Danube water levels 2018 and similar topics - plus tips and info

[G.M.T.]

5 hours ago, beachlivin said:

GMT and Notamermaid A geographically challenged passenger asked how was Germany on our trip from Bucharest to Budapest. Thought I would check with u folks to make Germany's boarders had not moved since we left the state's😂😂.

 

I can dig out some old maps and send you them, just put your geographically challenged passenger mind at rest.👨‍🎓

[RoRothman]

Can anyone describe how Viking deals with cruises that start in Budapest and en in Nuremberg? has anyone experienced this  itinerary?

[G.M.T.]

I drove from Passau to Vilshofen, the Danube is so low, never seen like this before and with no end in sight.

Even the locals are now complaining about the water levels. Many people use oil for heating and would now normally start stocking up for winter. These people have been hit with two areas that have increased the price, not only the higher price of crude oil but also transportation costs. Heating oil, diesel etc. are transported by river tankers to the various distribution points, the tankers can only load a third of their normal capacity in order to naviogate the Danube.

We're lucky, as we use woodchippings and the logs are no longer rafted down the river.

 

[Trvlcrazy]

23 hours ago, tazlover said:

We are in Vienna on the AMAVIOLA. No water here. We can’t go up or down river. We were supposed to go to Budapest. Now we are bussing it. Very disappointed but it is what it is. 

Hello, you are in Ama viola and in Vienna and bound to Budapest...  I have a similar itinerary in December.  Hoping you did make it to Budapest and you were able to see what you wanted to see there.

With the water levels, I am curious to know if Ama covered the sightseeing with other means - bus ?  When you can, will you describe your day in Vienna & Budapest ?  thanks kindly

[Marjan1]

6 hours ago, Pudgesmom said:

We’ve just boarded Viking Idun for one night in Budapest. They will be bussing us to our originally booked ship in Vienna tomorrow. We were unable to obtain ANY info from ship or headquarters prior to leaving the US  about timing for busses leaving the city.  We are very frustrated as we have private tours booked in several of our intended stops. The tour director was just short of rude when we arrived and asked for information about leaving tomorrow.

Has anyone here ever had their Vienna- Passau section canceled due to low water on the Danube?

 

 

 

Vienna - Passau should be OK.  The Inn River joins the Danube at Passau and is a major tributary.  When we were there early September the Inn seemed twice the size of the Danube   

Regarding bus timing - to be fair, at this stage your tour director simply does not know the exact time of berthing.  This is controlled by the river authority.  

 

[Pudgesmom]

Our temporary Viking ship has been parked near the the Chain Bridge in Budapest for two weeks. The water level is so low that they were given a half hour to move the ship today about a half mile downstream to Liberty Bridge.

[Kwaj girl]

I wonder how Crystal will handle the low water levels on the Danube - they don;t have enough ships to swap out at different locations.

[Mark_T]

2 minutes ago, Kwaj girl said:

I wonder how Crystal will handle the low water levels on the Danube - they don;t have enough ships to swap out at different locations.

So far they have been drastically changing itineraries and even shortening cruises where necessary.

[Kwaj girl]

9 minutes ago, Mark_T said:

So far they have been drastically changing itineraries and even shortening cruises where necessary.

 

9 minutes ago, Mark_T said:

So far they have been drastically changing itineraries and even shortening cruises where necessary.

Jeez...we only have a 7-night voyage to begin with - Budapest to Vienna....... ::rolleyes::

[Mark_T]

Well one certainty right now is that nobody is sailing out of Budapest...

When does your Cruise start and which ship?

[Kwaj girl]

12 minutes ago, Mark_T said:

Well one certainty right now is that nobody is sailing out of Budapest...

When does your Cruise start and which ship?

Crystal Ravel, 13 December, Budapest to Vienna

[Mark_T]

Way too early to worry then fortunately.

[CasaM]

We are on Viking leaving in 3 weeks, Passau to Budapest.  And while I know conditions can change in that amount of time, we wouldn't enjoy being bussed around.  We did this same trip about 8 yrs ago, and did the ship swap...bussing... staying in hotel in Budapest and missing alot of the city.  Bad luck for sure if we have to do this again.

