reeves35

6 hours ago, Frikki said:

Thank you so much for your quick and helpful reply.  I don’t know if I will actually attempt a bike ride but the option sounds interesting.  Would love to do a tour of the Melk monastery - we’ve driven past it twice.  Also very interested in Durnstein.

A visit of Melk Abbey is included as part of the Travelmarvel tour.  You get bussed up, do the tour and then can walk back to the ship through the town or get a bus back if you want to.  The early afternoon is spent cruising the Wachau Valley with a late afternoon visit to Durnstein which is really pretty

2 hours ago, Frikki said:

Just jumping on to this thread.

 

We are doing this cruise in August.  Reeves35, I remember reading your informative review a few weeks ago and it made helped me to understand the day to day activities.

 

I have a couple of questions…

1. Is there tea/coffee available other than meal times? If so, is it an extra cost?  I do like my cup of tea!

 

2. I have heard that push bikes are available on some cruises.  Does Travel Marvel have them?

 

Thank you!

Glad you are doing the cruise in August.  You'll have a great time.

Tea and coffee is available 24/7 in the lounge along with cookies.  This is included in your fare.

Bikes are available though I didn't use them as the most popular spot for riding is between Melk and Durnstein and the person I would have ridden with was sick on the day.

Depends how far you want to travel.  For an American like you, there is the Mississippi.  In Europe, there is also the Rhine, the Main, the Seine and the Douro.  There used to be the Volga too but it is off-limits for the foreseeable future.  If you want to travel further, there is the Mekong in Vietnam and Cambodia which is very different from European rivers but supposedly amazing.

Select are extra cost. The sample is from a day where there were no included excursions which was unusual. 

Travelmarvel are really good with dietary needs.  Speak to the Hotel Manager when you get onboard but wait staff tended to ask at every meal if there was special dietary needs so they could bring GF breads etc.  Meals are flexible so if you want to substitute one thing for something else, that is not a problem usually.

The menus are displayed every day outside the restaurant so you can decide if you want to have the restaurant meal that night or the casual meal in the Irish Bar.

I managed to find a couple of photos of menus I had taken.  We usually took them on the way into breakfast if they were up so we could have a look.  Daily newsletters are not distributed in your rooms but available on the TV as well as posted on the wall outside reception.  I've added a sample here too.

Hope this helps.

Travelmarvel does not use AMA Waterways ships though APT still does until the end of 2024 when it receives 2 bespoke ships of its own.  

Travelmarvel has 3 identical bespoke ships all launched in 2021.  I sailed on both Vega and Polaris last year from Amsterdam to Budapest.  We were originally on Vega but had a ship swap in Nuremberg due to water levels on the Danube.

I did put up a review Travelmarvel Review but feel free to ask me any other questions you may have.

5 minutes ago, Jim_P said:

Noumea is certainly no loss imo, I had been planning on just staying onboard and enjoying a less crowded ship. I just hope they don't change the itinerary to QLD or Tasmania. 

I can guarantee it won't be Tasmania this time of year.  Depending on the remainder of your itinerary, I'd guess another sea day is most likely.

Carnival has posted the following on their Facebook page. 

I sort of wonder if independence is what New Caledonians really want. New Caledonia remains significantly more prosperous than its near neighbour, Vanuatu.  Vanuatu got independence back in 1980 and has been decimated by political corruption ever since that has relegated it to a mendicant pauper state.

On 4/30/2024 at 5:04 PM, bazzaw said:

Just did a quick check re comparative prices - 10 nights on New Guinea cruise P&O FROM $1044  -- 10 nights Alaska cruise On QE FROM $1529. Certainly there is a 33% difference there and we would have flights to Canada for the Alaska cruise - but Americans and Brits would have flights to Brisbane for the NG cruise . No - $500 difference does not account for the different demographics!!!  

Comparing Cunard with P&O Australia is fairly meaningless. They are different cruise lines targetting different audiences.  The only thing they have in common is the same parent company which, like its 2 equivalents, loves to find new ways to separate customers from their money. 

P&O does target families etc and its price point means it attracts families and groups wanting a good value all-inclusive holiday at a low price.  This audience will never cross-shop against Cunard, it doesn't appeal to them and that is fine.  They will probably be comparing their cruise package against holiday packages in Bali or Fiji etc.

Your price comparison is actually larger than 33%.  The P&O fare includes gratuities.  For a 10 day cruise on Cunard, you need to add another AUD230 (USD15 p.d.) so the price difference is large but, as I said, pretty irrelevant too. 

