Odds of converting to a bus tour?

My husband and I are thinking about a river cruise. We have yet to pick the ship or itinerary. However we are hesitating due to multiple stories I have heard from friends and also read on these boards. Specifically that if the water levels are too high or too low the cruise is converted either totally or partially into a bus tour.

That would not be good for us due to some physical ailments that make it difficult to ride in a car/bus for more than an hour and I have heard sometimes the bus rides are many hours.

That said, am I over estimated our chances of this happening or are there certain rivers or river boat companies that would make this less likely? Thanks.

In my opinion it's a crap shoot. No way to predict.

Roz

Others will weigh in, but from my experience and reading these boards for a long time, it seems like the Danube is most likely to experience high or low water issues. They sometimes occur on the Rhine, but that tends to be near Basel, so you might embark/debark at Breisach rather than Basel (Breisach is about 40 miles/64 km from Basel).

The Moselle also seems to be pretty immune from high/low water issues. So a Rhine trip (Amsterdam-Basel) would be a pretty safe choice. You might also consider a Paris-Nuremberg, Paris-Amsterdam, or a Paris-Basel trip. These trips usually include a couple of nights in Paris and a train/bus ride from Paris to Luxembourg, but some lines like Avalon let you buy the cruise only portion from Luxembourg to Amsterdam/Basel. If you've got more than a week, consider a Amsterdam-Basel cruise that includes a side trip up and down the Moselle.

The Rhone sometimes has high water issues in the spring (we cleared a bridge with 2 inches to spare a month ago), but it's usually safe. I haven't heard a lot of complaints about the Seine, but others may know more than I.

Also, the March to May tulip time trips through Belgium and the Netherlands are a save bet since they sail mostly through canals, but you don't have great scenery (my opinion only).

Hope this helps.

I would try and stick to a week long trip at the most as that will obviously reduce statistically the days that this might happen to you. Fuelscience is more or less right as regards the Moselle as it is controlled by locks all the way where river cruise ships sails. Flooding can be controlled a little bit but there is an official cut-off point when the authorities close a river section. For low water you are lucky on the Moselle as the navigation channel is quite deep I have never heard of major problems there. For low water the Rhine bottle neck, the most scenic part that most cruises go through is the worst bit. A good itinerary would be Trier to Amsterdam excluding the "castle stretch". For the castle stretch Viking has hired a local company to sail for them when Viking cannot sail anymore, but I do not know if that is guaranteed. Normally all cruise companies try to provide sailing opportunities in the castle stretch if at all possible. The Seine has been impacted by high water but I cannot tell what happened to cruise ships in particular.

However, here is a big caveat to river cruising in general. It is not true that river cruise ships always dock in town and you can walk off the ship into the town centre. Some ports/towns do not have this facility - the ships dock out of town in a canal or in an industrial area - and you are automatically bussed into the city centre (it might be half an hour's drive) or you can use public transport. Strasbourg itself for example is not even on the Rhine but on a small river. I mean the city centre, the administrative district borders on the Rhine. Nuremberg is on a small river and the ships use a canal nearby.

Also, some excursions involve a bus and if you cannot sit on a coach for longer than 1 hour at a time you are limited in the places you can go to.

A good city to walk around is Budapest, also Koblenz springs to mind. Trier is a bit out of town, but Bernkastel-Kues (also on the Moselle) is as close to town as it can get.

As you can see it varies a lot and you need to really check what might be convenient for you.

Let me just say in defence of busses: those coaches that the cruise companies use are - from photos and comparable experiences - some of the latest models on the European market, with toilet, air-conditioning and reclining seats. Nice and comfortable.

I hope you find the cruise that is just right for you.

Oh, nearly forgot, best time in general to travel the Rhine is June to August but there is never a guarantee on a river.

notamermaid

My husband and I are thinking about a river cruise. We have yet to pick the ship or itinerary. However we are hesitating due to multiple stories I have heard from friends and also read on these boards. Specifically that if the water levels are too high or too low the cruise is converted either totally or partially into a bus tour.