My question is:. Does Viking ever just cancel when conditions are so bad, like some other lines do?  

[OnTheWater50]

We just returned from our Viking Danube cruise, Budapest to Nuremberg, October 5-12. We were notified we would not be leaving from Budapest about 2 days before the cruise started. As we were already in Budapest (2 nights on our own) we were asked to come to the Viking Idun, moored in Budapest, the afternoon of embarkation. Viking took our luggage and we boarded the Idun for a nice buffet lunch. We left by bus around 3 pm and embarked our ship in Komarom, Hungary. So we missed late afternoon/evening in Budapest on the boat. Viking bused everyone back to Budapest the next morning for the included excursion but we skipped it as we did not want to spend more time on the bus and we had seen some of Budapest on our own. We walked around Komorom and crossed the bridge to Slovakia to walk around. The boat was moored near the police station and was not scenic but we had a good laugh about that. 

Day 2 (after Budapest excursion returned) we left for Vienna. We did the included excursion of Vienna (walking tour by subway, very good) and walked around after. The boat did not leave Vienna until midnight, allowing late evening excursions to return.

From Vienna, we moved to Krems/LInz. Toured the Gottweig Abbey and cruised the Wachau Valley (yes, the boat cruised the whole thing).

From Krems /Linz we moved to Straubing, Germany and a ship swap.  Bused to Passau from Viking Var for walking tour, organ concert, and lunch in Passau. Bused back to different boat, Vking Tor, at 2:45 or 5 pm (passenger's choice) in Staubing, Germany (middle of nowhere but quite pretty with a lovely sunset). Moved to Regensburg at night, moored in town.

Regensburg walking tour (very good), ship leaves just after lunch. Some passengers stayed in Regensburg for the afternoon and a bus transferred them to the boat at Kelheim (we stopped only to pick up passengers). Moved on to Nuremberg, moored just outside of town, bused in to town for tours. 

All in all, I think Viking did a good job dealing with unusual water and weather conditions. The key is flexibility! Given our experience and what I now know about river cruises, I don't think I would book private excursions during the cruise. There is just too much variability as to what may happen when on the river. Anyway, I feel lucky we got to cruise as much as we did - even with the ship swap (which was fine by the way) during this hot and dry year on the river.

[austinetc]

OnTheWater50: Are you expecting any credit from Viking for future cruises due to the changes?

 

[G.M.T.]

The Danube rose a few centimeters overnight (must have been a beer festival going on - upstream) but is now falling again. No rain insight.

It's depressing always writing the same things, oh for the good old days when you could write "Rain Stopped Play".

Just waiting for some clouds to form and the young generation point up and asking "Clouds? Is that where my photos are".👆☁️

 

[notamermaid]

31 minutes ago, G.M.T. said:

The Danube rose a few centimeters overnight (must have been a beer festival going on - upstream) but is now falling again. No rain insight.

It's depressing always writing the same things, oh for the good old days when you could write "Rain Stopped Play".

Just waiting for some clouds to form and the young generation point up and asking "Clouds? Is that where my photos are".👆☁️

 

, with a tear in my eyes. It is so bad. As you did for the Danube, I could write the same about heating oil, shortages, etc. for the Rhine. Barges currently travel with a fourth of their normal load here. Business news report of shortages of truck drivers for the additional lorries that need to be put onto the roads. They say on TV a normal household will pay around 80 euros more this year for heating oil compared to last year (most of that increase is due to the additional costs caused by the drought).

Your comment reminds me of the "The Fast Show" sketch. A weather lady in a warm climate country with imaginary language keeps saying about the country's regions "scorchio"! (to mean hot without clouds), suddenly she points out that in one region there is "cumulus"! The fact that a cloud had appeared was so unusual they went over live to a reporter standing where the cloud had been spotted...

I saw this morning that the level at Pfelling had risen from absolute terrible to terrible. I was wondering where it had been raining but at this point a beer festival was probably more likely the cause, as you said.

notamermaid

 

[Mark_T]

The traffic between Vienna and Passau still seems to be moving in both directions which is something at least.

The two AMA/APT ships that I have been tracking have made it to Passau OK, but I'm not sure what happens next for their passengers...

