Planning Our First River Cruise

We are in the pre-planning stages for our first Europe river cruise in 2018. I see many deals and incentives to make our reservations now, but I am wondering if there is a "good, better, best" time when the river cruise operators offer the best deals.

BTW we are looking at October 2018 for our cruise and seriously looking at the Avalon River Cruise, Vienna to Zurich 13 day cruise.

Thanks in advance or your suggestions and advice.

The river cruise lines will generally offer their best deals in the early booking phase. If a cruise is not filling up they might offer a better deal down the road, but river cruises fill up quickly due to the small number of passengers they carry. I would book earlier rather than later to make sure you get the cabin and itinerary you want.

I've done one cruise with Viking 2016 and one coming up in 2017. I booked the 2017 cruise in December 2016, thinking that would be a good time to book. I am happy with the price I paid for my trip. But there seem to be sales all the time with Viking.

No idea if this happens every fall but Avalon had tremendous discounts last Oct/November (2016) for cruises in the fall of 2017. They were offering free air plus $1000/pp off list. Not every cruise was included but quite a few were and we got lucky. Prices have gone up substantially since then and promotions have been more like $250-400/pp off air and/or $150-250 off list.

Might be worth holding off to see if a big fall sale happens.

Vienna

Cruisecritic lost my message. I had a question concerning the itinerary from Passau to Zuerich. That is a superlong bus ride unless it is broken up in several shorter rides and hotel nights in between.

I booked already for Avalon for a May 2018 cruise. I watched the booking last year (go the the site, and do a "fake" booking, you will select the time you are looking at and can go to see how many cabins are booked already). I saw the week we were looking for was booked in the cabin selection we wanted by August, so I didn't wait. Glad I didn't, as there is really only a few cabins left for the ones we wanted, and I wanted a specific one (left side of the bed on the wall side). It's a gamble, but my TA said if there was a great discount she would try to fight to get it for me. She also put on that we would be interested in the air (no deviation fee), but as they can't book it yet, then she will wait and see what flights she can get. We are choosy on our flights as well!

Conversely, if you can cruise on short notice, Grand Circle has great savings on trips that are not full. The trips are listed under the drop down menu Ways To Save, then under Last Minute Savings.

We booked in April 2016 for a cruise May 2017, glad we did, within two weeks our cruise date was no longer available, all cabins taken (Tauck).

Cruisecritic lost my message. I had a question concerning the itinerary from Passau to Zuerich. That is a superlong bus ride unless it is broken up in several shorter rides and hotel nights in between.

Granted, there is a lot to see between those two cities. But, it's only about 500 km, maybe an hour more than from NYC to Boston.