IluvZ

We did a great hike in Skagway on our own that the NPS recommended called the Lower Dewey Trail to this beautiful glacier lake. Highly recommend that. And if you want, you could keep going to upper Dewey Lake, which was too much for me!

For Sitka, I second the walk out to the totems and then you can keep going all the way to the brewery. They have local taxis that can bring you back, unlike some of the other ports.  The Raptor Center is on the way to the brewery if you want to add a stop. Not super strenuous but beautiful. It was one of our favorite ports.  

I think one thing that people forgot is that when I book a land based trip, I can buy a bottle of local spirits and wine to drink in my room and often around the pool. We are highly limited in the ability to do that on a cruise ship. So the individual cost of drinks on a cruise effect us much more than any land based trip we take. 

We have sail sail a few times on MSC yacht club and they include drinks in the private spaces and around the ship.  The YC allowed me to bring all my spirits bought on shore back with no questions, restocked my mini bar every day with all kinds of drinks and snacks, and offer butler delivered drinks and snacks at all times.  Given VV advertising, I expect this as standard kind of level of provided amenities and was surprised when it was only limited beverages. 

I have no idea what happened. Anyone else know why the pictures don’t show up? I didn’t change anything. 

Thanks. We have 3 days in Budapest at the end of the cruise so I will have to get some Forints. Maybe get some from the ATM.

Was the weather ok in May? We're going to be a month earlier and I m not sure what to take.

Definitely got forint, you will save money over using euros. We had unseasonably hot weather with most days in the 80’s. I would have preferred the normal 60’s.

Great review. We're going on the Princess next April. I have a question... In Budapest and Bratislava what currency did you use? Do they accept $ and Euros or do you need their own currencies?

We used Froint in Budapest because were were there a few days pre cruise. Some placed did accept euro too. The euro was in all other locations. We didn’t try to use US $ and I don’t think they would take them.

Love the Spirit. Have sailed her three times and she is still our favorite ship of all times. She was originally was deployed in Asia and carried lions for a show in the theater. Most of the cages have been converted to dressing rooms but in the aft you can still see the outdoor cages.

We did a HAL cruise with our then 12 year DS two years ago and he really liked HAL. It was more low key than the Disney ship and he felt the tween and teen programs were more engaging. Much smaller groups of kids. The Xbox’s to check out were a big hit as was the sports deck, which were both never super busy.

We found the cruise demographic very mixed with a lot of multi generational family is on board. Much more so than we had ever seen on any other cruise. It’s also limited the amount of time that the kids that were on board for in the kids club because they were often busy with their families.

We find the food on HAL a big step up from Norwegian and similar to what we found on Disney. We liked it enough that we’re off to Norway in a couple weeks on the K dam.

Please let this be a typo/autocorrect ;p

:eek: Totally an autocorrect! Wow, that was a crazy one.

We really enjoyed our last river cruise but hated the complete lack of precruise information on typical docking times. That is what makes me hesitant to book one of the Christmas cruises. We will probably eventually just bite the bullet and take a last minute deal like this last time.

We are also considering a Christmas. Armed cruise and wondered if there are any that stay late in the ports. Our cruise this year on the Danube (May) we stayed late four nights but I see a lot of comments about not docking into the evening. I realize the Dock Master determines the times and docking locations but has anyone ever stayed late in December?

We did Gate 1 going the other directions but I do have a suggestion for Vilshofen. We had the most amazing meal at Gasthof Wolfersetter Bräusyübe right in the historic downtown. Highly recommend it!

We have been on multiple NCL cruises but chose HAL for our last Alaska cruise. Our DS was 10 at the time and loved the HAL kids club. The clubs were smaller but had great counselors. We found that in Alaska, on HAL there were a lot of multi-generation groups so there were always kids around . We liked HAL enough to be going again with our now 13 DS to Norway this summer.

I will say, we love all types of music so HAL worked for us. And we don’t go clubbing at night so the differences to NCL there didn’t bother us. We laugher, thought, the one day NCL pulled up next to us in port, they were playing loud Caribbean party music and our HAL ship was playing Frank. Kinda showed the differences in atmosphere.

We moved from NCL because the food had gotten so inconsistent and they were killing me with all their fees (can’t even bring water on ship). So we aren’t willing to do NCL right now.

