laverendrye Posted March 22, 2017 #1 Share Posted March 22, 2017 I've just booked a Douro River cruise with Emerald for May next year. The Emerald Radiance launches this May and is fully booked for this year, so I will be interested in later comments from those who will have taken this cruise, but also from those who have travelled with Emerald on other itineraries. I took a Douro cruise with Uniworld in 2012 and enjoyed it very much, but the rest of our group has not been there and I am certainly happy to do it again. I am a great fan of Uniworld and have cruised with them 5 times; I might have considered doing the Douro with them again. However the price difference between Emerald and Uniworld is incredible, at least for Canadian customers. For a similar cruise and similar cabin it is about C$3,000 per person and the only difference that I can see is that Uniworld includes all drinks, while Emerald only includes beer and wine at lunch and dinner. I know that Uniworld, Viking, AMA and perhaps others all charter their ships from the Portuguese company Agua Azul and on my last Douro cruise all the staff, including the cruise director were from Agua Azul. I understand however, that Emerald and its parent Scenic have had their own ships built so that the cabins and facilities are similar to Emerald and Scenic ships elsewhere. Perhaps they do their own staffing as well. I don't know whether this will make any difference or not. I certainly had nothing but praise for the staff on my Uniworld cruise but will be interested in any comments on Emerald in this regard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rare twototravel Posted May 20, 2017 #2 Share Posted May 20, 2017 We are going with Viking on the Douro in Nov. The boat is the Hemming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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