Anyone else on the holiday Danube river cruise this December 2018?

aroundtheriverbend

DIS Veteran
Joined
Mar 24, 2009
This will be our first ABD trip, it’ll be myself, DH, son 14 and daughter 13. I’ve been scouring the internet for trip reports, etc., thought it would be fun to obsess with real people if anyone here is going! ;)

Thanks,
Allison
 
Yes, I am going with my DH and DD 22. It is our first ABD trip too. I am ready to go now. December is too far away.
 
Yay! Was starting to worry we wouldn’t find anyone else on here. Almost at the 6 month mark - but that feels like a loooonnnnggg time from now. We’re going to head over to Munich a few days early to explore, hopefully everything’s not already closed for the holidays.

I was matching the calendar days to the itinerary - kind of interesting that Disney apparently carries enough clout to keep tours open on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in a pretty Catholic set of countries.
 
Yes we will also be going on the river cruise! We are flying to Warsaw and then spending some time in Munich before the cruise departs!
 


Can’t believe the 120 day is coming up next week, clearing the card space for final payment!! I think soon after that we get info on excursion choices? Been watching the itinerary, it’s changed a few times I’m guessing based on the timing/location on Christmas Day...

Looks like all that’s left are cat D rooms, seems like a full ship!
 
Seriously considering booking this cruise for the December 22, 2019 departure so i’ll be following along! Hoping for some trip reports!
 


Did you guys use DVC points for your cruise?

No, it didn’t seem like a cost effective use of points (plus although we have a decent amount of points, we wouldn’t have close to enough for all of us). Like a DCL Cruise my impression is it’d be most cost effective to rent out the points and apply the cash to the trip.....
 
No, it didn’t seem like a cost effective use of points (plus although we have a decent amount of points, we wouldn’t have close to enough for all of us). Like a DCL Cruise my impression is it’d be most cost effective to rent out the points and apply the cash to the trip.....
cool. Thanks for the input!
 
For those on this trip, I emailed ABD to find out about guides and number of kids, got the following for our 12/23 trip:

If all goes as planned the Adventure Guides for your adventure will be, Veronkia, Byron, Betti, Katerina, and George.

The number of children/teens on this adventure is currently 15 (3yrs-12yrs) and 26 (13yrs-17yrs).
 
Sorry for the delayed response, as luck would have it I managed to bring back a virus along with my memories and I’m just recovering. The trip was amazing!! The guides really make it very special. I know I have nothing to compare it to as I’ve never done a small ABD but the six guides (Betti, Veronika, George, Katka, Dusty, Byron) seemed to always be around and available so never felt like it was too large of a group. The AMA crew is great too, it was their last cruise before they get a two month break and many of them had been on the ship pretty much nonstop for at least seven months. They really had a lot of fun celebrating the holidays and showing us the customs from their different areas. Christmas markets are a real treat and should be added to bucket lists where possible!

One thing I would note, when you go over the actual holiday days themselves some of the things you’d like to see are closed for the holiday. For example Germany and Austria start celebrating on Christmas Eve and that carries through the day after Christmas so although the guides were great about finding us things that were open, some of the experiences might be missed. For example Dürnstein was a super cute town that we did a walking tour in, but not one shop or restaurant was open, which was a little sad.

We are definitely sold on the value of these types of guided tours, and are figuring out what we want to do next.
 
Sorry for the delayed response, as luck would have it I managed to bring back a virus along with my memories and I’m just recovering. The trip was amazing!! The guides really make it very special. I know I have nothing to compare it to as I’ve never done a small ABD but the six guides (Betti, Veronika, George, Katka, Dusty, Byron) seemed to always be around and available so never felt like it was too large of a group. The AMA crew is great too, it was their last cruise before they get a two month break and many of them had been on the ship pretty much nonstop for at least seven months. They really had a lot of fun celebrating the holidays and showing us the customs from their different areas. Christmas markets are a real treat and should be added to bucket lists where possible!

One thing I would note, when you go over the actual holiday days themselves some of the things you’d like to see are closed for the holiday. For example Germany and Austria start celebrating on Christmas Eve and that carries through the day after Christmas so although the guides were great about finding us things that were open, some of the experiences might be missed. For example Dürnstein was a super cute town that we did a walking tour in, but not one shop or restaurant was open, which was a little sad.

We are definitely sold on the value of these types of guided tours, and are figuring out what we want to do next.

Thank you for posting. I wondered what it would be like to tour during a holiday like Christmas Eve and Christmas I wasn't sure what would be open or not. I really want to do this during the holiday period just to see the Christmas markets again. But not thinking I would like the cold weather. How was the water levels? I am seeing someone else that was to depart from Budapest and water was too low, so they had to stay in a hotel their first night and bus to Vienna. (I am just not sure if they were after Christmas or before)
 

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