Notes on July 23 2018 Rhine River cruise

Eastridge

Mouseketeer
Joined
Sep 24, 2018
Since others have already posted detailed trip reports of the ABD Rhine River cruise, I'll just give some notes about particular aspects of our cruise. To start, here are some general comments and observations:

Our guides were Byron, Betti, Danny, Veronika, Jillian and Michaela. Here's a photo of them, along with Cruise Manager Maddy in front. The first four guides were on the inaugural Rhine cruise last year.

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If I could use only one word to describe this cruise, that word would be "smooth." Everything ran smoothly and we encountered no significant problems. I was able to reserve in advance every excursion my family wanted, and on the ship I requested and got another that I didn't reserve in advance. All the guides were great and the AmaStella ship and crew were wonderful. Since some activities had limited space, I assume some guests didn't get their first choice of excursions but I heard no complaints while on the ship.

If I could use one more word, that would be HOT. There was a worldwide heat wave going on, and at most of our stops it reached 95 deg F. In Rudesheim it peaked at 99 deg F! Fortunately Amsterdam was only 80 deg F. The guides told us this was the hottest cruise they had been on. When booking this cruise I hadn't considered that it might get this hot, so if you are considering going on this cruise, keep that in mind...

They made refinements compared to past cruises and the schedule they sent in advance, and these changes may have helped make the experience so smooth:
  • The Beauty & the Beast dinner was on the 2nd night, not the 3rd
  • The organ concert was on the 3rd night, when the ship was closer to that event and not on the same day as the day-long events to the Black Forest
  • The ship started sailing through the Rhine Gorge at 4pm on the 5th day and there was plenty of light to see the castles in the gorge
  • Some excursion options no longer existed compared to the inaugural cruise, such as the bike tour in Rudesheim or the Delft factory tour in Amsterdam
Compared to land-based ABD trips, this one was almost completely all inclusive. We bought our own lunch in Heidelberg, but other than that all meals were provided. At the end of the trip, my bill was 2.50 euros (for one soda from the bar).

We paid for both a prenight and a postnight. Both were expensive. But we got a lot for that. We were a family of three. For the prenight, they gave us two rooms! And the postnight in Amsterdam was in a large suite, with a wonderful view of central Amsterdam.

The river boat crew seemed much more casual and flexible than what I've seen on big ocean-going cruise ships. The captain invited us to visit the bridge, so we did. The Chef's Table is supposed to be an adult only experience, but they let my 11 year old son participate when we asked.

Out of all the amazing excursions and events, the ones I appreciated the most were the sessions where three guides shared their personal stories with the guests. Betti talked about growing up in a divided Germany and how Berlin was a divided city, and how gratifying it was to her that we chose to visit her country. Veronika described how her family escaped communist Hungary. And Byron talked about how he hated his first job at Disney but he persevered and got noticed and was able to apply his talents to become an Adventure Guide. These are all good stories for my son to hear. I lived in Germany for a while prior to the fall of the Wall, so I knew some of this from first hand experience but my son of course didn't have that perspective.

I'll post more pictures later but I'll end this for now with a picture of the pins we received:

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Thanks for sharing those pins. On my Disney Ama ABD I took pictures inside the bridge with the captain and it was very jovial. On my non-Disney Ama cruise I went up to the bridge asking for a picture with the captain and they looked at me like I was nuts and wouldn't let me in!
 
The 2018 Rhine River cruises featured a special Beauty and the Beast dinner one evening. I don't know if this will continue for 2019 and beyond.

Adventure Guides Betti, Byron and Veronika handing out roses:

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Menus for the dinner:

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Themed decorations at the entrance to the restaurant:

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The dessert plate. Try the grey stuff. It's delicious (but small -- look for the small mousse with the 3 silver balls on top)

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For Strasbourg, one option was to explore the city by canoe. I don't recall ever paddling a canoe previously, so it took a while to figure out how to steer and not aim the canoe in the wrong direction or into the bushes.

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We got some nice views of the town while canoeing:

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It was important to figure out how to steer because on occasion the guides would tell everyone to get to one side because of oncoming boats. In this example, it was to avoid getting run over by the tour boat that carried all the other guests from the AmaStella who chose to not go canoeing

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I walked right by there! That's so interesting because on my non-Disney Amawaterways tour we just did a walking tour with no boat part.
 


The evening event in Strasbourg was an organ concert in a church. Here is our group walking to the church:

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The impressive organ inside the church:

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Each guest had a chance to go upstairs to briefly observe organist Daniel Maurer while he was playing.

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The Rhine Gorge is an area with many castles along the river. As we started sailing into that region, the guides passed around a giant inflated prop shaped like a German pretzel. Each family got chances to have photos taken with the pretzel, as Cruise Manager Maddy demonstrates here:

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There were more castles along the route than I could keep track of. Here are two:

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We also passed by the Lorelei rock, which is a place where the Rhine bends and used to be a dangerous area for ships to pass.

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Later in the evening, the ship passed the remains of the Remagen bridge. This was the bridge the Allies captured intact, enabling them to cross the Rhine earlier than expected and end WW II months earlier than if it had not been captured. I don't have pictures because it was very dark and there's actually not much to see. All that remains are some of the support pillars. The bridge itself was destroyed and not rebuilt. But it was still a powerful moment to see a location that was so important in WW II.
 
Some of the smaller and more unique events in this cruise were perhaps more memorable than the highlighted events such as the Rhine Gorge.

Here's Danny singing "Friend Like Me" from Aladdin, during the sing-a-long event. Danny played the Genie in the long running Aladdin stage show at California Adventure:

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The spaghetti ice cream event was something that, while planning this trip, I didn't think much about. But it turned out to be fun and memorable. Apparently spaghetti ice cream is popular in Germany. It looks like a small bowl of pasta, but it it really vanilla ice cream with strawberry sauce on top. What made this special is they brought on board the family that invented it:

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Betti explained spaghetti ice cream and its history, and then ended by asking "Who is going to beat me to the first bowl?" That was the signal for all the kids to charge up to the stand and fight for the first bowls of spaghetti ice cream.

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A closeup of a bowl:

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Making the "noodles" by pushing vanilla ice cream through a special strainer:

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The kids didn't have to scramble for bowls at the beginning because, of course, there was more than enough for everyone. Michaela tried distributing the surplus:

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Spaghetti ice cream is something I wanted to try so badly on my non-Disney Rhine cruise. Taking a taxi to Eis Fontanella would have meant missing out on one of the big excursions so I opted against it. Hope it was good!
 
Ok, last set of photos. In Amsterdam, one of the excursion options is to tour the Van Gogh museum and then do a painting workshop afterwards. But the workshop isn't in the museum. Instead, they walked us to a nearby artist's house. Which was stunningly beautiful. Some of the group painted outside, with a view of the gardens:

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We ended up inside:

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The canvases you paint are yours to take home, but keep in mind that they are about 16 by 20 inches!
 
Really enjoyed your photos and narrative. Some activities we did were very different because of the weather but it was a wonderful trip.
 
Following along. Considering an ABD cruise but can’t decide which one
 
It looks amazing and I would love to go but the whole point of group travel, at least for our family, is companions for our son. I've only been on 1 ABD but it seems that the trips skew toward the younger side. Were there any/many teens on this trip?
 

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