Water levels i-on cruise river routes.

[Dolebludger]

From what I have been reading about historically low water levels in the Rhine and other major cruise rivers. I am concerned about what the River cruise lines will do if the cant go.About six years ago on Scenic which encountered a depth too low in the Rhine at a point. Scenic packed our luggage. Put us on a two hour luxury buss to an identical ship, in which out luggage was placed and unpacked. And the cruise went on. But, at the same time, we heard of another river cruise line that turned the remainder of the cruise into a bus and hotel.experience. We’ve taken those trips before and say never more. So before booking any rivern cruise, check on what it intends to do if stopped by low water.

[steamboats]

High or low water can anytime impact a river cruise. When you book a river cruise you must be aware of this.

 

How the cruise line is handling this situation? It may depend. Some cruise lines have enough ships to simply swap ships in case the river "obstruction" is only limited to a certain area (like between Regensburg and Passau). In some cases the river cruise turns into a bus trip with the ship used as hotel or even with hotel stays.

 

I´ve been on quite a few river cruises and I had it all (oh no, no ship swap yet). My shortest river cruise lasted for only 23 hours of cruising (minus the shore stop in Dürnstein). I had river cruises I had to tell the cruise line that the ship won´t go as planned. Actually this was my last US river cruise 9 years ago when a friend of mine told me that the ship can´t to up to St. Paul (and this friend was the captain of the boat). The cruise line took hours to verify this. I knew this on Monday for a Saturday cruise. We did fly to the US on Thursday. We were fortunately able to change our connecting flight from Minneapolis to Cincinnati. Other passengers weren´t notified until Friday. I had cruises where I got stuck in Paducah, Kentucky for 3 days... (I still need a cruise where I really arrive in Nashville by boat - would be my third try). BTW for all of those cruises in US which had massive itinerary changes I never got any kind of compensation. For that last one we got free shore tours. But nothing for the extra money we had to spend for changing flights.

 

When you go on a river cruise it might turn out as an adventure... I take it as it comes...

 

steamboats

[milling73]

Our current Rhine cruise with Viking is a boat hotel…bus to all excursions / stops. Viking does not tell you conditions beforehand or give choice to opt out. Viking’s only comment is they are monitoring conditions and well prepared to handle. (And now we know that handling is by bus and they either use boat as hotel, or use actual hotels.) 

Right now They are basically a bus vacation at double the price of those providers. Only with bus companies you know in advance what you are booking. When booking a river cruise you assume it will be a leisurely and wonderful river cruise,  until you arrive and find out it is not.

 

With the current drought in Europe odds are pretty good it will be a bus trip. 

[Daisi]

18 hours ago, Dolebludger said:

From what I have been reading about historically low water levels in the Rhine and other major cruise rivers. I am concerned about what the River cruise lines will do if the cant go.About six years ago on Scenic which encountered a depth too low in the Rhine at a point. Scenic packed our luggage. Put us on a two hour luxury buss to an identical ship, in which out luggage was placed and unpacked. And the cruise went on. But, at the same time, we heard of another river cruise line that turned the remainder of the cruise into a bus and hotel.experience. We’ve taken those trips before and say never more. So before booking any rivern cruise, check on what it intends to do if stopped by low water.

 

 

I agree, every line treats this situation (and the cancellations from Covid) differently. I was lucky booking my first cruise as one or two years prior, there had been both flooding and low water. It was a lot of reading back posts, but seeing how various lines reacted helped us choose which ones we really wanted to avoid. 

 

While they can't control the weather, and it can change from normal to flood / drought quickly, how they handle it is one thing to really look for. Those cruising next year (us hopefully 🙂) may have no problems, you just never know.