Chris_Texas

Thank you all for the great feedback. Based on advice here, I will definitely engage the services of a travel agent that specializes in cruises.

Good evening all- We did our first river cruise back in 2022 (Emerald Waterways on the Rhine). We are contemplating our second - a Christmas markets cruise along the Danube in December 2025. We have been planting the seed with our extended friend group and, while it's early, I can easily envision that we could get 12-15 couple interested in going. My questions are 1) how many couples would it likely take for us to begin to negotiate any discounts 2) any general ideas of how much those discounts might be and 3) are there any river cruise lines that are more (or less) likely to give discounts? Not that the discount will be the deciding factor by any means, but it would certainly factor it. Thanks! Chris

When Emerald initially canceled our Danube cruise, they simply mentioned that it had been "postponed" with no details on exactly what that meant, whether another date had been identified, or any other details. Since this was our first cruise, I didn't know enough to know which questions to ask. Once we spoke to our travel partners, we (head-slap moment) realized we should just call up and ask specifically what our options are. Once we did so, we got a lot of helpful info and found a Rhine cruise for the same dates that worked for us. It would seem like the Scenic/Emerald customer service staff are not trained sufficiently to transition the trip-canceled conversation to discussions about options. One would think that would be Customer Service 101, but I'm sensitive to the fact that everybody is having trouble filling jobs and that some of the training and experience are probably lacking as a result.