Avalon vrs Amadeus

[hcross888]

I am hooked on river cruising and just loved my Amadeus cruise (Blue Danube Discovery). Avalon has a cruise that looks good (Rhine). Is there a huge difference in the quality of the cruise? Would I be disappointed after the perfect Amadeus experience that I had. I'd appreciate input.

[coasters]

I am hooked on river cruising and just loved my Amadeus cruise (Blue Danube Discovery). Avalon has a cruise that looks good (Rhine). Is there a huge difference in the quality of the cruise? Would I be disappointed after the perfect Amadeus experience that I had. I'd appreciate input.

 

MSEm vbmenu_register("postmenu_15681779", true);

Cool Cruiser

Join Date: Aug 2000

Location: Ocean Springs, MS, USA

Posts: 428

 

 

Avalon Things add up quickly

I was on Avalon in June 2008. Our first river cruise was on Viking. When you add the cost of all the tours and the recommended tips, I could have booked Tauck for almost the same total cost. Viking also would price out at about the same. Avalon only included a general city tour. If the city tour was in the afternoon, I had seen at least 1/2 of thing places we went to on the city tour. Since the tours are almost all optional on Avalon, you would be cheaper if you just stayed on the river vessel or walked on your own. Several times there was not way to get into the city without being on the tour bus.

The food was OK. We always had fish with sauce as 1 of the 2 entree ooptions. You could substitue grill chicken breast or grill salmon for the entree of the day. If you do not eat fish your entree choices are very limited.

The inluded wine was drinkable, but not something I would purchase.

Tours were not well organized. We wasted 1/2 with the tour dictor trying to find the master head set. The mast head set for the guide was still on our river vessel.

 

I do not plan to travel with Avalon again. I would look at Tauck, Viking, AMA (Amedaus) or Uniworld.

 

Emily

 

 

Perhaps this CC'r best answers your question.

I found it as # 17 on the River and Canal Cruises CC board.

Jerry

[webfoot]

We loved our Avalon cruise and would cruise with them again anyday. The cruise director often makes or breaks an experience. We had an excellent cruise director. We never lost any time. He even arranged transportation in several towns so that the folks with mobility problems would be able to join the tours.

 

Obviously, from reading many of the comments here on the board, everyone has a different experience and different likes and dis-likes, but I would take another trip with Avalon with no hesitation. Now if only the stock market would go up so we can afford another one ... but then again, that's another topic.

 

Please feel free to contact me again if you need any more positive reinforcement on Avalon.

[WIT]

MsEm - Sorry you had a bad experience with Avalon. I did a 3 week Grand Tour of Europe with their parent Globus and was lucky to get a retired professor from Berlin as our Tour Director. Everything ran with the expected precision and we all enjoyed his dry sense of humor. We went on every option offered except the Paris Illumination dinner-cruise and regretted not doing that. The options did increase our cost substantially.

 

The optional tours extra was why we looked elsewhere when we booked our first river cruise. We liked the mostly everything is included approach of AMA Waterways (Amadeus) and will go on our third cruise with them this December - another Christmas Markets cruise Amsterdam-Paris.

 

WIT

[MSEm]

I posted a more detail review under Avalon on the REVIEWS board.

Also you can check under this board by searching for MSEm and check all.

 

Boy, I do not proof what I have written late at night. I know what I was writing and reading the words not typed in the my late night postings.

 

If you would like any other info, please e-mail me directly

 

msem2 at cableone dot net

 

Emily

[EURiverCruiser]

I have been on three Avalon cruises in last four years. Obviously, I loved them. I tend to vote with my wallet or travel budget, if you will.

 

I like the idea of choosing where I want to spend my money, i.e., which optional excursions I want to spend time, energy and money on as opposed to booking a cruise, where everything and all is included. Some of the optional excursions are going to the places, (like Salzburg), I have been to and I see no reason to repeat the experience, since there are other places that I would like to see. Avalon offered a great excursion as an alternative on that particular day, and I went to see Cesky Krumlov. The trip was absolutely worth every penny, I paid for.

 

Indeed, the things do add up. Yet, I like to be in charge of my funds and I like to control, how the things add up as opposed to paying for a very expensive cruise and staying onboard just because I do not want to be driven around to see the same towns over and over again.

 

Both the food and the service onboard have been impeccable. Virtually everyone onboard (and onshore) was going out of their way to please and make sure, we had a wonderful time.

 

Avalon has very modern ships with all the great amenities you have come to expect from the river cruise ships these days.

 

In a word, Avalon has my vote.

 

EURiverCruiser

[marieelizabeth]

Dear EURiverCruiser -

 

I was so happy to read your reply. We will be going on our first river cruise (the Rhine on Avalon) next summer, and I was started to think we made the wrong choice. I'm relieved that we didn't really mess up by choosing Avalon. I, too, would rather pay for any optional tours that I want to go on rather than pay a set larger amount up front. We also chose Avalon because its boats are newer and, being our first river cruise, we wanted to go on a trip of no more than a week's duration - just in case we don't like it. If you have any other information to share, please do.