RCI has made a lot of cuts too. I suspect it's industry-wide except maybe at the luxury level. I have wondered about those "roller coaster slides" and what happens if you do get suck at the bottom. :o

I agree cuts have happened across the board but it seems NCL has lead the charge in deep changes. HAL charges me approx $40 for a liter of alcohol in my cabin, and NCL charges $110 for the same bottle. Just one example.

We watched the cruises get stuck on the slides one year because our room had a view of the pool. It was hilarious watching people try to be graceful at first to unstick themselves and then basically start to try anything to get moving again. It provided a lot of entertainment for us.

Thank you for all the thoughtful and detailed responses. I think we may lean toward Norwegian for this Europe cruise because they have some big slides for the kids (which my kids do love), but HAL would be a good option for the next one that Husband and I take without the kids.

As a previously very loyal NCL cruisers, I would just advise you to pay attention to the changes the line has made under the new leadership. We haven’t been happy with the cuts and that is why even though we have historically liked our NCL cruises, we refuse to sail the line right now. One of the biggest for those with kids is the inability to bring ANY beverages onboard. No water, soda, etc. I have a lot of other issues with their policies now but you might have no concerns there as it is all personal preference.

And if you are booking for the slides make sure to read the slide reviews. Two of the ships we did with slides, they were so slow people kept getting stuck on the way down. It was funny to watch but not fun to ride. The Disney water roller coaster was the only one that was amazing, but it was so windy the week we went that the slide was only open twice.

I disagree that pre-teens are not going to like HAL. We took our then 11 DS on HAL to Alaska on the Amsterdam and he declared it the best kids club he had been in - including Disney, NCL, and MSC. Because there aren’t a ton of kids the conselors were very hand-on with the kids and the clubs were never crowded. In addition, they allowed pre-teens to sign in and out if the parents approved, which Disney also allowed but NCL made him be check in an our until he was 13. The staff was amazing with all the kids and most of the passengers were really sweet as they were reminded of their own grandkids.

We think the food and service is better on HAL than RCI and NCL. But choices will be driven by the ship. Ours had only two alternatives- and dive-in closed EARLY. And the buffet times were a lot shorter than we had found on other lines. We often ended up ordering room service for dinner because we eat late. But that was the Amsterdam. This year we are doing the K-Dam and we are looking forward to all the food choices. So look closely at the ship and services.

The other quirky issue we had on the Amsterdam is they closed the sports equipment check out for the sports court during breakfast and lunch hours in the buffet. The court was above the buffet and I am guess people didn’t like hearing basketballs bouncing. That was a bummer for an active kid, but a purchased nerf football in port solved the issue because the court was open. Probally only an issue on the small Amsterdam.

And if you pick a ship with the covered pool the kids can swim even in the cold weather cruise. The best thing is there won’t be a ton of other people in the water like the sea of human bodies you see in RCI and Disney.

Any specific questions, just ask. My son isn’t a ropes course or water slide kid either (mainly because most of the ships water slides are lame so we don’t even bother looking for those anymore). I think HAL could be a nice fit.

Was the internet free? Loved the review!

 

Sent from my SM-T550 using Forums mobile app

Yes. It worked pretty well in our room unless we were rafted to another ship or in an area of the river without many towns.

Hi Roz,

They didn’t actually provide much direct in that. We were predominantly in the Euro zones so that is what I used and looked up the current exchange rate. I am guess the staf would be happy with any of the local currencies.

IIuvZ,

 

Thanks again for posting such detailed information. I have some questions and if you already posted the answers, just direct me to the number of the post(s) where I can find it.

 

How were tips handled? What currency did you use? Euros or US dollars? Who did you tip? Can you give me a ballpark of how much? How much was an average glass of wine and a cocktail such as a martini at the bar?

 

The reason I'm asking these questions is for budgeting purposes. I'm so spoiled by Uniworld where most everything is included. On my first Uniworld cruise the only charge on my onboard account was for some postcard stamps.

 

Roz

Hi Roz,

I don't think I covered tipping. We were asked to tip either in local currency with envelopes or on account to the crew. There was a big box in the lobby to place the tips for everyone except the activity director and cruise director. The staff recommendation was the equivalent of $12 us per person per day. $4 per person per day for Cruise Director and $2 per person per day for the activity director - those had to be cash and paid in-person to the individual.

