Stratheden

Monn A; we took this cruise on Avalon and loved it. We also took the one from Paris to Normandy right before and thought both were terrific!

 

Avalon ships are lovely and Paris and the Provence--well, what's not to love!

We went in September.

We are planning on doing both cruises next year with Scenic - so pleased to hear that enjoyed them. There haven't been many reviews on these itineraries yet.

Also NN I am enjoying your blog and especially your photos very much. Sorry about the mosquito bite - mosquitos are very partial to me so thanks for the warning - I will bring the Deet.

Hope the lock is fixed and you are on your way by now.

Unlike Laine, who sailed a month before us, we had to change boats twice. There was initial disappointment that we didn't start on the Jewel, as most booked a new ship, and the Diamond is somewhat worn. The staff however was terrific. So expectations were high after boarding the Jewel 3 days later. The cabins were much better, especially the shower and balconies. It was pretty obvious at first that the staff fell short. They didn't smile, didn't make eye contact, and neglected people waving them down for drinks. Lots of grumbling among passengers. It left many of us scratching our heads. This was not a complaining crowd of passengers, most understood the problems the flood left, with ships out of sync, etc. I personally felt the blame was with the hotel manager on the Jewel.

 

If I had a do-over, I would have skipped the cheesy castle tour, dinner, it was terrible, and the handful left on board had a wonderful time. I might have also skipped another port stop or two. I also would have eaten more lunches in the bar, avoiding the lengthy lines and crowds at the buffet in the dining room.

 

This was our first and probably last river cruise. There were more bus tours, longer bus rides, and very little time to tour on our own in the towns. The ship often dropped passengers off, then moved as soon as all were off. Stopped to pick up busses who drove an hour to meet the ship, then took off again. I can't add the hours we spent on busses of 45-50 people, stopped for bathroom breaks, load, unload etc. free time on tours were sometimes 15 minutes. My vision of taking a morning walking tour followed by lunch on board, and time in the Afternoon for DIY touring never happened. Our lengthy port stop was in an industrial area, with a 10€ one way fare to the center of town.

 

 

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Can you please let us know if the change of boats was caused by lock strikes?

I don't know if Scenic can be held accountable for industrial action. Perhaps they were doing their best to give you your tour in the only way possible.

I know that Scenic have always provided a very full itinerary - there would be lots of people complaining about not getting their monies worth if an all inclusive tour did not include excursions. If I felt that I had had enough of coaches, I would just give a tour a miss and stay on board and drift along the river.

There have been many threads started by prospective cruisers wanting to know what cruise line etc is best for them. This is my exercise, living in Australia, on deciding on what cruise line we'd sail on in 2014. I want to stress that this is one persons perspective and is by no means meant to be a template for everyone. I just hope it helps.

 

First up we chose our intinary. We want to cruise Southern France in 2014. There are many companies offering many and varied packages so we started a spreadsheet to be able to clearly define the differences being offered. At this point we eliminated those cruise companies that only deal direct in the U.S.A like Vantage, Gate1, Grand Circle etc. Because we really want an all-inclusive holiday we then eliminated Viking as they really do not offer anything that appeals to us. With that done we started our long exercise.

 

On our spreadsheet were Avalon, Uniworld, Scenic, APT/AMA and Tauck. We started with cabin sizes and found that Tauck sell the smallest standard cabin. We then listed the starting price of all cruises of similar itinary comparing equivalent cabins (apples with apples) and again were surprised that except for Avalon all the remaining companies were very close in upfront cost. In fact APT and Scenic were more expensive than Tauck.

 

We then looked at what was included in the "all-inclusive" price and found that it has different interpretations by different companies. Avalon include gratuities but little else and in our opinion were not truly all-inclusive so we eliminated them at this point.

 

We then looked at the carrying capacity of the boats and found that Tauck have a maximum of 118 passengers, APT 148 passengers, Uniworld 159 passengers and Scenic 169 passengers. Why this step I hear people asking? Well, as the boats are almost identical in length and width we think it is important to consider space available outside the cabin area.

 

The other companies appear on paper to include everything but reading the fine print you find they have different interpretations. Uniworld offer you their brand new boat for 2014 SS Catherine with an incentive of a $600 discount if you pay in full but at at least two ports they offer optional tours not included in the price. To add to this Uniworld do include Transfers to and from the airport BUT only on the start and finish days of the cruise otherwise you have to pay for them. To us this is not all-inclusive so at this point we eliminated Uniworld.

 

From here on in it became much harder. The remaining three Companies were, in our opinion, truly all-inclusive with all of them including 24 hr open bar, tours etc. Both Australian companies were offering incentives to book with them. Both Scenic and APT had similar fly free deals but only a select few sailing dates and as we wanted to cruise in late August/early September we found there were no deals for us. It is at this point that you have to split hairs. How many fellow passengers do you want to sail with? Is the size of the cabin important? Is the difference between a French Balcony and a real balcony important? Do the reviews on the three companies influence you in any way? Is one company vastly superior to the others? It was at this point when we were looking for that little incentive that might push us toward one company that Tauck offered its Australian clients a free night at either the start or finish of their cruise. That became the difference. The opportunity to stay an extra night in Paris at a 5 Star Hotel was impossible to refuse. We chose Tauck.

 

River cruising has become so competitive with a lot of companies now offer such incentives as a 24hr Bar to attract customers. All-inclusive is the new buzz word of the industry. We found the exercise to be long but rewarding as we found out little things about river cruising costs that aren't always in the big print of the brochures.

 

I hope this gives some new cruisers an idea of what we did to select that cruise. CC is like a big vault with a wealth of good sound advice from it's contributors and I hope in a small way so does this thread. If you have any specific questions on our thought process please ask.

Thank you so much for your analysis. It made very interesting reading for me.

We have chosen to do some river cruises in 2014 with Scenic. We have already got 21 days of Scenic travel on our account and after these cruises will have over 60. This will entitle us to limousine transfers from home to the airport and if you travel for 20 days or more you can get an additional night pre or post of the trip.

Can you let us know if took all of these into account when you did your analysis. We believe that it is in our best interests to stay with Scenic at this stage.

I will gladly take all unwanted chocolate croissants! :p

 

Here's another, not so secret, secret....the little bag they give you to cram full of laundry for $20 some bucks....actually holds a whole bunch of clothes. Last Christmas I was on a cruise with my parents and on about day 4 or 5 we thought we'd throw some clothes in the bag to get cleaned. Well we ended up having to hunt for dirty laundry as the bag held everything we'd alredy worn. Mind you we didn't put jeans or anything really bulky in it. But we were completely shocked at how much did fit. And then when it was all returned....oh my!!!! Beautifully folded in tissue paper and hung professionally on hangers. We definitely thought the $20 was worth it.

$49 for 7 days laundry and ironing on the Zuiderdam. What a bargain. Everything that had been worn on the previous 14 days tour was washed and ironed.