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Danube water levels 2018 and similar topics - plus tips and info

notamermaid

By notamermaid,
in River Cruising

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pinotlover Great Review Rare

pinotlover

Posted
Posted

A couple weeks ago in the lower Danube, the Captain got all the passengers off the ship on tours, dumped all the water in the holding tanks so to float higher. He then proceeded upstream, past the extreme danger areas to a new docking where he had to refill the tanks before we got back from tours.

 

It really wasn’t a big deal for us, in fact a pleasure. It only required about 30 minutes of additional busing, but we got to see a lot of new a very pretty landscape in Bulgaria in lieu of driving in and out on the same route.

 

I don’t believe boats are even making Guirgu presently.

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Roland4 "Live from...." Rare

Roland4

Posted
Posted
I am on Crystal Mozart (Sep 10-20) & we will NOT be going to Budapest. The situation isn’t good & no rain in the Budapest region is forecast for the next 10 days. We will be bused to Budapest from either Bratislava or Vienna. Depends on water conditions in Bratislava. Will know tomorrow.

 

We actually watched you sail by Vienna this morning as were walking up the length of the pier counting the ships. Hope you made it to Bratislava without trouble! For anyone interested, there are presently 13 ships docked in Vienna. We are scheduled to sail for Krems at 10:00 PM.

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DTWgypsy

DTWgypsy

Posted
Posted
We are booked on Uniworld SS Beatrice from Budapest to Bucharest, embarks October 4th. I realize that’s still 18 days away, but is Danube passable headed from Budapest to Bucharest??

We're in the same situation, leaving October 7th on Avalon from Munich to Budapest. I see the 10 day weather forecast for that region is dry warm weather. It sure isn't promising for water levels. :(

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pinotlover Great Review Rare

pinotlover

Posted
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FlaGator65;

 

We finished your trip in reverse on 9/5. My guess would be the Beatrice can make it down river and through the iron gate and double locks. I don’t believe boats are making Guirgu ( Bucharest) now. It would be an issue of how far they can make it and how much busing they can do. Below the 2nd locks/dam the river really starts to widen out and get shallow. Good luck! Our timing worked perfectly and we got in our complete trip!

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Flamencacha

Flamencacha

Posted
Posted
We're in the same situation, leaving October 7th on Avalon from Munich to Budapest. I see the 10 day weather forecast for that region is dry warm weather. It sure isn't promising for water levels. :(

 

 

 

Have you been able to get any info from AVALON? Or your TA

 

 

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Malekin

Malekin

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I am on a Danube cruise right now and have seen at least one Avalon ship moving between Passau and Linz but don’t know about any other part of the river. There are apparently web sites that allow you to track the location and movement of specific boats.

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Flamencacha

Flamencacha

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We're in the same situation, leaving October 7th on Avalon from Munich to Budapest. I see the 10 day weather forecast for that region is dry warm weather. It sure isn't promising for water levels. :(

 

 

 

Have you been able to get any info from AVALON? Or your TA

 

 

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DTWgypsy

DTWgypsy

Posted
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I contacted Avalon & they said 1-2 weeks out they will know more about our cruise. I've seen they are also offering credits or refunds. I haven't contacted our agent yet. I'm using cruisemapper to see the ships on the Danube. Good to hear you saw an Avalon ship! Thanks!

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jbeuks

jbeuks

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Posted

People have been asking "Have you heard from Avalon?" Well, we heard from Avalon this afternoon, and the news (at least for us) isn't good. We're booked on WAB 80921 from Amsterdam to Budapest, scheduled to leave this Friday on Avalon Expression. Well, Expression hasn't been west of Passau in six weeks, but we assumed we'd leave AMS on another ship and do a ship swap somewhere in Bavaria. NOT SO!

 

This afternoon (less than 24 hours before we're scheduled to fly to AMS), I received an email from Avalon telling me that, because Expression will be "stuck in Passau," the first six days of the cruise will be by bus. We will first check into a hotel in AMS (not yet identified) for two nights, then bus for several days, with hotel stops in Bonn, Frankfurt, and Nuremburg (two nights) before finally joining Expression in Passau on 9/27. This means missing a couple of scheduled stops along the Main River, so they're adding a couple of stops (Linz and Grein) in Austria. We'll do the Rhine gorge for a few hours out of St. Goar, presumably on a day-cruiser. No mention of any disruption at the eastern end of the cruise (Bratislava, Budapest), but that shoe could still drop.

 

Avalon offers the option of cancelling before the cruise starts, with full refund or rebooking on a future cruise but no assistance on "outside airline change fees or price changes for new vacations." OR, if we go on the trip with the new itinerary, we "will be refunded 6 days accommodated in hotel at 100% per day of the cruise only price including cabin upgrades." I'm quoting the Avalon email here, exactly as it was written, i.e., with no punctuation, and I have no idea what it means. I guess we'll find out eventually.

