DaveinCharlotte

On our Mississippi cruise on the Melody this past September, we had pretty good entertainment (this is subjective, of course).  We had a full slate of TV channels, although sometimes DirectTV would say "your subscription does not include this offering" (?).  A large number of movies were available.

We once received a flyer from American Queen Steamboat Company that touted "sale prices" for upcoming cruises.  But the internet did not show these prices.  We called in, and were told the lower prices were indeed legit, and the internet just hadn't yet "caught up."  However, we had to book the trip over the phone and pay for the entire cruise right then to get the flyer prices.  At that time, the cruise in question was well over a year in the future.

So I think it might just be possible that the flyer is valid, so I recommend you try calling in again and hopefully you will not encounter such a clueless rep.

I do notice that the internet prices are much lower before June, then take a big jump after that until the end of the season.

Will be taking Star's last Rivers of Florida cruise in mid-March, then the ship will be heading north to pick you up in Charleston.

Very interesting map, notamermaid.  Have been looking for a "mainstream" cruise line that has a cruise that would entail 100% lock-controlled rivers.  Thought I'd found one - Viking has a "Paris to Prague" cruise that goes from Trier to Bamberg.  Your map seems to show that this would all be in lock-controlled water EXCEPT for the short segment between Koblenz and Mainz.  So "close but no cigar," I guess.

2 hours ago, notamermaid said:

 

It is possible to do a river cruise in Europe on a river that is wholly a dam and lock system, the Douro has been mentioned.

I am doing well, thank you.  Used to spend much time on the Europe rivers forums reading your numerous and helpful comments there...but have given up on Europe for now (covid reasons, mainly).

Yes, the Duoro has indeed been mentioned, but my question remains...just where else are these river cruises that are free from high/low water issues?  Maybe Nicco small-ship/small river cruises someplace?

On 12/9/2021 at 5:49 PM, jimdee3636 said:

I realize that the water level is out of the cruise line's control (that's a big reason why I'm reluctant to do any river cruise, here or in Europe),...

On 12/9/2021 at 9:04 PM, Host Jazzbeau said:

You can minimize that risk by choosing a river that is controlled by locks – e.g. the Douro in Portugal.

That makes sense.  Where (besides the Douro) in Europe would I look for cruises wholly in dam-controlled rivers, free from high/low water issues?

We have done 3 ACL cruises this year, and have not seen any issues on any of them.  ACL screens the vaccination cards, and those who do  not have them have to jump through additional hoops.  With most passengers in their 70s and 80s, general self-interest means all or virtually all would be vaccinated.  (But as to the crew, that's another story.)

I do wish ACL would take just one more little step and say ALL must be vaccinated.

5 hours ago, Floridastorm said:

...how is it to travel on a river boat in an Inside cabin?

A little claustrophobic, perhaps.  But on balance, I think it is worth it.

We have been on just one AQSC cruise (Duchess) and we decided to go with an inside cabin.  When the cruise was over, we decided we had probably made the right decision.  Our reasons:

 - On AQSC, huge price difference between inside and outside cabins

 - Balconies are, in my experience overrated -- space constraints, can't use in poor weather

 - Quality of the inside cabin was excellent - little difference between inside and out (except where comparing with the high levels of outside cabins)

 - Didn't spend much daytime time in the cabin anyway  

8 hours ago, twototravel said:

I think ACL is putting their best crews on the newer ships. I'm still reading on various forums that issues remain on some of the older ships.

That has been my thinking as well.  Our excellent September cruise on the Melody bears this out. BUT...in July we took the New England Islands trip on the Star (one of their smallest and oldest ships), and were surprised to discover that ship too was well staffed, well trained, and with a galley crew that delivered excellent food fast.  So still haven't figured out what determines one cruise will be marginal and another excellent.

But why then was the "American Queen Steamboat Company" link changed to "American Queen Voyages"?  AQV appears to be AQSC + Victory.  The small Victory ships seem to be strictly coastal rather than what I would call "ocean."  If AQV on Cruise Critic excludes Victory, maybe the CC name should be changed back to AQSC?  Just wondering. 

Sigh of relief here, glad to hear of another successful cruise!  This mirrors our recent experience on the Melody.

14 hours ago, ericosmith said:

I don't believe this itinerary has ever been offered before. 

I remember seeing their Illinois River trips a while back and got interested -- then they disappeared from their catalogs for quite some time.  But, as AQJazz notes, they're running again.

1 hour ago, Joanandjoe said:

Does anyone know what the clothes washing facilities are on the Constitution?  Thanks

Washers, dryers, and soap (free, of course) are available on the Constitution's upper deck.  Even though it's not shown on the deck plan, it adjoins the fitness center, which is shown.