Cocktails were in the $8 range except for the drink of the day that was usually $5 dollars. Beer was $5. Sorry I only drank the wine at dinner so I didn't check those prices. There was no added gratuity to the drinks as they were covered in the staff tipping amounts.

lluvz

 

Thank you for the detailed review.

What was the name of the restaurant you discovered in Vilshofen? We left from there on Christmas Day so as you can imagine it was shuttered but looked charming and we would love to go there again when the town was "open".

Durstein was charming - we had one our "best" days there - we hiked to the castle and walked the town (again shuttered because of the holiday) - and then did quick buffet dinner on board and back out to a wine tasting event. I joked with our guide that I would love to retire to a town like that and she laughed as well and said why?

 

I see that your are from Madison WI. My wife has family in New Lisbon (we actually fly into Madison when we attended their wedding 23 years ago!)

The restaurant is called Gasthof Wolferstetter Bräu. My DH ate the biggest Wiener schnitzel I have ever seen. I should say try to eat it, he only got through half. I had veal in a pepper cream sauce and rösti potatoes.

And I can’t believe the guides sometimes, Durstein was amazing wine country. We got a bunch of gin from their distillery, too, and that was delicious. It didn’t make it home.

Can’t say I get to New Lisbon often, by I drive by on the way to our cabin.

IluvZ Thanks for the information. We were afraid that river cruises are more elite travelers and we are more middle class.Gate One appears to be our level of travel flip

I don’t think you would feel out of place on any of the river boats, really, as I saw every other group walking around and without the little flags you would be hard pressed to guess which ship they were on based on clothing.

IluvZ- Thanks for posting your write-up. You approached this very differently than most cruisers, which made it that much better of a read.

 

For the price you paid, just using it as a floating hotel really worked out.

 

I like that you stayed late in a few locations, made your dining off boat choice that much easier.

Thanks for he complements! Trip reports are hard!

I think the beauty of Gate One’s pricing, especially their special offers, is the idea of flexibility. We joked that we might have spent a few more hours in the bar suffering, I mean listening, to the pianist if there were included drinks but it’s not like drinks were terribly expensive. In fact our total bill including a 90 massage was €170 at the end. The cruise director told us that last year one “younger” couple left the ship for two nights to hit Octoberfest in Munich on a 14 day trip. We liked that idea a lot too.

And the late nights were great, even for those who ate on the ship as quite a few people went out after dinner to enjoy an evening stroll.

Funny you ask, as we just got back from our first river cruise and are former NCL cruisers. I just wrote a review if you are interested but overall we loved it and would go again. We got a great last minute deal on one of the lines that is considered typically less expensive. We stayed late moats nights in port so the lack of nighttime entertainment didn’t bother us as all.

Here is a link to the review:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?p=56108219#post56108219

IluvZ, Thank you for the review. My wife and I are thinking of a Gate One cruise in 2019. Where most of the guests from USA or were there alot of Europeans? We like meeting people from other countries. We don't like having to get dressed up for dinners,so I guess I'm asking is how formal the dress code is/ Thanks again your review answered alot of questions about Gate One also

The majority of the guest on our cruise we from the US. There were also South Africans, Australians and British. Less than 10% not native English speakers.

As for dress code is was casual all the time. Lots of shorts and jeans for dinner. Women in capris and casual pants. We noticed that the first few days people were dressing up a little more but by the end of the week anything goes. There is no published dress code that I remember. The nights we went to dinner I was the only one in a dress.

Enjoyed this thread. Good sales job too ;)

Funny - we usually like every cruise we take even the one where my DH ended up standing on fire ants and the one I ended up both walking into a glass wall and falling down a set of stairs. But I was really surprised with Gate One.

Final thoughts:

We would do another river cruise again. We did find some of the ports crowded, Durstein in particular, but most of the time we didn't see much impact of the boats on the towns we were visiting. The atmosphere of the boat and speed of cruising appealed to us. In fact, many of the cruise ship things people love - casinos, big shows, etc - we don't use anyway so river cruising fit us better.

I do wish the rooms were bigger! And I would like more food flexibility.

