Melody Inaugural 22-day Cruise Comments

[DaveinCharlotte]

Just got back from this cruise.  We thought it was excellent!  A few notes...

 

The trip got off to a rocky start, as Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans just a few days before we were to arrive.  Both the airport and the Intercontinental Hotel were seriously impacted, so ACL changed the first part of the itinerary.  They dropped the first day, and had us change our air reservations to Jackson, MS, where they met us and bused us to Natchez MS for embarkation. Then the Melody went straight down to Baton Rouge (which had not lost power) and we resumed the original itinerary north from there. We were told there were just 113 passengers on the ship, so we had room to spread out.  ACL booked 120 passengers, so the rest either couldn't handle the change from NOLA to Jackson airport, or flunked the Covid-19 protocol we went through at the Jackson airport.

 

The ship was in mint condition, as you would expect, with minimal glitches (unfortunately, one of these was the toilets, which conked out for a hour several times early in the cruise, but this was corrected).  One feature of these new ships we enjoyed was the walking track that completely envelops the outside of the top deck.

 

The food was superb.  The stewards did an excellent job of taking orders and getting the food out very quickly, even when people arrived at the table at staggered times. The ship seemed to be not just fully-staffed, but almost overstaffed!  Only a couple of tables per server, and housekeeping had our rooms cleaned in a jiffy every day.

 

One interesting note:  In St. Francisville, the captain could not dislodge the ship from the town levee where we were tied up.  Had to wait an hour or so for a tow boat to arrive and push us off.

 

It appears ACL has responded to AQSC's  much-praised hop on/hop off system by getting their own fleet of ACL-owned, logoed buses.  Four buses accompanied us all the way from Natchez/Baton Rouge to Minneapolis.  These were the same buses throughout, though at St Louis a different set of drivers took over to complete the second half of the trip.  One driver told us ACL had just purchased 40(!) of these buses.

 

The excursions were all excellent.  Every port included one bus dedicated to hop-on/hop-off (ACL calls them "shuttles") used the other three for various excursions.

 

Let me know if you have any questions about the Melody... 

 

 

[nybumpkin]

Thank you for your post! We're booked on the NOLA-St. Louis sailing in 2023 on Queen of the Mississippi. We'd love to do the full 22 days but the schedule doesn't work for us. What did you do in the different ports?

Edited September 26, 2021 by nybumpkin

[DaveinCharlotte]

47 minutes ago, nybumpkin said:

What did you do in the different ports?

Here's a list of the excursions that were available up as far as St Louis. (The ones we actually did are asterisked):

 

Baton Rouge:  Houmas House All Day Excursion; *USS Kidd - Museum & Ship Tour (excellent!); City Experience bus tour; Walk through Capital City

 

St. Francisville: *Town Shuttle; *Rosedown Plantation; ***** Plantation

 

Natchez: Cemetery Tour; *Frogmore Plantation (excellent!); Longwood Exploration; JN Stone House Tour & Concert; Great River Outdoor Adventure; *Monmouth Historic Inn & Gardens; *Town Shuttle

 

Vicksburg:  *Historic Vicksburg Walking Tour (excellent but long); Antebellum Vicksburg Experience; *Vicksburg Military Park (excellent!); *Town Shuttle

 

Greenville: *BB King Museum in Indianola (excellent!); Shuttle to local museums (did this on previous cruise - excellent)

 

Memphis: Civil Rights Museum; *Rock & Soul Museum (excellent); Sun Studio (did this on previous cruise - excellent); Graceland (cost extra - those who went said it was excellent); Town shuttle

 

New Madrid: *Town shuttle

 

Cape Girardeau: *Town shuttle; Mural walk

 

Chester: *Tour of town and National Veterans Memorial (located in Perryville - they have a full-size replica of the Vietnam War memorial - excellent!); Popeye Character Trail

 

St Louis:  Arch tour (did this on previous cruise - excellent); *Anheuser Busch Brewery Experience (excellent); Town Tour

[nybumpkin]

2 hours ago, DaveinCharlotte said:

Here's a list of the excursions that were available up as far as St Louis. (The ones we actually did are asterisked):

 

 

Thanks again, Dave. This is very helpful as we start planning (admittedly, we have almost two years to plan). We had already decided on two - USS Kidd (we love museum ships, and our oldest son is Chief Engineer on a current destroyer) and Vicksburg Military Park.