Just an aside: Dress is very casual on the Constitution, so no need to pack much, especially for a short 8-day cruise.  But if you need it, it's there.  Haven't actually used the Constitution's laundry facility ourselves, but we did do our laundry on a 3-week Mississippi cruise on Melody.  One tip we learned there:  Machines tend to get very busy, so best to go there early in the morning.

2 minutes ago, kpgibbs said:

I'm not sure where you live, but the entire USA is having a hard time getting service employees to work.

If things around here are any indication, you are absolutely correct!  Countless businesses in my area (Carolinas) have signs posted & websites posted with notices such as "we apologize, due to staffing shortages we have to..." shorten hours, or close Mondays, or take longer to answer the phone, etc.  This has been going on for several months now and shows no sign of ending anytime soon.

17 hours ago, vino100 said:

Yes, I fully understand why they only offer 3 choices.

Actually, I meant to address why the ship would ask in the morning for the day's choices, not why the ship would offer only 3 choices.

Thanks for posting as you go, and glad the trip is going well so far.

BTW, there have been many gripes here about lack of internet service.  On the Melody, we had perfect internet, up 24/7 and could get it anywhere on the ship (even in the bus outside, waiting for an excursion to start!).  Your frequent posts suggest you too are getting good internet coverage.  True? 

14 hours ago, jagoffee said:

On our recent Harmony cruise the back-porch was only opened during lunch hours.  Yours was open during dinner hours?

No, not really.  Cafe on the Melody (they call it the "Ellipse Cafe") opens promptly at 6:30am, serving breakfast options until 9:30am. Then they reopen at 11:00am and stay open through 5:00pm.

So no, not exactly "dinner hours."  But if we didn't like the day's meal options, we would skip lunch and have a hamburger mid/late afternoon.  With heavy snacks coming up at happy hour, we never went hungry!  

4 minutes ago, vino100 said:

One thing we do find strange is choosing what you want for lunch and dinner in the morning.

This gives the chef an idea of what to have on hand, so meals will be served quickly and no-one will be disappointed because they ran out of what they wanted.  You are under no obligation to actually order what you selected in the morning.  Nice thing about seeing the day's options in the morning...if there's nothing that strikes your fancy, you can opt out and eat upstairs in the back-porch cafe.

3 hours ago, Calliope said:

I am referring to the Str. AMERICAN QUEEN. Her steam engines were removed from the retired USACE dredge KENNEDY for use on the AQ. Unfortunately, at this time the Str. DELTA QUEEN is not operating and is laid up in Houma, LA.

Thank you.  I was under the misapprehension that the American Queen steam power was just an auxiliary -- thank you (and oldone79 and ericosmith) for setting me straight.  Amazing that such old technology can still be put to good use.

Spent a week on the Delta Queen when it was docked as a boutique hotel in Chattanooga.  They were running the boilers just to keep things from rusting up.  They told us regulations prevented them from running the boilers are more than 50% capacity, but out of prudence they never ran them over 25%.    

16 hours ago, Calliope said:

I would recommend the  Str. AMERICAN QUEEN as she is real steam with nearly 100 year old steam engines, a melodic steam whistle and  calliope that add to her charm, also more activities are offered during the day than the company's smaller diesel boats.

Are you referring to AQSC's American Queen, or to the old Delta Queen?

13 hours ago, midwestchick said:

Does AQS have a walking track or walking area on board? I am not able to tell looking at the deck plan.  We sail on the Queen in November. 

I guess you asking specifically about the AQSC's American Queen, but I have not been on that ship.  If memory serves me right, there was limited walking on the top of American Duchess.

Since this forum is "ACL vs AQSC," I'll go ahead and add what I know about walking on ACL ships.

On ACL newest ships (Jazz, Harmony, Melody, Symphony) there is a lighted track running around the perimeter of the entire ship on the top deck.  On the older ships, there is room to walk on the top deck, but it is limited.

ACL does offer excursions specifically for walking, but these are relatively few. 

47 minutes ago, nybumpkin said:

What did you do in the different ports?

Here's a list of the excursions that were available up as far as St Louis. (The ones we actually did are asterisked):

Baton Rouge:  Houmas House All Day Excursion; *USS Kidd - Museum & Ship Tour (excellent!); City Experience bus tour; Walk through Capital City

St. Francisville: *Town Shuttle; *Rosedown Plantation; ***** Plantation

Natchez: Cemetery Tour; *Frogmore Plantation (excellent!); Longwood Exploration; JN Stone House Tour & Concert; Great River Outdoor Adventure; *Monmouth Historic Inn & Gardens; *Town Shuttle

Vicksburg:  *Historic Vicksburg Walking Tour (excellent but long); Antebellum Vicksburg Experience; *Vicksburg Military Park (excellent!); *Town Shuttle

