Rhine River

[DLCNF]

Has anyone been on a Rhine River Cruise in the last month? We are scheduled to leave next week out of Amsterdam on Crystal's Debussy Riverboat and hear that the river is dried up and boats cannot complete the itinerary. Crystal is being less than forthcoming. Any info would be greatly appreciated!

[G.M.T.]

Has anyone been on a Rhine River Cruise in the last month? We are scheduled to leave next week out of Amsterdam on Crystal's Debussy Riverboat and hear that the river is dried up and boats cannot complete the itinerary. Crystal is being less than forthcoming. Any info would be greatly appreciated!

 

There are plenty of other threads on this subject and covering various cruise companies.

[notamermaid]

Just to expand on G.M.T.'s - perfectly short - suggestion. I assume you mean you are supposed to sail Amsterdam to Basel and that your ship cannot get through the Rhine gorge to get to Basel. By way of definition the river is not dried up but too low for large river cruise ships to sail the whole journey. You will read in the thread about Crystal that ships have been rerouted to do Koblenz, into the Moselle river and back, then to Amsterdam. That is the safe stretch for Crystal to do as it is little affected by water levels - the Moselle is deep!

 

 

To be fair to Crystal, it is only Thursday and they cannot know what the river levels will be like next week, but to leave you with little info - that is what it sounds like to me - is a bit customer-unfriendly. You might receive more info soon, but in the meantime you can read about an alternate itinerary in the thread about Crystal.

 

notamermaid

[Captiveguru]

We sailed from Basel to Amsterdam last week on AmaStella (arrived AMS on 8/27). The river was low, but we made it through. The captain told us that there was only a foot of clearance in a few areas. The low water did affect our docking locations, but all excursions occurred as planned. One morning the busses had to leave 30 minutes early due to the docking location.