Amsterdam to Budapest - who has best Excursions

[Kenato]

Hi,

We are looking at an Amsterdam to Budapest cruise offered by AMA and Avalon. May be hard to answer but does one line offer better excursions than the other especially on this cruise? Reading their brochures, it appears AMA stops in additional ports some evenings and offers optional tours that I don't see offered by Avalon. Not interested in comments about any other cruise lines but any information on excursions offered by AMA and Avalon would be appreciated.

[Shebely]

2014 June, ship Visionary

Amsterdam

Sunday - Choice of one of these in afternoon prior to sailing from Amsterdam prior to dinner

Dutch Village tour - Volendam and Edam

Rijksmuseum

Anne Frank house

Biking outside Amsterdam

Monday - Cologne - no optional excursion

Tuesday - Rudesheim optional German Dinner party evening

note: docked overnight Rudesheim sail 4:45 am

Wednesday - Mainz and Heidelberg - no optionals

Thursday - Strasbourg France

choice one of afternoon tours

French Wine Tasting in Alsace

Maginot Line

Friday - Breisach, Black Forest and Colmar, France

choice of one of two optional afternoon tours

Biking & E- biking (electric)

Excursion to Colmar, France

Saturday - disembark Basel am

 

Hope this helps

Edited June 13, 2015 by Shebely

[Casey12]

AMA is a higher rated cruise line compared to Avalon. Looking at optional tours can be deceiving as when you get on a ship -- the listed ones may be completely different than what is on the website. There may be more or may be less. Look at the times in port and the included excursions and compare those. We felt more were included with AMA but it wasn't the same route to compare apples to apples. AMA is more polished than Avalon.

[davidrw]

The advantage of the Amsterdam to Budapest cruise is that you actually dock at a lot of wonderful locations. & don't actually need to go far from the boat unless you want to.

 

Even if you took no optional excursions, you will have an excellent holiday and the option of spending longer at any location that you like following the included tour.

 

Relax, you are on holiday and just go with the cruise line that you feel is right for you & see if any of the optional excursions appeal to you. We enjoyed Avalon on that route, however I am sure that the others are just as good.

[Shebely]

I know you asked about optionals, but if I were you I would make sure you go to Mainz to see the Gutenberg museum. Our local guide on Avalon literally "stepped into the shoes" of Johannes Gutenberg to show how he invented printing.

We absolutely fell in love with Strasbourg, France and really enjoyed the beauty of the city and the history. We had a lovely canal cruise here too. Our guide for the included and optional tours is one of the best local guides we have ever had. Kudos to Avalon for securing her. She is enthusiastic, very knowledgable, and of course, she loves her community.

We very much appreciate the design, function of the Avalon panorama suites at 200 sq feet.

We are getting ready to leave on our 4th Avalon adventure. Three in Europe and a Peru trip to Machu Pichu/Amazon. In September, we travel to Vietnam, Cambodia for our Mekong cruise.

One last suggestion. When you get down to pricing, please look at the online travel agents for great price reductions. The online company I use sells both Avalon and AMA. I am not permitted to give the compzny name, but do some searches and I am confident you will find them. I do all my research and when I am ready to "pull the trigger" I get the quotes from them.

Since Avalon is part if the Globus family, Globus offers a extra 5% off for returning customers.

Enjoy your planning and enjoy your cruise.

Edited June 13, 2015 by Shebely