On drinks packages, personally, I think they are a scourge.  They only exist because the cruise companies have worked out they are a great way to make more money because very few people actually get their money's worth.  They are part of the "fresh wallet" psychology that the cruise lines have discovered whereby people forget the cost of the items they prepay before departure and are more willing to spend on other things once onboard.  The cruise lines' revenues are now nearly 50% non-fare related so the system has been a huge financial success for them.

The further downside of drinks packages is some feel they have to somehow get value out of the package and are compelled to drink to excess.  This leads to the ugly behaviour many have talked about here but it also could lead to far more dangerous things.  P&O suffered immense damage from the Diane Brimble case 20 years ago but seems to have taken no lessons from that sad event.  Surely, the cruise lines have some responsible service of alcohol program but I have never seen it.  

Using the term budget for a cruise line like Emerald is nonsense.  Emerald's product basically mirrors what you get on Viking which, given their size, is probably the benchmark for how European river cruise lines are measured.  Emerald's ships are bespoke with some features even Scenic doesn't have such as their signature aft pool. 

Emerald is more of an unbundled product compared with Scenic where you make a significant saving on the headline fare by removing a number of things such as unlimited excursions, full drinks package etc and you can then choose to add back in what you want.  I cruised on Travelmarvel last year which is basically APT's equivalent to Emerald and never felt I was missing out on anything. I was on a newer ship than APT was sailing, received the same loyalty recognition as I would have received on APT, I bought the optional excursions I wanted, I bought extra drinks if I wanted and I still saved over USD1000 compared to the fare on the identical APT itinerary.

I don't like the term budget as it implies a cheap product and from what I saw there are few, if any, lines on the rivers that are really skimping on their product.  Some lines are using older secondhand ships so maybe that is a measure if you are trying to group Gate1, Tui etc as a class below Viking etc but speaking to guests on a Gate1 ship that rafted next to us last year, they said they were having a great cruise even if they did notice that our ship looked noticeably more modern than theirs.

It is a bit meaningless to just try to categorise river cruises as either just premium and budget.  It is far more nuanced than that with a number of possible categories such as Premium, Luxury, Comfort and Budget and that is before you introduce the regional overlay with some cruise lines being solely targeted at particular language groups or countries. 

This is one area where river cruise lines are not that different from ocean cruise lines even down to some companies such as APT and Scenic running a multibrand strategy across different categories.

I haven't done this on Princess but, on other lines, if you are doing Anytime dining they may move you downstairs to an empty "traditional" table which makes sense for both convenience and spreading the effort across the waitstaff.  On Carnival, we ended up downstairs 5 nights out of 8 and on RCI 3 nights out of 6.  They always asked if we minded but, since we weren't getting the same staff every night anyway, we were fine.

12 minutes ago, OzKiwiJJ said:

 

Definitely a furphy!

 

My guess is that there is something that needs to be done to Station Pier that the Victorian authorities aren't telling anyone but has caused them to limit or stop any disembarkations/embarkations from Melbourne .

 

That may explain why the Diamond itineraries have ended up as they are. I suspect the original plan was for Diamond to homeport for the whole season in Melbourne but Princess had to change things due to whatever is going on with Station Pier.

 

Princess isn't the only cruise line to pull out. Cunard is no longer coming here other than as port stops on it's world cruises. Virgin has also redeployed. 

Unfortunately, Victoria is stony broke so nothing will be spent on Station Pier until the debt is under control.....ask again in 2150!!!

Australia has a number of issues that now seem to be affecting the decisions of cruise lines when they decide on seasonal deployments.  These include:

• Closure of Suez Canal due to ME tensions meaning transfers from Europe are uneconomic.
• NZ Quarantine Requirements meaning hull cleaning required but difficult to do
• SYD port access difficult during peak season particularly if ship can't go under Harbour Bridge
• MEL port charge increases plus decrepit state of Station Pier Terminal
• BNE Difficulty in filling ships meaning discounting is required
• Strong USD means there is lots of money to be made out of US ports 

All of these are on top of the always present issue that Australia is a long way from where ships are based during the northern summer so 2 lower yielding repositioning cruises are required to get the ships to and from Australian waters.

38 minutes ago, canoncruiser said:

Am I hallucinating or have I seen steam coming from QA’s whistle when it sounded? 🤨

Yes, but it is fake....not really sure why they bothered.

5 hours ago, Pear Carr said:

Totally unacceptable and confusing for staff given table will have been allocated for a reason re: staffing/station.  Selfish and not in the spirit of Cunard.

Nothing to do with the "spirit of Cunard";  It is rude anywhere.  You have been assigned a seat.  If, for some reason, you want to move, you should ask the wait staff to move you but doing it unilaterally is impolite on Carnival just as it is on Cunard.

Rudesheim was fun.  I went to the Music Museum with fairly low expectations but it was OK and only went for 30 minutes anyway.  The only issue we had was that it was a hot day and the place is not air conditioned.  After the museum we wandered around the town and came across a summer wine festival in the town square which sated the thirst nicely.

