gadugger

Are there any websites which will show current water levels on the Douro. We will be on the AmaDouro embarking Nov. 16.  

April 25, 2019 AmaCello Arles to Lyon with 3 day pre-cruise stay in Barcelona.

On 11/29/2018 at 7:58 AM, Valley Girl of VA said:

Which AMAPrima sailing are you on?  We are on Dec. 8th.  I too would like to know what the Amsterdam to Amsterdam covers.  Unfortunately we had already booked and paid for a tour outside of Amsterdam for our two days after the cruise.  If we go to Antwerp, there is a Christmas market there.  I wonder if this ship does the same itinerary as the Tulip Tour?

 

Jane

Below is the AMA PRIMA route from our Nov. 17 -24 cruise.  AMA did a very good job with this alternative route. However they did a poor job about communicating what was going on with the low water levels. 

Finally made it to AmaPrima about an hour before it sailed to Utrecht.  NO sleep since Fri. Night.  Very pleased with service so far especially cruise manager. Took awhile to accept itinerary  change but alternative route looks good so far. Good dinner tonight. Met Coli and Mum. Off to Gouda tomorrow. Assurance provided that everyone will get to Basel as needed. 

52 minutes ago, gadugger said:

Now 10:30. Hope ama transfer is monitoring our flight 

Now 11 am. Thanks Delta for taking more than 48 hrs to get from Kansas City to Amsterdam 

1 hour ago, gadugger said:

Supposed to be there. Still in Minneapolis.  Mystery cruise or misery cruise? Hello to Coli. Supposed to get to Amsterdam 10am sun.

 

 

Now 10:30. Hope ama transfer is monitoring our flight 

34 minutes ago, kathywin53 said:

Boarded in Amsterdam on Amaprima,  met  Coli and her mom....nice to connect. Several others from home area on board.  notified at briefing that first 5 days are planned but not the cruise we booked. Told we would be ending in Basel but transport to there could be determined later...? Plane, bus, train.

tomorrow tour Amsterdam then we leave for Utrecht NL. Excursions are being planned for stops but we do not know what they are.

wine specialist on board and will be doing presentations. I suspect there re no vineyards planned but will update if any arise.

Supposed to be there. Still in Minneapolis.  Mystery cruise or misery cruise? Hello to Coli. Supposed to get to Amsterdam 10am sun.

6 hours ago, Coli said:

See you there gadugger. Heading to JFK later for our flight to AMS. The mystery tour will be epic! Poor Rhine.

Hi Coli, additional bad news for us. Flight from KC to Detroit cancelled. Not expected to get to Amsterdam till early Sunday.  Save me a doggie bag from Saturday dinner  :) George 

About 16 hrs. before we drive to the airport to get to Amsterdam for our AMA Rhine river mystery cruise, I break a tooth after dentist office hours. Luckily I got an emergency appt. for a temporary repair before regular office hours tomorrow. Apparently I should have spent less time praying to the rain gods and more praying to the patron saint of travelers (St. Christopher). I will see whether tragedy  plus time  equals comedy when it comes to travel. 18 months ago, my wife broke her toe right before a trip to Amalfi Coast with its hundreds of steps. 

3 hours ago, Mark_T said:

I’ll try not to post too much temptation on here, but I do have to say that the food has been excellent, tonight was the Chaine de Rotisseurs dinner and the preparation, especially of the lamb was exceptional.

 

So tomorrow we will sail the Rhine gorge and yes I will carefully note the name of the ship 🙂

 

it it has been confirmed that we have exclusive use of the ship they are using, so no need to worry about having other people onboard as some have mentioned in recent weeks.

 

Sail away from Cologne tonight gave us the beautifully illuminated Cathedral as a backdrop..

 

Hi Mark, is there just one Chaine de Rotisseurs dinner per cruise? Also are you limited to just one captain's table dinner? I look forward to the food and drink. As we don't where we will be cruising till we are on board, I can't say the same for the port and the excursions. I'm too old for a Magical Mystery Tour 🙂   George   Amsterdam to ??? Nov. 17

7 hours ago, peregrino said:

 

Thanks a lot Mark_T !

 

We hope that APT correct their information promptly, to avoid the general impression that they are making false promises and trapping people into a last-minute Clayton's choice.  It would be a short-term strategy, if it tarnished their reputation.

 

The website I am using indicates that AmaVenita has finally arrived in Koln.  Yay!!!

 

We really appreciate your extra info on your travels, especially the news that you will get to see the Rhine Gorge (local boat would be just fine for us too, if it is offered!) and that your impromptu trip on the Mosel River is proving enjoyable!