With nothing else from AMA available this side of the Rhine Gorge it looks like hotels if they are going to continue any further.

Thier two sister-ships stuck north of the gorge left heading north this morning so they are apparenty not waiting there to receive a transfer of passengers to continue from Cologne, so anything is possible I guess... (except rain!)

 

 

[OnTheWater50]

Yes, without any complaining on our part, Viking sent us a future cruise credit of 25% of what we paid for the cruise only (no air, after agent discount, etc) - which was very smart on their part as I am already looking at booking an ocean cruise! We have done one ocean cruise with Viking and loved it. I'm looking forward to a return.

[SuzieQK]

We are supposed to leave on Avalon’s Panorama on Wednesday next week from Budapest to Prague. Our travel agent informed us yesterday that we wouldn’t be boarding in Budapest, but staying overnight for 2 nights in a hotel TBA. We will then be bussed to Vienna to board a ship(don’t know if it will be the Panorama), missing Bratslova altogether. Keeping an open mind.

[Flamencacha]

6 hours ago, G.M.T. said:

The Danube rose a few centimeters overnight (must have been a beer festival going on - upstream) but is now falling again. No rain insight.

It's depressing always writing the same things, oh for the good old days when you could write "Rain Stopped Play".

Just waiting for some clouds to form and the young generation point up and asking "Clouds? Is that where my photos are".👆☁️

 

Don’t know how to multiquote now. This directed at Notermaid also.  

 

How many days of rainfall is needed for the Danube to get to acceptable levels? 

This year in Southern Spain it has rained more than usual, we have had a milder summer, and right now it has rained  twice this week.  We were also threatened by a Hurricane called Leslie. 

Our Grape harvest was up by 9 %,, the weather is really out of sinc. 

My heart breaks with the issue

 

 

 

 

[austinetc]

15 minutes ago, SuzieQK said:

We are supposed to leave on Avalon’s Panorama on Wednesday next week from Budapest to Prague. Our travel agent informed us yesterday that we wouldn’t be boarding in Budapest, but staying overnight for 2 nights in a hotel TBA. We will then be bussed to Vienna to board a ship(don’t know if it will be the Panorama), missing Bratslova altogether. Keeping an open mind.

I think other cruises bused people back from Vienna to tour Bratislava.

[G.M.T.]

2 minutes ago, Flamencacha said:

Don’t know how to multiquote now. This directed at Notermaid also.  

 

How many days of rainfall is needed for the Danube to get to acceptable levels? 

This year in Southern Spain it has rained more than usual, we have had a milder summer, and right now it has rained  twice this week.  We were also threatened by a Hurricane called Leslie. 

Our Grape harvest was up by 9 %,, the weather is really out of sinc. 

My heart breaks with the issue

 

 

 

 

OK open another bottle of sherry and here goes.

Noone knows how many days or how much rain is needed to get back to normal levels.

What we don't want is torrential rain which will increase flash flloding greatly. We need continuous moderate rain over at least several day and spread over the whole of the Danube catchment area. This is so the Danube and it's tributaries can supply a continous amount of water to maintain a constant level.

[Flamencacha]

32 minutes ago, G.M.T. said:

OK open another bottle of sherry and here goes.

Noone knows how many days or how much rain is needed to get back to normal levels.

What we don't want is torrential rain which will increase flash flloding greatly. We need continuous moderate rain over at least several day and spread over the whole of the Danube catchment area. This is so the Danube and it's tributaries can supply a continous amount of water to maintain a constant level.

Thank you! I agree flash flooding is not a good idea.  

May I recommend.... 

[AussieGirlKaz]

So I was booked on an APT cruise from Amsterdam that was scheduled to leave on the 27th. Got a call literally just after I checked in for my flight that they have cancelled cruises for the next few weeks. 

 

So now I am scrambling to figure out what to do as I had precruise bookings with them that are also cancelled.

Just offering a refund. Nothing else as good will. 

I had spoken to them last week and they had assured me that all would be ok cause APT look after you. Not so much seeing as I am now left with 18 days in Europe and  now plans and also any plans have to be prepaid before their refund comes through.