That would not be good for us due to some physical ailments that make it difficult to ride in a car/bus for more than an hour and I have heard sometimes the bus rides are many hours.

That said, am I over estimated our chances of this happening or are there certain rivers or river boat companies that would make this less likely? Thanks.

Viking has a link on their website where they list all the ships that are in any way affected by water issues. I keep an eye on that list regularly just to try to figure out how often the water problems happen.

Based on what I've seen, it is less than 5% of the time. The only exception is the Elbe which has lots of problems regularly.

Some cruise lines are better equipped to handle this than others. If you take a cruise line like Viking which has a lot of ships, they frequently can take you halfway and do a ship swap which means the cruise is still a river cruise and not a bus cruise. I don't know about other lines with fewer ships.

Thank you for mentioning the ship swaps. They apparently went very smoothly last year. I remember though that on some occasions on the Danube there was a gap between ports so that in order to swap ships cruisers had to bridge that gap with a two hour plus coach ride.

5% sounds quite accurate for an average year. Apart from the Elbe, correct, I think they could only do 3/4 of the season last year.

Another aspect I have just thought of: for flooding you do not need to consider this but for low water issues the lower the draft of a ship the less likely you will be stopped by such a situation. For that it is best to go for the 110m ships. 10cm less draft can be make or break in such a situation as the captain decides whether the ship can sail or not.

notamermaid

We have had high and also low water issues on the Danube, as well as high on the Rhone on two occasions, and at different times of the year.

While it is a crapshoot, some lines historically handle this better than others due to ship design. AMA in particular handles these situations really well.

We had great luck with AMA and never missed a port, nor took a bus, and that was over the course of three affected sailings with them where many others were not able to sail. Viking is the worst with their longboats and we saw their empty boats all along the river on each of these occasions.

On an Avalon cruise years ago we had to outrun the high water in Regensburg by leaving early. Some guests were left ashore as they could not find them to let them know. They handled it well and have a strong ground operations team since they are owned by Globus.

Others will weigh in, but from my experience and reading these boards for a long time, it seems like the Danube is most likely to experience high or low water issues. They sometimes occur on the Rhine, but that tends to be near Basel, so you might embark/debark at Breisach rather than Basel (Breisach is about 40 miles/64 km from Basel).

 

The Moselle also seems to be pretty immune from high/low water issues. So a Rhine trip (Amsterdam-Basel) would be a pretty safe choice. You might also consider a Paris-Nuremberg, Paris-Amsterdam, or a Paris-Basel trip. These trips usually include a couple of nights in Paris and a train/bus ride from Paris to Luxembourg, but some lines like Avalon let you buy the cruise only portion from Luxembourg to Amsterdam/Basel. If you've got more than a week, consider a Amsterdam-Basel cruise that includes a side trip up and down the Moselle.

 

The Rhone sometimes has high water issues in the spring (we cleared a bridge with 2 inches to spare a month ago), but it's usually safe. I haven't heard a lot of complaints about the Seine, but others may know more than I.

 

Also, the March to May tulip time trips through Belgium and the Netherlands are a save bet since they sail mostly through canals, but you don't have great scenery (my opinion only).

 

Hope this helps.

Thank you so much for taking the time to post! This was VERY helpful!

I would try and stick to a week long trip at the most as that will obviously reduce statistically the days that this might happen to you. Fuelscience is more or less right as regards the Moselle as it is controlled by locks all the way where river cruise ships sails. Flooding can be controlled a little bit but there is an official cut-off point when the authorities close a river section. For low water you are lucky on the Moselle as the navigation channel is quite deep I have never heard of major problems there. For low water the Rhine bottle neck, the most scenic part that most cruises go through is the worst bit. A good itinerary would be Trier to Amsterdam excluding the "castle stretch". For the castle stretch Viking has hired a local company to sail for them when Viking cannot sail anymore, but I do not know if that is guaranteed. Normally all cruise companies try to provide sailing opportunities in the castle stretch if at all possible. The Seine has been impacted by high water but I cannot tell what happened to cruise ships in particular.