 

We really wanted to see river scenery and castles, and the German Xmas markets.  Any itinerary that contains these things (without lots of bussing about, or stooging about in lowland canals) would be just great - whether by boat swaps or whatever it takes.  🙂

"Clayton's choice" A toast to you for exposing me to this phrase from the exotic land of Australia  🙂

4 hours ago, Coli said:

Hi gadugger... our TA is on holiday so we called one of her colleagues today and said could they check with AMA. She called and said AMA sent out the letter yesterday to TAs and they sent her a copy for us today. I think Cruise Critic’s messaging system is down or I’d send you a copy. Again thanks to notamermaid and GMT and all the others who have posted about the river situation.

Thanks Coli. Thanks to a new friend in low places, I got the info. I needed. Hope to see you on the cruise, wherever that is 🙂

2 minutes ago, Coli said:

The credit is full amount you paid for this cruise to use on another AMA cruise. To be used in next 3 years. I’m on this trip with holacandita. Got our letter from AMA today. The other option was to cancel this cruise for a full refund. As holacandita states, AMA will get us to Basel for the post cruise extension. AMA also asks for those who are traveling indepentantly from Basel to give them all those details. Sounds like they are trying to get everyone to Basel regardless. Mum and I are going to take the revised itinerary, enjoy the fact we’re on holiday and go for the full credit for another cruise. We’re happy we get to do our 4 night post trip as planned.

 

HBR777 - if we end in Düsseldorf we take train to Basel. If we’re ending in Amsterdam we fly to Basel.

Thanks for the info. on the credit. I still haven't got any info. from AMA or my TA even though I informed them of what was apparently going on thanks to the posters on this board. 

13 minutes ago, holacandita said:

It doesn't say but they did ask us to email them our travel information --- if you PM me your email address, I can forward you the letter I received.

I don't think the PM function is working. 

46 minutes ago, holacandita said:

The credit is better than what Crystal is offering and I am happy with it.

They said they will either be sending us back to Basel via train from Dusseldorf or by plane from Amsterdam, depending on which itinerary we end up taking.  We have an extra day in Basel before we leave for home, but I'm hoping to not lose it to traveling.

I am on the same cruise as you. I contacted my TA  who had no info. but would call AMA. Did AMA indicate what time they would be getting people to Basel. We have train tickets to Paris leaving about 12:30 pm. We had hoped to spend a few hours in old town Basel before leaving. 

40 minutes ago, holacandita said:

Correct, we embark on Saturday!  Possible itinerary includes sailing Netherlands and Germany from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf -OR- a round trip Amsterdam to Amsterdam sailing through The Netherlands and Belgium.  But we won't know until we're on board.  Either way they will have to get us back to Basel via train or plane to make our post cruise arrangements. 😞  But I'm still hoping for a great trip.  And we will receive credit for a future cruise.

If there was enough water in the Rhine, I would walk the plank but I guess I will have to come up with an amended itinerary 🙂

8 minutes ago, hokiemare said:

I just got off the AMAStella/AMAKristina Rhine River cruise - Basel to Amsterdam.  I thought AMA did a wonderful job with the details of the "ship swap".  We actually visited Baden Baden, Germany; Luxembourg City, Luxembourg; Antwerp, Belgium instead of three cities in Germany.  Yes, 7 hours on a bus is not pleasant and yes, packing and unpacking is not fun and yes, meeting and bonding with a whole new cruise staff is not ideal.  But AMA sent us to beautiful places and made the event totally seamless!!!!  It was a delightful cruise even with the swap.  I would also note that AMA headquarters are in LA and on Monday their servers were down due to the fires in Malibu and Southern California.  So while I understand the concern for wanting to know about your vacation, these poor folks in CA are dealing with life and death situations - just my thoughts.  

A lot of this could have been avoided if AMA and other cruise lines acted transparently and notified their customers of how they have had to modify recent itineraries so customers could make informed decisions and, if they accept the changed itinerary, had some time to research the new destinations. The cruise lines should also have assured their customers that they would be able to make post cruise transfers on time or that alternate transportation would be provided. Did AMA give you a credit for a future cruise?

27 minutes ago, hbr777 said:

Holy Zeus. I cannot believe a company would refer customers to that site. That is NUTS.

I noticed the "fake news" water level site some time back but didn't pursue the issue. Still no word from AMA for our Amsterdam to Basel Nov. 17 cruise. AMA did put our cruise on their web app  Amacruiser.