The included tours are, by their nature, only a brief introduction to the town or city.  Ideally, if time allowed, we went on the tour in the morning and in the afternoon went out by ourselves and explored a bit further and at a gentler pace that allowed for a wine or beer along the way as well as some shopping.  The brevity of the tour is obviously more of an issue in cities where you only see a fraction of what the city has to offer and we came away from places like Vienna, Amsterdam and Budapest wishing we had had more time. 

On 4/13/2024 at 12:09 AM, david,Mississauga said:

For those of us in Canada, Cunard quotes fares in Canadian $ but just recently the wording has been changed to: "fares shown are in $ $" whatever that means.  If the fares shown to us in Canada are in Canadian $ as usual, there are indeed some great prices. But if they are in US $ a 35% surcharge is not such a big deal. On one of the later Alaska cruises there are three fare levels available. The maximum fare which includes all the Grills perks is the same as it was when it clearly showed that fares are in Canadian $, so maybe the cheaper fares are also in Canadian currency.

 

We are anxious to book something - and our dates are flexible - but I have to wait for one more medical appointment for the purposes of our travel insurance.

Not sure about the laws in Canada but, in Australia, consumer law says $ means AUD.  If suppliers mean USD, they have to say USD.

Other cruise lines had a range of specials as part of Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales across a variety of onboard things including internet, drinks packages etc.  All Cunard offered was highly conditional special pricing on selected sailings and, even then, restricted it to US customers only.

Maybe they'll be a bit more involved this year but, if their app (or lack of app) is any indication, I'm not hopeful of Cunard being particularly innovative.

Does this low roofed theatre design match with other HAL Pinnacle class ships?

17 minutes ago, Pushpit said:

Moderate drinking is self determined (quite rightly). But in England the age-gender breakdown suggests that men aged 55 to 64 years old drink on average 18 units a week - that is the highest of any age or gender. If I'm toeing the party line, the NHS recommendation is a maximum 14 units a week. 18 units would be about 1.5 glasses of wine a day equivalent, total alcohol intake. 

 

Incidentally the most abstemious age group is currently those aged 25-34 years old, men in that group are on 12.5 units a week, women 7.3. 

 

Americans drink significantly less than Brits.

That seems to tally with the Australian advice also which is a maximum of 10 standard drinks per week and no more than 4 drinks in a single day.

Drinks packages are rarely great value; cruise lines offer them because they are good for them not for you!!  They only make sense if you plan on drinking 8+ alcoholic drinks per day including shore days when you may only be on the ship in the evening.  For most people 8+ per day every day is a lot.  

We are on Cunard next year on a cruise similar (or same??) as you and will probably go for the soda package and I may take the hot drinks option for premium coffees if it is able to be had for just one person but won't bother if I have to buy it for both people in the cabin as my wife only drinks tea which you can get for free in the buffet etc.

Looking at a single cruise during school holidays is not really representative of what demand looks like during winter.  I cruised on Spirit on the equivalent cruise in 2013 and it was also full with lots of families but it really isn't the best time to cruise out of Sydney.  The first sea-day and the last are very likely to be too cool to be outside and Australians aren't really attracted to cruising when you can't be outside. (I can't see P&O Australia ever attempting to copy P&O UK with winter cruising to cold weather ports across winter.) 

I'm sure if we looked at all cruises out of Sydney across winter, we would see demand remains seasonally low and discounting is rife.

Obviously cruising out of Brisbane over winter largely overcomes the weather issue but the value equation drops off as travellers from the 2 major population centres now have to either add airfares or incur higher airfares.

On 3/10/2024 at 6:26 AM, notamermaid said:

APT and Travelmarvel in 2025: https://travelweekly.co.uk/news/travel-agents/apt-travelmarvel-unveils-2025-european-river-cruise-programme

Interesting that Travelmarvel has UK and Ireland exclusive cruises. Other companies do this of course but I would not have thought that an Australian company would go for this. I guess it makes perfect sense to put the shorter cruises, which are not worthwhile coming to Europe from Australia for, only on the UK and Irish markets.

 

notamermaid

 

I wonder if these are unique itineraries or just unique packages for UK travellers.  On our Travelmarvel cruise last year, most travellers were Australians and New Zealanders doing the classic 14 night Amsterdam to Budapest itinerary but nearly all the UK travellers were doing 7 night itineraries of Amsterdam - Nuremberg or Nuremberg - Budapest. 

These itineraries were not really advertised to Australian travellers and a lot of them were last minute type deals with no single supplements etc.  They also seemed to miss out on things like Travelmarvel backpacks and nametags.