Gate One was great. The staff was fun, the food was excellent and the rooms good. They could be so much easier to work with though. The pre-cruise information was limited and often inaccurate. To their defense, I think some of the other companies don't share a lot of information either but they have more passengers so there is more information here on CC.

Finally, on a kid note, I think our DS would have enjoyed this ship. Partially because he would have liked the crew a lot. But also because we were in ports so late. We could do a variety of things while having some downtime back at the boat. It was a very similar pace to our land Europe tours which he enjoys.

Any questions, ask away.

Vienna -

Vienna was one of two long ports days. Many people we talked to went on all three tours, two of which were additional costs. We were docked in Nussdorf, which is farther out then the other river boat port. It is 30-45 min into downtown depending on how you go and time of day. We were excited to be here because Nussdorf is the center of the wine district in Vienna.

The train and tram into town were a 10 minute walk from the ship. If you go on your own, the tickets for both can be bought on the train platform, not at the tram stop. Also, the tram had a detour and didn't go downtown like normal. Don't trust google maps on this location, use the local transportation app.

In the evening, after exploring downtown Vienna, my DH and I walked into Nussdorf to find a wine tavern and garden. They are throughout the small city and each are open at different times. You can tell which ones are open because they hang pine branches outside. The one we selected was 20 minutes from the ship.

Durstein, Melk and the Wachau Valley:

Sorry - this is the day I don't have the program for.

Durstein is a very small town but it right in the middle of the best wine area. I had marked out wine stories and local wineries on my map for us to explore in the morning. But, we only docked from 8:00-10:30. I was really disappointed. We rafted to two other ships that weren't leaving until 11:30 and noon. Of course, I thought Durstein was really charming, too. I expressed my disappointment to one of the staff members and he said "what would you do here, it's so small". Ugh - it's the middle of some of the best wineries in the world.

Wachau Valley - we spent 2 1/2 hours cruising between Durstein and Melk. It was a great cruise and this is the day they did the Bavarian food buffet for lunch.

Melk - the river boats park outside of town, through a woodland preserve. The walk is approximately 20 minutes. We didn't do the Abbey tour (lots of personal reasons) and because it was Saturday afternoon most of the town was closed. This was our least favorite town, not just because things were closed but we felt it lacked the charm of the other cities. In hindsight, we should have rented bikes in Durstein and spent time riding through the Wachau Valley and met the boat in Melk. There is a company right at the docks that had one way rentals and e-bikes. We didn't do this because we felt we wanted to cruise the Valley on the boat but we definitely missed out on items that would have appealed to us much more.

Linz -

Linz is a great city and seems very underated. We docked right next to the historic downtown and there were fewer boats here than in other ports. Unfortunately, it was Sunday and lots of the town was closed. We had limited choices on our promo rate for the cruise, so we didn't look too closely at what days were were in port. In hindsight, we wished we had Duerstein and Melk on Sunday and Linz on Monday. That being said, we ended up enjoying a local beer hall with many families celebrating Mother's Day and it was a terrific day.

Passau and Vilshofen:

So today was a surprise. Both because Passau was only really a morning stop and because we were sent to dock in the worst location in the middle of nowhere. The crew said this was the first time they were sent to the location and really had no idea where we were. If we had gone to the port talk the night before, we would have learned that we were outside of town, so that was totally our fault. And because I never heard about this location I had done no research on the area. Those people that took the tour in town had two shuttle times to get back to the ship but they didn't have other shuttles to get into town since the port of call was shorter. There was a bike rental place 5 minutes from the ship and a bus stop about 10 minutes away. We ended up outside of the tourist area in their main commercial area and had a good time, but not was we anticipated.

This was the port the crew was going to go out with us at 2:30 but we were sailing by then. We had a good laugh about that later. Many people stayed on ship with us and skipped the Reggensburg tour, as we did. This was the busiest we saw the sun deck. Interestedly, we pull out of the dock and then waited 45 minutes to get into the lock. I had scheduled a massage and didn't miss one minute of our sailing. That was a nice surprise.

Finally, Vilshofen we were the only ship. We arrived late afternoon and I don't think many people even got off the boat in town. That was a shame as the town was a quick walk, had all these great little hidden passageways and we had one of the best meals right in the shadow of their bell tower.