 

 

However, here is a big caveat to river cruising in general. It is not true that river cruise ships always dock in town and you can walk off the ship into the town centre. Some ports/towns do not have this facility - the ships dock out of town in a canal or in an industrial area - and you are automatically bussed into the city centre (it might be half an hour's drive) or you can use public transport. Strasbourg itself for example is not even on the Rhine but on a small river. I mean the city centre, the administrative district borders on the Rhine. Nuremberg is on a small river and the ships use a canal nearby.

 

Also, some excursions involve a bus and if you cannot sit on a coach for longer than 1 hour at a time you are limited in the places you can go to.

 

A good city to walk around is Budapest, also Koblenz springs to mind. Trier is a bit out of town, but Bernkastel-Kues (also on the Moselle) is as close to town as it can get.

 

As you can see it varies a lot and you need to really check what might be convenient for you.

 

Let me just say in defence of busses: those coaches that the cruise companies use are - from photos and comparable experiences - some of the latest models on the European market, with toilet, air-conditioning and reclining seats. Nice and comfortable.

 

I hope you find the cruise that is just right for you.

 

Oh, nearly forgot, best time in general to travel the Rhine is June to August but there is never a guarantee on a river.

 

notamermaid

Thank you so much for the description of the busses! Our issues involve bathroom access and also not being able to sit straight up for long periods of time. The description of the busses you gave really helps us!

Thank you so much for the description of the busses! Our issues involve bathroom access and also not being able to sit straight up for long periods of time. The description of the busses you gave really helps us!

Viking busses in Europe have small bathrooms on them. The others may as well.

You should avoid the Elbe. It is very liable to water problems.

Also, the busses in Europe have a steep climb to get in and out. Many people have difficulty with it. The seats are very comfortable.

If you do a 'cruise' that includes Paris (except the Seine cruises) you will have a train/bus ride of well over an hour. The same is true for connections to Prague.

Check the ship very carefully to be sure that it has an elevator that goes to the level of your cabin. Warning, I have been on two Vantage ships where the elevator was not in operation for most of the trip. This has not happened on other lines.

You should check to see that your cabin is on the same level as the dining room for a flat walk.

River cruising in Europe may be too strenuous for you.

Thank you to everyone who posted. You gave us valuable information in order to make our decision.

xmaser,

Thank you for pointing out the steps, I had forgotten those. The toilets on a coach are sometimes at those steps and are small.

Peachypooh, for your full enjoyment of your holiday I am leaning towards xmaser that a river cruise might not be the right thing for you but if you can sort out potential issues directly with a cruise line you could well be fine. It is of course possible to enjoy the rivers without long excursions. I had an older gentleman on my cruise who stayed on the ship the whole time I think. I never saw him on excursions, he did not look unhappy.

So all the best for a contented decision and a nice holiday.

notamermaid

 

Check the ship very carefully to be sure that it has an elevator that goes to the level of your cabin. Warning, I have been on two Vantage ships where the elevator was not in operation for most of the trip. This has not happened on other lines.

 

You should check to see that your cabin is on the same level as the dining room for a flat walk.

 

River cruising in Europe may be too strenuous for you.

Most ships now have elevators for some levels, but they do not all reach the top. If stairs are a concern, you may want to think about that, as if or when you raft with another ship, you may have to go to the sundeck to get off. I hope you do find something you can cope with, but if you have mobility issues I would say to really check out which line is best.

I have been searching river cruises for the last few weeks and came across one line that said that their ships had a lower draft and were less susceptible to low water levels. If I can find it, I will post it here.

Of course, that wouldn't effect high water level.