Greenville: *BB King Museum in Indianola (excellent!); Shuttle to local museums (did this on previous cruise - excellent)

Memphis: Civil Rights Museum; *Rock & Soul Museum (excellent); Sun Studio (did this on previous cruise - excellent); Graceland (cost extra - those who went said it was excellent); Town shuttle

New Madrid: *Town shuttle

Cape Girardeau: *Town shuttle; Mural walk

Chester: *Tour of town and National Veterans Memorial (located in Perryville - they have a full-size replica of the Vietnam War memorial - excellent!); Popeye Character Trail

St Louis:  Arch tour (did this on previous cruise - excellent); *Anheuser Busch Brewery Experience (excellent); Town Tour

Just got back from this cruise.  We thought it was excellent!  A few notes...

The trip got off to a rocky start, as Hurricane Ida hit New Orleans just a few days before we were to arrive.  Both the airport and the Intercontinental Hotel were seriously impacted, so ACL changed the first part of the itinerary.  They dropped the first day, and had us change our air reservations to Jackson, MS, where they met us and bused us to Natchez MS for embarkation. Then the Melody went straight down to Baton Rouge (which had not lost power) and we resumed the original itinerary north from there. We were told there were just 113 passengers on the ship, so we had room to spread out.  ACL booked 120 passengers, so the rest either couldn't handle the change from NOLA to Jackson airport, or flunked the Covid-19 protocol we went through at the Jackson airport.

The ship was in mint condition, as you would expect, with minimal glitches (unfortunately, one of these was the toilets, which conked out for a hour several times early in the cruise, but this was corrected).  One feature of these new ships we enjoyed was the walking track that completely envelops the outside of the top deck.

The food was superb.  The stewards did an excellent job of taking orders and getting the food out very quickly, even when people arrived at the table at staggered times. The ship seemed to be not just fully-staffed, but almost overstaffed!  Only a couple of tables per server, and housekeeping had our rooms cleaned in a jiffy every day.

One interesting note:  In St. Francisville, the captain could not dislodge the ship from the town levee where we were tied up.  Had to wait an hour or so for a tow boat to arrive and push us off.

It appears ACL has responded to AQSC's  much-praised hop on/hop off system by getting their own fleet of ACL-owned, logoed buses.  Four buses accompanied us all the way from Natchez/Baton Rouge to Minneapolis.  These were the same buses throughout, though at St Louis a different set of drivers took over to complete the second half of the trip.  One driver told us ACL had just purchased 40(!) of these buses.

The excursions were all excellent.  Every port included one bus dedicated to hop-on/hop-off (ACL calls them "shuttles") used the other three for various excursions.

Let me know if you have any questions about the Melody... 

Just got back from this cruise.  It was excellent.  I'll post a few details on a new thread, Melody Inaugural 22-day Cruise Comments

2 hours ago, Globalfish said:

Would be especially interested in knowing whether you will be able to do Cape Girardeau and St. Louis further upriver since the current sailing of Queen of the Mississippi appears to have stopped for less than 1-1/2 hours in the latter and skipped the former entirely.

When I went into our "booking documents" (the one you get to from the e-mail they now send), I discovered that they had already revised the itinerary PDF.  The only change was to the first 3 days of the cruise, lower Mississippi.  Everything upstream of that, including Cape Girardeau and St. Louis, show things exactly as they had been.

For several days I have been monitoring the Melody's position on MarineTraffic website.  A couple of days ago it reported Melody had left Vicksburg enroute to Natchez, but then updated positions just stopped -- as though Melody had switched transmitter off.  Currently says "out of range" or some such.  Not sure the online readings can altogether be trusted.

1 hour ago, Globalfish said:

Will let you know what happens in the lower Mississippi, but the new ACL vessel American Melody stopped in Vicksburg yesterday and is in Natchez today.  Don’t know what will happen with points further south.

The Melody began its first cruise last week, getting out of New Orleans before Ida hit.  Got to Vicksburg and was scheduled to turn around and go back to New Orleans, but stayed in Vicksburg (unsurprisingly).  I suspect passengers had to depart there and fly home from Jackson MS.

We were scheduled for the next Melody cruise, 23 days New Orleans to Minneapolis, starting today.  This past Monday morning we got an e-mail from ACL saying they were still analyzing the situation and would get back to us. Tuesday afternoon they e-mailed us again, with a new plan:  Embark at Natchez on Friday the 3rd; they will meet us in Jackson MS airport and bus us the 110 miles to Natchez.  They will comp us by making all Premium excursions free (though no advantage to us, as we are Society members).  Was able to change American Airlines reservations online quickly, at no charge.

So far, we are pleased with the way ACL has been handling this situation.