg to Wertheim MiltenBerg/Wertheim..hike up to castles day..did one..got on a bus went to the next city and did it again.. Land extension to Prague...this one ended up being a bit personalized since I ended up being the only one who did the active tour (there were only 5 of us total though the other 4 took a van to the castle). 2 hour straight walk from the hotel to the Prague castle then free time for the next day and a half to do whatever we wanted. cruise 4 seine Paris to Le Havre This cruise...honestly did not have any notable active..activities in fact I DID and then complained about one 'hike' that has since been removed from the offerings because it was just..not a hike and not to see what it was billed at). There were a few bike days but again I didnt do them. Thats not to say this was a bad cruise...it might have been my favorite of the 4 but not for places I had to work to get to(the one Long walk that stands out was actually down hill in Normandy to get to the beach where the British built their artificial harbor in WWII for lunch effectively) , at least on the river segment. where THAT started was again doing the land extension Land extension was to St. Malo which is a walled city where you have the better part of 3 days to walk around it and out on areas only accessible at low tide, and then there was Mont St. Michel literally a walled city/cathedral on an island that has to be seen to be belived...and that requires some fitness (though in the end all 26 of our group made it up...including the about a dozen who didn't think they could and split off from the "active...we'r doing this" group.

I know the feeling, I just put $1500 of an American Airlines credit towards a cruise next May that..lets see started as I want to say $2500 for airfare for a cruise in may 2020, was canceled and AA lost the voucher until I called them then was partially used for a trip in the US then the remainder was booked again with AA and they canceled the flight (but refunded the trip back as credit)...the fun part is that AMA cant use credit towards their booked airfare so I cant get their discount and use it. Even better part I looked up a business class ticket to Australia...$16k-$20k.

That might be a decent option but keep in mind that the sun deck is still up a few steepish steps from the 2nd deck and the elevator again cant get up there. Im sure she can get someone to help her if she asks the desk. Also a consideration is getting down. If the ship is under way then she can probably knock on the wheel house/stick her head in there and the officers will find someone. Alternately if people are up on deck I would expect the bar crew to be around occasionally. The crew rest area is also at the very stern of the ship on the sun deck There are still a "few" steps between the area around the wheelhouse and the main sun deck (about 4) but there is a couch behind the wheelhouse on that lower level. (good for keeping out of the wind) and chairs and tables in front of it. Alternate plan, sit on the bow on the deck level or in the lounge. Worse case give her a cell phone and have her call the desk that way.

Suggest calling them and asking for that Im going to guess (and even though Ive been on 4 AMA cruises I don't drink) that the wines can rotate too much for them to give you more than a general answer. The default wines definitely will change almost every meal There are also "wine cruises" where a winery will bring their own wines (I was on a ship where this happened and the winery was from california) and the wine host will buy additional wines in port that will also be served during meals. I cant imagine they would say no letting you bring your own wines from shore. At least one of the excursions has been to places for "tasting" where the passengers are encouraged to then buy whatever was tasted (last cruise I was on it was cider and calvados but wine is very popular) and bring it back to the ship.

That is a tough one and the linked article touches on most of it. Unlike the US river cruise I took last fall the buses in Europe are NOT set up for passengers with mobility issues/wheelchair lifts. you would definitely have to store the chair in the bus for each trip (which I think is doable) and then help her climb the stairs. On the Ama ships cabin choice comes into play for MOST of their ships the elevator will go to the 2nd and third floor cabins and the first floor restaurant but can NOT be used to reach the 1st floor cheaper cabins (and on some of them the first floor rooms are down a spiral set of steps) Stairs are going to be an issue on a lot of excursions and maybe even some docking locations, as the article mentions sometimes the ship will be docked next to another ship and you will need to cross it to get to the land side. For Ama ships if that "land side" ship is viking you absolutely will be going up and down stairs as their 2nd decks dont match up in height (and some lines just dont let you go through their common area even if the ships are the same deck heights, AMA had that policy during covid).