6 minutes ago, notamermaid said:

I saw this article on the website yesterday and thought this might be worth starting a new thread with as it is about more than just the Rhine. As it is getting distribution and some more attention that way I think I will give it a go.

 

notamermaid

 

An additional right that should be included is disclosure about cancellations specifically if cruise cancellations are linked to air cancellation if air is booked thru the cruise. AMA didn't disclose that if a cruise cancellation occurs either by the company or by the customer, then air booked through them is also cancelled. 

Below is the notice AMA has now put on their website re their California toll free line. It appears that you may have trouble even reaching them by phone much less getting a straight answer.

1 hour ago, pully8 said:

Thanks for that info.

Good news about the 10 day notice and offers.

Do you know if that was offered to all passengers, or just for the UK market?

5 days out from our A - B cruise and AMA has said nothing. 

Not looking too good at Kaub: https://www.elwis.de/DE/dynamisch/gewaesserkunde/wasserstaende/wasserstaendeUebersichtGrafik.html.php?pegelId=1d26e504-7f9e-480a-b52c-5932be6549ab

1 hour ago, gadugger said:

There is a very negative recent review of the AMA app on Google Play store. Basically the app is of no value if your scheduled itinerary is substantially changed. Review is below

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Scott Schmit

November 4, 2018

Perhaps this app works fine when the cruise goes to plan, but if your itinerary is disrupted, it's essentially useless: there's no longer any information about your itinerary or available activities, and I have no idea how you'd share your pictures tied to location and such. When I tried to look at the itinerary after learning of the disruption, I got the original for several days with no change. Once it took notice of the change, it simply presents a message redirecting you to a generic web page with information not specific to my pre- or post-tour extensions (very confusing). This page never changed as things continued to change throughout the cruise (we were able to start as originally intended, and we stopped at a different place). It takes no notice of my personal activity selections as best I can recall from before the cruise either. It also turned out that one of the activities was erroneously included from the summer in the print materials (too dark in the fall, and a substitute was offered instead). A shame this app couldn't correct the misinformation... The one part of the app that continued to work was the daily cruiser display, but that didn't become available at a consistent time (even as the paper edition was always available regularly). Once it didn't become available until halfway into the day of (usually it's available the evening ahead). It is also only available for the cruise itself, not extensions. There's also a bug: the bottom is hidden by the on screen buttons, but you can work around this by zooming in. How well that works depends on how much blank space there is at the bottom. Another bug: it can't reliably remember which days have already been downloaded. I can only imagine what the rest of the app would have been like had the cruise gone to plan. As much as Ama pushes the app in their pre cruise materials, it's obviously an afterthought. Fortunately most of their customers are old enough that they'd never notice or would assume it's their own fault.

I installed the app and it only shows a Nov 10 and a Nov 24 cruise not our cruise on Nov 17

19 minutes ago, deMila said:

Nice to meet you too & hbr777,    I'm Mila,  we are also flying independently to meet the AmaKristina. So we will deal with what happens if/when it happens. May have to rethink packing to make lighter if we are going to have to be rerouted a bit. By the way, have you received the boarding documents yet? Don't forget Ama has an app now to download - but as of yesterday our cruise was not loaded yet. We did this Christmas market  cruise last year on the Danube and has such a wonderful time so we are trying the Rhine. 

 

Cheers!

Mila

 

There is a very negative recent review of the AMA app on Google Play store. Basically the app is of no value if your scheduled itinerary is substantially changed. Review is below

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1 hour ago, newgolfr said:

Thank you for keeping an upbeat tone for river cruising in this incredible year of high temperatures and low rain fall.  Our experience with Amawaterways was great.  I was initially disappointed that we wouldn't be spending the entire week on the AmaKristina, but after being on the AmaStella before our ship swap, I missed the crew on the AmaStella!  Honestly that was the hardest part of ship swapping.  Our motto when packing for these trips is, "wear what you wear at home and is comfortable."  No one cares if you wear the same pants and sweater with a different clean shirt all week.  And it makes packing for the swap and train travel so much easier.  Even though we missed Cologne and Rudesheim, I was so pleasantly surprised with Antwerp and Luxembourg City.  I'll go back to the Rhine on Amawaterway"s dime when the waters rise!  

Did AMA get you to your original destination? I can't find out if our Nov. 17-24 AMAPRIMA A to B cruise, which surely will have a changed itinerary, will still get us to Basel where we have train tickets to go Paris or whether AMA will get us to Paris in some other fashion.