riverbird

We did get a langos from one of the places upstairs which was good, although on the pricey side. However, many of the other stalls were scams, selling these "food boxes" which were basically just flatbread / etc. with a bunch of food piled on it to unsuspecting tourists for 9,990 HUF (~$28).

Yes, they must have gotten rid of the Vienna Woods wine night or replaced it with the Spitz one. Both of the Budapest tours go to the Fishermen's Bastion. I think the Queen of the Danube tour only goes to the Marketplace. I visited the Market on my own and wasn't that impressed to be honest.

Thought I would follow-up with my thoughts from my trip: Note - for most of these tours, you can make your choice the night before / the day of / really any time before the tour starts. The only exception to this are the Bike Tours, which you have to arrange with the Cruise Manager once on board. The “Special Interest Tours” like Apricots & Sweets and Tastes of Slovakia are also capacity restricted, but I didn’t get the impression that either of them were full or pressed for available slots. Budapest - Castle Hill Hike or Queen of the Danube Tour This tour had the best guide of the trip. Our guide Szilvia was extremely knowledgable, hilarious, and managed to keep us entertained non-stop for the entire tour. If you spend any amount of time in Budapest prior to the trip and can do the Pest side on your own, I would highly recommend the Castle Hill Hike as it’s a phenomenal way to see the Buda side of the city. We finished by walking across the bridge and learning a bit about the Parliament Building. We then headed back to the boat on the tram with our guide. Clocked in at just over 5 miles total of walking. The elevation gain wasn’t really much at all - especially compared to some of the other Castle Hikes on this trip. Bratislava - Coronation City Walking Tour or Tastes of Slovakia or Bratislava Castle Hike This was the only tour of the trip where we did not have a very good guide. This may have been because we had ~30 people on the Castle Hill Hike (far higher than what is typical from what I could tell) so they split the Castle Hike in Bratislava into two groups. We did bring up our guide experience to the Cruise Manager and he said that others had also mentioned this, and that he was going to make sure they never use that guide again. That being said, the castle itself is not *that* particularly interesting in my opinion. However, the views across the river to the other side of the city and the border with Austria are quite nice. Given the short amount of time in Bratislava I may have been better off just exploring the city on my own. Vienna - Imperial Vienna Tour or Vienna Bike Tour The bike tour was as a great way to see the city - we started at the boat and worked our way to the city center to the major sights. Due to the stops for traffic lights and the fact that we had a 30 minute free time period in the middle of the tour, it wasn’t overly strenuous. I was extra glad we did the bike tour since you have to take a bus to Schonbrunn Palace and I would have had serious bus fatigue if I had done the Imperial Vienna Tour in the morning, which features a good amount of bus rides. We didn’t do the Mozart concert - but the people who went seemed to enjoy it. It’s only about 60-90 minutes of concert time, so not overly long. Krems - Durnstein Walking Tour or Durnstein Fortress Hike or Krems Bike Tour or Apricots and Sweets Half of my group did the walking tour and the other half did the Bike Tour. The walking tour was nice, and Durnstein is a cute town (although I get the impression that it can easily become jammed with tourists). The half of my group that did the Bike Tour raved about it - this is a great place for cycling as the Wachau Valley is extremely scenic and you get to bike through vineyards and other lovely scenery. Was thankful for the warning from others on the Fortress Hike - getting up to the Fortress looked intense. Spitz - Melk Abbey Visit or Spitz Hike or Spitz Bike Tour It’s a relatively short bus ride to Melk Abbey, where you pick up an Abbey-provided guide to tour the inside of the Abbey. This tour was a bit of a letdown in my opinion. While our guides were excellent, most of the Abbey tour was spent in the “museum” portion which was not particularly unique or interesting, and a short amount of time spent in the libraries + church which are the real highlights and reasons for visiting. While the church interior is great, I wouldn’t call this a “must do” attraction if you feel like taking the afternoon off / exploring Spitz etc. Linz - “UNESCO City of Media Arts” Walking Tour, “Cultural Mile” Bike Tour, Full-day Salzburg, Full-day Cesky Krumlov As expected, the Salzburg option was the most popular excursion. Salzburg is pretty and you get a good (2+ hours) of free time to explore the city, but man the Salzburg core is packed with people. This is also a LONG amount of time on the bus. About 1 hr 30 min on the way there - but you stop at Mondsee so it doesn’t feel as long. Wished I had more time to explore Mondsee as it was very scenic and far less crowded than Salzburg. Leaving the city it took us about 1 hr 45 to get back to the boat. Overall, probably worth doing if this is your only time to see Salzburg but the time on the bus was significant. Salzburg or Cesky Krumlov are really your best options (other than taking a day off perhaps) as Linz is not really a tourist city as others have said. Passau - “City of Three Rivers” Walking Tour or Passau Castle Hike or River Inn Bike Tour I think at this point in the trip, most of the people on the boat had “lollipop burnout” (the lollipops are the signs held by the tour guides while leading tours). We only had 9 people on this hike. Our guide Guido was lovely. We took a route that involved climbing a lot of stairs in a (very pretty) nature park before reaching the Castle, which provided terrific views of the city and offered us the ability to see the different colors of the three rivers that meet in Passau. Finished by briefly walking through the city and seeing water level markers on the buildings. Overall this tour definitely exceeded my expectations. The “Spitz Exclusive Wine Event” and “Oktoberfest Celebration” were similar in that they were both cheesy and I would argue pretty weak.

