chessybear

Well its now the 18th of December and still no sign of either RCL or NCL sailings. We are looking for transatlantics, Norway, British Isle, and Iceland sailings for 2019. Lets hope its soon.

Great to see Le Tour de France start in Germany and a great win by Marcus Kittell on stage 2. It looked like the Rhine received some rain that day. I follow the tour every year and last year spent 9 weeks in Europe following the Tour in the mountain stages near Annecy.

Hi All Gate 1 does seem to be the only company keeping up with us we are on Scenic Jewel and our brillient maritime crew got us through Regensburg to Passau when others had to ship swap, only two cargo and us. We have only seen us Gate 1 and Avalon moving in two days on the Danube, on our way to Melk now. CA

Thanks for the update. Looking at our itinerary there would not be an option to ship swap.

Hello chessy bear,

 

happy to help. But I really do not know how things might go with the Monarch Queen. Sounds as if she should be ok, we sort of established last year here on CC that Viking still sails when the level is at 80cm at Koblenz. I have lost track of how far down it went after that, but Viking narrowly avoided the ship swaps I seem to remember. Have a look at last year's thread from post #390 onwards: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2308253 to give you an idea of what the situation was like.

 

As regards place: the ships get stuck in or very close to the Rhine gorge with the shallowest navigation channel being there, that is between about Wiesbaden and Koblenz.

 

notamermaid

Thank you Notamermaid for your advice and thread. I have rung Gate1 and as of today they have had no boats impacted yet by the low levels on the Rhine. She said sometimes they will off load people and bus them to meet the boat where it is very shallow to allow the boat to navigate across the shallow areas with out the weight of 100+ people onboard. Of course we are not sailing until mid Autumn so lets hope this area has had some rain by then.

Jackie

Thank you for starting this thread. We are a group of 6 travelling 24 September from Amsterdam to Budapest on Gate1 Monach Queen. The boat is 110m in length and the draft is 1.75m. We will be doing a rain dance when we reach Europe this year in August. If the Rhine is too low do you know at what point a transfer would most likely happen.

Thank you for the review, very helpful. We are booked with 4 others on Monach Queen late September from Ams to Budapest. Like Tara Jane we received an email via a travel promoter and the price on Gate 1 was to good to resist. Going by the reviews I have read I think we are going to very happy with our first river cruise and Gate 1.

What I am referring to is the fact that the dining experience for those in the MDR has been affected much more with the addition of Lumina than the addition of Blu. First there is now one door for at least 750 guests on the bottom deck. Second the walled off area is quite an eyesore for those dining near it in the MDR. Third it has reduced the window count on the bottom floor by about 25%.

Thank you for the update and post :)

All Solstice class ships added Luminae to the starboard side of the bottom deck of the main dining room. Because of this there is now only one entrance (on the port side) to the MDR. Luminae is just a walled off area on the starboard side of the MDR similar to what Celebrity did to create Blu on the Millennium class ships. Unfortunately it is not transparent to the quests in the MDR like Blu is on the Millennium class ships.

Thank you :)

Does anyone know where the new Suite restaurant is positioned on Silhouette we are in Suite class and sailing in 2.5 weeks time.

Absolutely, it's a different chemical balance in the water to what many are used to at home. For some, it has no effect (hence the posts that they've drank ships tap water for years no problem). For others whose own body chemistry reacts differently, ship water is the cause of a lot of issues. I am in the second group so it's bottled all the way for me

I am also in the latter group once I made the switch to bottle no more swollen ankles. You can certainly taste a difference in the water once you have been on bottled and try regular water it is very very salty.

Once we switched to AQ/ BLU never any swollen ankles, fingers or that salt bloated feeling.

Hope same lower salt prep will be in Luminae....by its nature, onion soup with cheese tends to be salty...no added salt needed for most people.

 

Jenna...again thanks for your great review and photos...looking forward to your next cruise blog!

I have found it is not only the food but definitely the onboard water. Only drink bottled water.

We will be in Fredericia early June, how far away is Trelleborg from there? We plan on renting a car for the day. Thanks, Prish

Hi Prish I used google map and put in the port and then where the Jelling Mounds and Runic stones are it was approx. 40min drive. We have rented a car and requested they have the car at the port for us.