River Cruise App

[FuelScience]

Has anyone taken a look at the River Cruise App for Android and iPhone? It appears to be an audio guide for various rivers. There are audio descriptions of the river you’re on that are indexed by kilometer markings. You can download the app and river samples (typically two points of interest on the river) for free. The individual guides I looked at cost $3.99 each. The web site lists six areas of interest that the use can select: urban development, nautical water management, 20^th century conflicts, legends and history, personal recommendations, and nature. There are also guides for the bike trails along the Rhine, Danube, and Main.

The app includes a GPS autoplay feature, which I assume will automatically play the proper guide selection when you near the location.

Rivers included:

• Rhine: 5 guides, 3 covering Basel to Spyck, and the other 2 use the Netherlands guides.
• Danube: 8 guides, 3 are currently available, Kelheim to Passau, Passau to Vienna, and Vienna to Budapest. 2 guides covering Budapest to Vidin should be available sometime in 2019.
• Netherlands Belgium Delta (4 guides, only one, Lobith/Millingen to Amsterdam is currently available, the others, Namur to Rotterdam, Arnhem to Antwerp, and Maastricht to Ghent should be available sometime in 2019.
• Main: 2 guides, Mainz to Lohr am Main and Lohr am Main to Bamberg
• Main Danube Canal: 1 part Bamberg to Kelheim, available spring, 2019
• Moselle: 2 guides, Koblenz to Bernkastel and Bernkastel to Schengen.

 

We'll give this app a try on our upcoming cruises!

http://www.rivercruiseapp.com/

 

Edited January 13, 2019 by FuelScience
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[KathyK13]

Interesting!  Please let us know how well you liked the information provided by the app.  We are doing Avalon's Canals, Vineyards, and Castles in June and would be interested in information on the Moselle.

[plimouth pilgrims]

I did have this app on my phone for our Danube cruise in November but I didn't use the audio guide part.

Each Audio guide section has a fee, and our ship, The Amacerto had an GPS located section that streamed to the Quietvox free of charge.

The Cruise director also gave a narrative over the ships intercom.

[G.M.T.]

I had a look at this app, first off it looks professionally. The company behind the app have tried to make it an all embracing one, trying to cover everthing with many menu options i.e. "Before You travel" or "History of Hydropower". Each section of a river costs €2.99 so the Danube (when complete) will cost €23.92.

 

The port of call written information is limited to one screen side on my smart phone, the actual audio content is just the same as the written content.

 

One problem, my back button on my Galaxy S8 would not work with this app.

 

Summary: For me there is too much superfluous infomation and menu options with very limited basic information on ports of call, didn't find any POI.

 

I personally would go for either a good guide book and / or excursion guide. An alternative would be to use Google Maps with GPS, with links to Wikipedia, Google Earth and Google Maps POI.

[sbjornda]

Scenic Tours, and probably some others, provide a free GPS/Guide unit that you can use either on guided tours (receives broadcasts from the shore guide's microphone into your headset) or use the built-in guidebook for self-guided tours. When cruising along the river it can narrate a couple of minutes on each town and castle you're passing by.