Got it - thank you. Upon closer inspection, it seems that the only two tours labeled as "Special Interest" are the Tastes of Slovakia and Apricots and Sweets tours.

I was just looking at the shore excursion registration as well as the travel booklet that was emailed to me. In the booklet, it says "After completing your Cruise Check-In, you will be able to register for all shore excursions including Special Interest Tours – alternative immersive experiences in local culture. Availability is limited – register online as soon as possible to guarantee your preferred choices." How much do I actually need to be concerned about registering for things ASAP? It seems like most of the potentially capacity-controlled excursions say "Please contact the Cruise Manager to sign up for this tour" anyways. Which, for tours like that, should I leave them blank or register for one of the other tours for now and try to change it once on board?

Both of your replies are amazingly helpful - thank you so much!

Long time lurker, first time poster. I’m also going on the Magna on the Danube and really appreciate all of the opinions you all have shared so far. I’ve also been reading some reviews both on this site and elsewhere. I’ve put together what - I think - seems to be the consensus, and wanted to see if you all agree. I’m looking at the itinerary PDF on the AMA website, hopefully I’m reading sequence correctly: Budapest - between the “Queen of the Danube” and Castle Hill hike, you see more on the Queen of the Danube tour. The Castle Hill hike is a lot of walking, but it tends to not have as many people sign up for it, so you end up with a much smaller group / "private" tour in a way. Bratislava - options of City of Kings walking tour, Tastes of Slovakia, and Bratislava Castle hike. Seems like the Castle hike is a robust walking tour uphill but not overly strenuous. Still a lot of walking at around 8-9 miles. Vienna - “Imperial Vienna” tour or Vienna city tour by bike. Sounded like the bike tours on AMA tend to be pretty strenuous - moreso than any of the “hike” options. Haven’t seen any reviews of how strenuous the Vienna bike tour is specifically though - but did see that it's obviously very urban / biking through the city center. Krems - Durnstein walking tour or Apricots and Sweets tour or Fortress Hike or bike tour. Saw a review that said the Fortress Hike here is very, very strenuous compared to some of the other castle hikes offered during the cruise. The bike tour here is supposed to be extremely scenic but a bit tiring at around ~25 miles of biking. Melk Abbey or Spitz hike or Spitz bike tour - seems like everyone has said that the Abbey is definitely worth seeing. Linz - Cesky Krumlov, bike tour, or Full-day Salzburg - seems like most people enjoy the full-day Salzburg trip and many of the people who do Cesky Krumlov go there because they have already been to Salzburg. Passau - City of Three Rivers walking or bike tour or Passau Castle Hill hike - the Castle hike offers great views, is still somewhat of a strenuous hike, but not as strenuous as the Fortress Hike in Durnstein. But it also bypasses a lot of the city walk. Doesn’t seem like there is a good/bad option here. Thanks!