 

 

 

Obviously the water levels aren't Avalon's fault. But I suspect they have found themselves with no ship available to carry us from AMS to, say Nuremberg or Regensburg, where a ship swap might be possible, and that is their fault, at least in terms of poor planning. And whoever's "fault" it is, it certainly isn't what we thought we were buying when we booked this cruise. But that said, we and the friends with whom we're traveling have decided to go ahead with the revised plan. We'll still be seeing interesting new places that we haven't seen before, and we'll still get an 8-day cruise, rather than the original 14 days, if there are no problems below Vienna. In short, we've been handed a few lemons, but we're hopeful that the lemonade may still be reasonably tasty and refreshing.

 

 

I provide this information for the benefit of others who are also ticketed on Avalon, to give you a hint of what you may expect (including the relatively short notice)

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Flamencacha

Flamencacha

Posted
Posted
People have been asking "Have you heard from Avalon?"

 

 

 

 

 

I provide this information for the benefit of others who are also ticketed on Avalon, to give you a hint of what you may expect (including the relatively short notice)

 

 

 

How disappointing for you! Thanks for the update. I will definitely look at planning a alternate. I am only doing 8 days out of Deggendorf, so will be eager to know how your water portion went.

 

May your trip be the best you ever had!

 

 

 

 

 

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kruzin2010

kruzin2010

Posted
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People have been asking "Have you heard from Avalon?" Well, we heard from Avalon this afternoon, and the news (at least for us) isn't good. We're booked on WAB 80921 from Amsterdam to Budapest, scheduled to leave this Friday on Avalon Expression. Well, Expression hasn't been west of Passau in six weeks, but we assumed we'd leave AMS on another ship and do a ship swap somewhere in Bavaria. NOT SO!

 

This afternoon (less than 24 hours before we're scheduled to fly to AMS), I received an email from Avalon telling me that, because Expression will be "stuck in Passau," the first six days of the cruise will be by bus. We will first check into a hotel in AMS (not yet identified) for two nights, then bus for several days, with hotel stops in Bonn, Frankfurt, and Nuremburg (two nights) before finally joining Expression in Passau on 9/27. This means missing a couple of scheduled stops along the Main River, so they're adding a couple of stops (Linz and Grein) in Austria. We'll do the Rhine gorge for a few hours out of St. Goar, presumably on a day-cruiser. No mention of any disruption at the eastern end of the cruise (Bratislava, Budapest), but that shoe could still drop.

 

Avalon offers the option of cancelling before the cruise starts, with full refund or rebooking on a future cruise but no assistance on "outside airline change fees or price changes for new vacations." OR, if we go on the trip with the new itinerary, we "will be refunded 6 days accommodated in hotel at 100% per day of the cruise only price including cabin upgrades." I'm quoting the Avalon email here, exactly as it was written, i.e., with no punctuation, and I have no idea what it means. I guess we'll find out eventually.

 

 

 

Obviously the water levels aren't Avalon's fault. But I suspect they have found themselves with no ship available to carry us from AMS to, say Nuremberg or Regensburg, where a ship swap might be possible, and that is their fault, at least in terms of poor planning. And whoever's "fault" it is, it certainly isn't what we thought we were buying when we booked this cruise. But that said, we and the friends with whom we're traveling have decided to go ahead with the revised plan. We'll still be seeing interesting new places that we haven't seen before, and we'll still get an 8-day cruise, rather than the original 14 days, if there are no problems below Vienna. In short, we've been handed a few lemons, but we're hopeful that the lemonade may still be reasonably tasty and refreshing

 

 

I provide this information for the benefit of others who are also ticketed on Avalon, to give you a hint of what you may expect (including the relatively short notice)

 

 

Thanks for that detailed post. As you said you may indeed enjoy the lemonade. Too bad, you couldn't pour that in the river to increase the levels!

 

Have a fun trip, keep smiling and let us know how it went

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jbeuks

jbeuks

Posted
Posted

Further clarification re Avalon's "make good" offer for the extensive disruption in our AMS-Budapest itinerary, noted above. According to my TA, who talked to them this morning, the unclear sentence that I quoted means that we will be refunded for 6/14 of the cost of our cruise (proportionate to the number of days we'll be on bus rather than ship), AND they will put us up and feed us during the bus portion of the revised trip. Pretty good terms, as I see it. Apart from the disappointment, I really have no basis for complaint at this point.

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notamermaid Excellent Advice! Rare

notamermaid

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The Crystal Mahler has left Nijmegen and is travelling upstream towards Germany: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/details/ships/shipid:5187099/vessel:CRYSTAL%20MAHLER

 

 

See her webcam: https://www.crystalcruises.com/river/river-guidebook/our-ships/crystal-mahler/crystal-mahler-live-views

 

 

My, goodness, so much exposed sand in the Netherlands as well! The river level at Emmerich (the border) has fallen again. Luckily the river is dug out deep there.

 

 

 

notamermaid

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Flamencacha

Flamencacha

Posted
Posted
Further clarification re Avalon's "make good" offer for the extensive disruption in our AMS-Budapest itinerary, noted above. According to my TA, who talked to them this morning, the unclear sentence that I quoted means that we will be refunded for 6/14 of the cost of our cruise (proportionate to the number of days we'll be on bus rather than ship), AND they will put us up and feed us during the bus portion of the revised trip. Pretty good terms, as I see it. Apart from the disappointment, I really have no basis for complaint at this point.

 

 

 

They seem to be quite generous. Hopefully they will continue.

 

 

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