I’ve used it a good bit to upload pictures to their app. Never for FaceTime. Its ok..don’t expect home speeds depends a good bit where you are at the time. Latency can be high for sure

It can be tough. I’ve been on 4 amawaterways cruises. Every day the main expedition will have an “easy Walker” group that moves slowly and takes more breaks. And in some cases has motor transport to shorten the walking. But this last part is highly dependent on where you are and what the activity is. on one cruise a passenger had a motor scooter that was bus transportable (that I think ama provided it, I saw one last month on the amadante that no one was using) but abandoned it by about day 2 likely due to difficulty in making it useful in the tight spaces and on the cobbles.

to expand a bit on the above. 1. no the bikes are not tandem, and all the bike excursion are set for fairly experienced riders (one on a cruise I did last fall was a 30 mile ride over a route that most passengers went with a bus, they were late because one of them "bonked"). 2. AMA almost always has one excursion set up for normal, "active" and "easy" walkers with a different guide for each group. This will NOT be for every excursion but usually is for the main one of the day. Often the "easy" walkers will have minibuses or some other means of motor transport in some places where a long walk would be involved (and there is access to streets to do so). The normal speeds are usually pretty ok, and in fact on the cruise I got off a month ago my somewhat mobility limited mother(whom we got a wheelchair for airport segments)..never did the easy speed. Think people with canes and walkers...thats the usual audience for the easy walker group. The issue is probably going to be more time on feet than distance looking at the archived info from the Rhine cruise I did with them cologne 15min bus ride 1 hour 45min walk lahnstein 2 hour walk (though as I recall a large part of this was looking around a garden around a fortress then cable ride down) cochem 2 hour walk including castle visit (bus to the castle itself rudesheim shuttle train from the dock to town then ride up a cable car...they dont even list a duration on foot night activity was shuttle back to down then walking around the mechanical music museum "ludwigshafen" (just where the ship stops) 2 hours on a bus then 2 hours walking around either Heidelberg or schwetzingen palace Strasbourg this ones a little unique since its a ~20min bus ride to the city center than a 1 hour walk tour and then back to the ship except they keep running buses back and forth from the ship to the city center every hour for most of the day. Breisach just a dock again with bus tours to small cities then about an hour tour.

In my experience kids on Amawaterways cruises aren't common (probably excepting those disney charters) Ive been on 4 AMA cruises and was usually the youngest (at ~47) on the ship for 3 of them (the exception being an early 20s passenger on the first).

I did that cruise with my Mother back in late April to Early May. Was my 4th cruise with them. I thought it was one of their better itineraries. Vs their normal Paris loop over the same river and most of the ports it certainly looked much more relaxed (she normally reaches Le Havre/the end of the seine on about the 3rd and then has to power back to Paris) where as on this cruise it was on the 5th and even then we were off the ship all day while it made the final leg). Its still a new itinerary (I was on the third sailing) so they may be tweaking it a little I can see that they dropped one of the excursions I did that I felt was a little redundant in the offerings so thats good. I also recommend heavily the st.malo land extension on which ever end of the week that is for the week you were looking at. Mt St. Michel is definitely a bucket list place to see. The only downside is that the Le Havre end of the trip can (if you take the all day excursions) end up being a lot of time on a bus going to and from normandy for a few days in a row (literally 3 including the repositioning to or from st. Malo with the extension). day 5 leaving from Paris the all day option is a bus from Caudebec to Bayern/Caen then to meet the ship in Le Havre. day 6 CAN BE (there is a second excursion to honfleur area as well) bus to the normandy WWII beaches and then back to Caen for a museum then back to Le Havre). We did have a fairly decent packed lunch in the town with the remnants of the British mulberry/mobile harbor. Dont get me wrong these are both REALLY good excursions but they are all day and in the same area for both but you can do something else closer to the ship instead if you want. I was a little worried about the AmaDante as she is both one of their old ships and did NOT do cruises last year but they used the time to paint pretty much everything and the ship showed no signs (or smells unlike the Ama...viola I think it was in late 2021) of having been mothballed for nearly 2 years. We only had 52 guests on the ship and 26 (they had it capped for at least the week I was on) in St. Malo. We didnt do the pre-trip in Paris but it might have been worth it. Between jet lag and May1 being a scheduled holiday/demonstration/riots day in Paris we didn't really get to see a whole lot but that was a scheduling quirk not AMA's fault. Covid protocols...this might change but no pre-cruise test. They tested everyone for fever on embarkation and every morning at breakfast. No actual testing. They are pretty serious about filling out their pre-cruise health forms though. We were (great this is going away) tested for the return trip either on the ship or at the hotel at CDG the night before we flew home.