Danube water levels 2017 and similar topics

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The 135m boats will all have problems, the 110m boats should be fine for a bit longer.

thanks for this interesting discussion.

.I was curious, so I looked up our ship for an upcoming cruise, the Gate 1 Monarch Queen (ex AmaDagio). It is a 110m boat with a max draft/draught of 1.75m, current draft is 1.6m.

 

thanks for this interesting discussion.

How do you look up this information? Is it from your cruise company website? I am on Viking and will try to look up this info. I am traveling early Sept 2017.

EDIT: Can't seem to find this information for Viking????

Hi Zitsky

I tried to post the link but it appears that the site that included a list of ships including Viking may be blocked here.

You may also be successful by searching the ships name and "+draft" or ships name and "+110m" or "+135m"

I also found an interesting article earlier today about Viking building new ships with lighter materials with the goal of achieving less water displacement.

If your search doesn't show up any information let me know the name of your ship and I will see if it's on the list.

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How do you look up this information? Is it from your cruise company website? I am on Viking and will try to look up this info. I am traveling early Sept 2017.

 

EDIT: Can't seem to find this information for Viking????

All the Viking Longships [named after Norse gods] are identical 135mm designs and have the deepest draft of any river boats.

We are just off of the Viking Ve, one of the longships. During a briefing by the cruise director he indicated that the normal draft of the Viking longships is 2 meters. Emptying the ballast tanks can make that 1 1/2 meters. It does take, he said, quite a while to empty the ballast tanks as they hold quite a bit of water.

He did say, by now, there are so many Viking ships that on almost every itinerary, there is one ship leaving from one end, and another duplicate ship leaving in the opposite direction from the other end. That way they are able to swap ships in the middle or wherever there is a problem. Not perfect solution, but mother nature controls the level of the rivers, not the cruise lines.

Norm

Hi Teach29

Yes Uniworld are taking it day by day hour by hour. We are still rushing to get through today with an excursion starting at 9am and not back to the ship until around 6pm. Not ideal.

They do not have as many ships as Viking so doing a swap is less likely. I hate to think what will happen if we get stuck. Am sure it will be OK - we are going down to Bucharest so I certainly hope so.

About the draft of ships: I seem to remember it is not mentioned on the Viking website (i.e. not for the longboats). This is the shipyard information: http://www.neptunwerft.de/en/neptunwerft_de/schiffe/flusskreuzfahrtschiffe/viking_river_cruises/viking_longships/longships_1.jsp 1.60m is the empty vessel. As nreeder has reported - thank you for taking the time to post - full it is 2m.

Hostjazzbeau - thank you, yes, all the Viking longships are identical. What caused them the problems with authorities on the Seine. The alleged deepest draft in the industry is an unofficial title they share with ARosa from what I have researched, incidentally, also built by the Neptunwerft.

Suja, thank you for taking the time to post. I hope your day is going ok. It is another hot day (just a little cooler than yesterday) in Bavaria, I guess Austria is not much cooler. Sorry to hear about the rushing about. One good thing is you are travelling with the water and not in the other direction towards the lowest stretch.

Enjoy as much as you can.

notamermaid

We are currently docked in Passau on River Beatrice getting ready to leave port and head to Vienna. We had a close call in not being able to sail through on day 1 (we didn't board in Nuremberg) but took a coach to the next port and in Regensberg we got off for our morning tour and the ship had to leave us all there to sail to the next port before the levels dropped any further so we had a full day in that wonderful city and Uniworld gave everyone lunch money since we were on our own all day there. They handled it very well and the captain did a fabulous job in getting the ship to the next port so we could reboard! It seems we had four cm to spare or we would not have sailed to our next port so we were very lucky! It is very hot here, 95 the first day 92 day 2 so I don't know how the river will be once we get to Budapest for the next group sailing back towards Prague where we started!

River Beatrice is a lovely ship and many nice people onboard. The tours and tour guides have been wonderful, I just wish it was 20 degrees cooler!

River Duchess just pulled up next to us [emoji4]

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Wendy G

Thanks for the update

We are on the next cruise leaving Budapest I will try and contact Uniworld today

Based on the water levels on the Danube, would they cancel the cruise?

Hi Wendy. More likely that would stop at Vilshofen or Passau if the river is too low, and bus from there to Prague. That's what Scenic did on our August 2015 cruise.

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Rain is sweeping over Bavaria this morning, covering the Alps region and the Munich area as well as Passau. As the Isar in Munich feeds the Danube hopefully this will give it an inch or two. The Regensburg area (unfortunately) does not get much rain according to the radar images. They could do with some rain there as well.

notamermaid

The following is a "copy and paste" from the Viking River Cruises website:

DANUBE RIVER

Due to low water levels on the Danube River, we anticipate the following sailings may be affected:

• June 24th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Gullveig
  
• June 25th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Atla
  
• June 25th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Jarl
  
• June 29th Grand European Tour aboard Viking Embla
  
• June 29th Passage to Eastern Europe aboard Viking Aegir
  
• June 30th Grand European Tour aboard Viking Ve
  
• June 30th Grand European Tour aboard Viking Gefjon
  
• July 1st Grand European Tour aboard Viking Bragi
  
• July 1st Grand European Tour aboard Viking Skadi
  

It doesn't really say "how" these cruises may be affected, but I assume ship swaps or something similar.

Norm

How disruptive is a boat swap?