[bassmomma]

I have just booked an Avalon Danube Discovery cruise for April, 2009. We have never done the river cruises and are looking forward to it. I wanted to go with Amadeus but our dates for cruising are limited and their space was already gone. I have been very happy with Avalon's customer service so far. Tell me what we should expect!

[Zorka]

We have booked this "special" Avalon tour and it is great to see mostly favorable comments about the Avalon experience. Our river tour will be on the Tapestry and while there are a lot of "special" things going on due to the specific tour, one thing not included in the price is the gratuities.

 

I would be curious what is considered a sort of standard gratuity on the ship, who gets the tips and so on. I know that generally staff is tipped, but while in the US I am used to giving 20%, what is appropriate on a European cruise?

 

Besides special tours given by Burt Wolf, the cruise personnel will also be conducting tours. It sounds like from other posts they also get a gratuity. Any percentage suggestions?

 

As you can probably tell, this will be our first cruise of any kind, so it is all new to me.

 

Thanks in advance.

[MSEm]

The recommended tips for the river vessel crew was $25 per person per day.

Recommended tips for the cruise director was $5 per person per day for the river and land portion.

Also $1 -2 per person per day for the bus drivers and $1-2 per person per day for the local guides.

 

I use the recommeded amount as a guide and increase or decrease the tip amount depending upon the service. If someone did a very good job and others did just OK, I will often give part of the tips in cash directly to the person for very good service.

 

They prefer tips in Euro's. I used an ATM to get Euros for the tips.

 

Emily

[EURiverCruiser]

I have found my last Avalon Travel Docs.

 

This is the recommended tipping guideline, which seems to be pretty fair.

 

Crew: EUR 12.00 per person per day.

Cruise Director: EUR 3.00 per person per day.

 

They may prefer Euros but have been happy to take US Dollars and even traveller's checks. After all, it makes little difference to them.

 

It has been also possible to charge the crew tip to your onboard account and pay everything using your credit card. This works just fine, since it reduces the need for carrying additional cash and paying withdrawal fees from ATMs.

 

---

No cruise line is a perfect choice for absolutely everyone. However, everyone enjoying the cruising on the high sees or on the rivers can and ought to make a well-informed choice.

 

I like flexibility, my selection of excursions to suit my interests and my budget and frankly, I like the comfort of the new ships. I absolutely disagree with the Tauck Tours policy that 'if something is worth seeing, you should see it and it should be included in your tour or cruise'.

 

Tauck Tours tend to conveniently ignore the fact that each and every person has his or her own individual interests, likes and dislikes. 'One-size-fits-all' is definitely not my idea of a good cruise.

 

EURiverCruiser

[smallturtle]

When do we receive the list of the optional excursions?

 

There are very few on the Avalon website

 

We like the flexibility of Avalon and want to be prepared to make our choice

 

Thanks for your info

[pjtraveler]

We sailed on the Rhine from Basel to Amsterdam with Uniworld in June, 2007 and had a great experience. We also booked a pre-cruise extension in Lucerne which got us off to a wonderful start with a very charistmatic local host. This was our first river cruise, and we've since done two others with Uniworld (Danube and Egypt) and will be traveling with them to China in late September.

 

From reading these boards, I think you would get great service from any of the major companies. Look at the itinerary, what excursions are included in the price, and any optional excursions to help you in making a decision. I know you can download the cruise companion booklets at the Uniworld site. These will explain the included and optional excursions. Whomever you choose to travel with, you'll have a wonderful experience.

 

If you'd like to see our Rhine photos at Kodak Gallery, send me an email (pjppaula@comcast.net) and I'll send you an invitation to view them.:)

[webfoot]

We took Avalon's Magnificent Europe in April/May. The optionals were finally all listed on the website about 2 months prior to our departure.

 

Once our travel documents arrived, the optionals were listed in the booklet, and they corresponded to those that were listed on the website.

 

Our tour director did add one additional optional tour that was not on the list, but otherwise, what was listed was what we got.

 

We don't normally take a lot of optionals and choose wisely, we think, which ones we took. It gave us some 'downtime' to just relax on the ship.

 

Please let me know if you have any additional questions.

[smallturtle]

Pat,

You are a big help for me

Thanks

[hcross888]

The feedback on this thread convinced me to take a chance on an Avalon river cruise. I really wanted to do the Rhine, and Amadeus didn't have this trip during the summer.

 

From the itinerary it looks like there is guided sightseeing in each town visited, and that is the same as Amadeus. I am counting down to next July. :D

[Zorka]

Thanks all for the advice and information. Really appreciate it.