Thanks again to everyone who posted. I talked with a friend who took a river cruise with her sister as companion. Her husband stayed home due to concerns about it being too strenuous for him. She was glad he stayed home and told me she thought it would be too much for me too. I appreciated her honesty. We are now planning a cruise on a ship we have been on before and know we can handle the exertion required.

There were unusually high river levels on the Rhine in early June last year, and as a result bosts could not get down to Basel, Switzerland. Instead of embarking in Basel we were notified via email that we were to be bused several hours north to Mannheim Germany.

Excursions the next day involved busing, the captain also took the boat on a sail for those who just wanted to walk around in Speyer which I thought was a nice option as we did not care to have lengthy bus rides two days in a row. The rest of the trip was as scheduled, you could see how high the river levels were on the shore but it did not affect the boats. We were on Scenic.

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I have been searching river cruises for the last few weeks and came across one line that said that their ships had a lower draft and were less susceptible to low water levels. If I can find it, I will post it here.

 

Of course, that wouldn't effect high water level.

And then there are times when sections of a river - in our case the Danube during the extreme drought in August 2015 - are closed to all traffic. That results in ship swaps and, in the worst cases when a company doesn't have the 'right' ships in the 'right' places, cancelled cruises.

Thanks again to everyone who posted. I talked with a friend who took a river cruise with her sister as companion. Her husband stayed home due to concerns about it being too strenuous for him. She was glad he stayed home and told me she thought it would be too much for me too. I appreciated her honesty. We are now planning a cruise on a ship we have been on before and know we can handle the exertion required.

Thank you for posting this. Many don't realize even when no water level problems, that river cruises involve much mobility to be able to enjoy fully. Enjoy your selected cruise!

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If you have any issues may it be mobility or other either talk to a good TA or directly with the cruise company explain everything, any of the companies want their customers to have the best of experiences, this is the era of litigation after all, also read the small print!

By the way the more correct expression is 'shallower draft' as 'lower' implies deeper which would make cruising more difficult during times of low water.

Marine Traffic does show the draft of the various cruise ships in most cases, some time ago I checked on Scenic and their boat drafts get shallower as they get newer and it looks like Viking Longships are somewhat deeper. Nowadays though Viking have so many vessels that they can ship swop quite easily (that's if they do not have to many in dock for repairs) Scenic and others seem to be able to cruise for longer but are also able to ship swop of course another way round this is to sail through the difficult area without passengers thus lightning the load and making the draft shallower although this does mean an extra bus trip.

I'm not to sure that anyone has an answer to the challenge of high water levels as loading up will not deepen the draft enough, although I have seen it work on the UKs canals.

Here is to normal water depth and good cruising. CA

My brother in law cruised on the Danube when being shuttled by bus happened to their cruise. They didnt want to go on the bus and opted to stay on the boat. Less weight of the other passengers allowed the ship to pass through. This may be an option for you and you could check with the cruise line about its availability to you in the case of lower river levels.

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Based on what I've read on these Boards it sounds like the Elbe is highly affected by river levels. One of our friends just couldn't resist a low advertised price on an Elbe river cruise last year but in the end lots of disruption and busing due to low river levels, so not an ideal trip

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Just FYI. At a technical talk on board Viking Ve last week, they said the draft of Viking longships is approximately 2 meters. It can be 1 1/2 meters if they empty the ballast tanks. That takes a while he said because they hold a lot of water. Still no guarantees but that plus swapping ships can keep you floating instead of riding the bus.

They also said they have so many ships now that most itineraries have a duplicate ship going out at the other end of the route and they meet in the middle so they can be swapped if necessary.

Norm

nreeder,

from what I remember last year on the Danube the swapping worked well and on the Rhine in 2015 things went smoothly with plan B's as well. But depending on where the affected river sections is and how long it is the docking situation for both ships that are to swap passengers might not be ideal. It will result in a coach trip of anything between one and four hours approximately.

The Elbe can be so bad that swapping (if Viking has indeed organized the ship departures to make that possible) is not possible as the ships might become stranded for several days.

notamermaid