On board Scenic Jewel moored at Nuremburg about to leave for Regensburg we are moored with Scenic Crystal. Talking to our Captain, Jewel has a draught of 1.56 metres and at one time during our cruise on the canal section, he had to ballast with water to make the draught 2 metres. Superb cruise so far, the food etc has been realy good although it's obvious that you can't please all of the people all of the time. Happy cruising CA

How disruptive is a boat swap?

We were on a Uniworld Budapest to Amsterdam cruise during the extreme heat and drought of August 2015 when the water level of the Danube dropped so low that a number of cruises were cancelled or ship swaps were initiated. I do remember that another Uniworld cruise on the same itinerary was cancelled that week because it was on one of their new super ships and there wasn't a sister ship coming in the other direction to use for the swap. We were lucky that our cruise was on their most popular style ship. We were notified 2 days before our cruise that we would be bused from our excursion at Melk Abby to Regensberg (about a 4 hour drive) and each of us would receive a $1000 future cruise credit. On the morning of the swap we just packed up our suitcases and left them in our cabin. That evening they were waiting for us on the new ship (same cabin). After touring the Abby we were taken to a very nice restaurant for lunch and then put on comfortable tour busses complete with guides who shared lots of information on the area we were driving through. Then when we were were bussed from Regensberg to our excursions in Passau the next day and given 20 euros each for lunch and then returned to Regensberg for another night before continuing our journey. The river was so low that a barge went aground and all traffic was stopped for a day or so -- we saw it first hand from our tour bus.

It sounds like you were satisfied with the changes needed to finish the trip?

We have any upcoming trip towards the end of July and certainly can't predict the weather. But we also have insurance to cancel and receive 75% of the cost for any reason. I guess we'd need to think in terms of whether it would still be 75% good :)

It is a short 9 day / 7 night cruise.

Thank you

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The following is a "copy and paste" from the Viking River Cruises website:

 

DANUBE RIVER

 

Due to low water levels on the Danube River, we anticipate the following sailings may be affected:

 

• June 24th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Gullveig
  
• June 25th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Atla
  
• June 25th Romantic Danube aboard Viking Jarl
  
• June 29th Grand European Tour aboard Viking Embla
  
• June 29th Passage to Eastern Europe aboard Viking Aegir
  
• June 30th Grand European Tour aboard Viking Ve
  
• June 30th Grand European Tour aboard Viking Gefjon
  
• July 1st Grand European Tour aboard Viking Bragi
  
• July 1st Grand European Tour aboard Viking Skadi
  

 

It doesn't really say "how" these cruises may be affected, but I assume ship swaps or something similar.

 

Norm

We were scheduled to cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest on June 30th on the Viking Gejfon. We have received an email stating that we will now be leaving Amsterdam on the Viking Ve this Friday. The Gefjon cannot get through in the Passau/Regensburg area thus the reason for the ship change. They also state that a "SHIP SWAP" may be needed at some point along the way. Oh well, it makes for an exciting if not somewhat unsettling adventure. :confused:

We are on the Viking Modi, leaving tonight on the Grand European Tour. So far we haven't heard anything about low water. It rained here in Amsterdam last night.

It sounds like you were satisfied with the changes needed to finish the trip?

 

We have any upcoming trip towards the end of July and certainly can't predict the weather. But we also have insurance to cancel and receive 75% of the cost for any reason. I guess we'd need to think in terms of whether it would still be 75% good :)

 

It is a short 9 day / 7 night cruise.

 

Thank you

 

 

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We were more than satisfied with the ship swap; in fact we did another 15 days on Uniworld (the Seine and the Rhone) the following year without any problems -- we were one week ahead of the flooding in central France. We would have been very disappointed if we had been on one of the cancelled cruises but if there is no ship to swap with the cruise lines don't have a choice.

Thanks! I think we will just go with anything they toss at us and hope for the best.

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Scenic Crystal has today swapped with Scenic Jade. Our captain on Scenic Jewel is convinced we will get through keep your fingers crossed! A combination of being off ship and leaving or starting excursions sooner or later, will keep you up dated everyone still upbeat. Wonderful sunset this evening. Keep cruising. CA

We are in Budapest and it's still 80 degrees each day (has been for almost a week). We leave tonight. No one has announced anything about water levels. Our ship just returned from Amsterdam without incident from what I can tell. We may see rain as we leave Vienna in a few days according to Weather Channel

 

Norm

Hi Norm,

My wife and I would like to read the a short comment on you recent river cruise. We will be going to our first river cruise with Viking on August 25 to Sept 1 from Nuremberg to Budapest and take the trans-Atlantic cruise back from Berlin to NYC on Regal Princess after the Viking cruise. We happens to live in Torrance too.

David

Reply to above, but short as it's slightly off topic from "water levels"

We had a wonderful trip. Ship was very comfortable and relaxed in décor which we wanted. There are some lines that specialize in fancy décor, and are more inclusive, but we didn't want that. Crew was wonderful especially the cruise director (David from England).

Learned a lot of history and saw lots of churches both Gothic and Baroque. Tours were seamless from the ship. Food and wine were great too (we had Silver Spirits package so could choose any wine off the wine list not just the default wines poured with each meal).

We are going to do China with Viking in 2019.

Norm

We made it through without problem.

We are on Gate1 Monarch Empress.

Hi, we are leaving onJuly 24 from Budapest onthe same ship Monarch Empress , hope water level will be ok !

Suzanne