Chapter 2

Saturday, Sunday, Monday

Oct 28, 29, 30

AMAPrima

Overview 

AmaPrime at a riverside dock

In most regards, the Ama Waterways boat AmaPrime is like most other river cruise boats that sail on the rivers of Europe with the requirement to fit under low and narrow bridges and into locks.  The AmaPrima is 38 feet wide and the standard river locks locks are slightly less than 40 feet wide.  The pilot house on the upper deck retracts down several feet to allow the boat to get under some bridges, especially during high water levels, as on our cruise.

Under a bridge: the captain had to duck his head.

You can see an example of a low bridge in the photo above.  That is the captain in sunglasses in the pilot house that has been lowered and he had to duck his head as he went under the bridge.  To complete the numbers, the boat is 443 feet long and can accommodate 162 passengers.  There is a higher deck, called the “Sun Deck” that has a walking/jogging track and chairs to sit on to relax, but the walls and umbrella-like shelters must be collapsed to clear the lower bridges.  I think it was in operation for two days of our cruise and had to be dropped to go under bridges the other days.  The weather really wasn’t very good for sitting outside anyway.

The Sun Deck with almost everything collapsed to clear low bridges.

Accommodations

We had a cabin on deck 3 (highest) which had the best view and was probably most convenient.  We made our reservations late and did not have much choice in cabins but, if I had a choice now, I’d choose a larger cabin on deck 2 for the same price.  River cruise boat cabins are generally rather small compared to ocean cruise ships.  For example, our cabin had 170 square feet of space while the cabins we had on our last couple of ocean cruises were 277 sq ft. 

The space was used very efficiently with reasonable storage space, although I question the usefulness of a large pivoting box under one side of the bed which prevented the space being used for suitcase storage.  The queen bed was comfortable and, although initially made with a duvet instead of two sheets, it was quickly changed when we requested.  We had what is called a “French Balcony” which really means there was a large window, part of which could be opened, although we never did.  The bathroom was proportionally small with only a shower: this was pretty well a “one person at a time” bathroom.

Common/Public Areas

In addition to the upper/exterior decks there were several interior common areas, the first of which and probably the most used was the reception and lobby area in the middle of the boat at the entrance doors.

Looking down into the reception area

Forward from the reception area is the main lounge and bar on the “Violin Deck”.  This is where any meetings, presentations, wine tastings, or other entertainment were held.

The lounge, looking toward the rear of the boat

The lounge was comfortable and functioned well for most purposes, but the “one single large space” layout was sometimes limiting, but I’ll cover that in the “Entertainment” section.  There were large windows across the front, looking over the bow, and along both sides of the room and these afforded good views of the countryside when we didn’t want to brave the cold.

Looking past the pilot toward upper deck seating area

As mentioned above, there was a nice seating area on the forward top deck and the Sun Deck on the aft top deck.  There was also a small spa and an exercise room but they both seemed rather lightly used.

Dining

There was one main restaurant on the lower forward deck, under the lounge and a small specialty restaurant, the “Chef’s Table”, at the stern on the third deck (Violin Deck).  During meal times, you could also sit in the lounge and have light meals brought up from the restaurant immediately below via a “crew only” stairway.

In the main dining room, deciding on a table

There were tables set for two, four, and six.  We would generally sit at one of the larger tables and welcome any other passengers who wanted to join us.  After a couple of days, we got to know several people and usually ended up sitting with some of them.  The food was very good, but we did not think it as good as on our Windstar cruises, and probably slightly better than on our Seabourn cruise.  It did seem that there was more emphasis on presentation than on taste.  Service was also very good and attentive, but there were a number of mistakes made, such as bringing a different soup than was ordered.  For what was supposed to be a “wine cruise” the wine choices were more limited than I expected.  Service was wine by the glass and I did not see any option for upgrading to better wines or wines by the bottle, even at extra cost.

An appetizer in the Chef’s Table restaurant

The appetizer above is an example of “presentation over taste” as it looks interesting, but had very little taste.  Everyone could book a reservation in the Chef’s Table once per week although I understand some people did get a second visit on a “as available” basis.  The food and service here was a notch above the main restaurant, but we did not bother attempting to get a second visit.

Our Special Guests

Some of the following comments will make more sense if we talk a little about a couple of special guests on board this cruise.

Kristin Karsh and Rudi Schreiner speaking in the lounge

Before this cruise, I thought that AmaWaterways was a relatively small cruise company, with maybe 6 or 8 boats.  Then I saw a digital map in the reception area that showed the location of all the AmaWaterways boats: there is a lot of them.  A little research indicated there are more than 25 AmaWaterways boats, mostly in Europe, but also Africa, Asia, and, soon, South America.  It is a big company and the owners, Kristin and Rudi, were on the cruise with us.  Apparently, this was a kind of test run for several new/different things they were trying and they wanted to see how things went in person.  As we found out, a number of the excursions were new and had never been offered previously.  A couple of the places we stopped had also never been used, so we were checking them out.  Looking back now, it is clear that most of the excursions worked fine, but a couple definitely did not, and now I understand how one excursion, in particular, went so bad.   This was also a test of a new approach to entertainment.  In the past there might have been a “piano player” on board, but most entertainment came from local people brought on board for one evening.  On our cruise there was a couple, performing as a duo, who were the “full time” entertainment, with no local “one nighter” entertainers.  I’ll comment further, under “Entertainment”, below.

I want to be very clear: Kristen and Rudi were both very delightful, friendly, down-to-earth people.  We were on several excursions with them, usually Kristen, and they were the same as the other passengers. Without the introductions and comments, I would never have guessed they were the owners of not just this boat, but the entire company.  Hmmm, I wonder if they got the “Owner’s Suite”?

Their presence did have to have an impact on the crew, knowing that the owners were watching their actions this week.  After the cruise, we asked Marcia about this and she admitted that, yes, the crew was definitely on “pins and needles” for the week.  Marcia’s job put her in the spotlight all week and I’m sure she also had to be a bit nervous, but based on my perception of how Marcia did and Kristen’s comments about her at the end of the cruise, I think Marcia definitely met with Kristen’s approval.

Entertainment

As mentioned above, we were the Guinea Pigs for a new form of entertainment. In short, we liked the way it was going, but it needs some other accompanying changes to make it work.  The duo, were talented, but were being restricted or throttled too much to really take advantage of them.

The couple providing entertainment

We enjoy listening to (and Susan likes dancing to) live performers producing the kinds of music we like, as this duo did.  However, apparently many passengers were used to the previous approach which really offered “background music”, not this more “foreground music”.  The duo were instructed to not turn up the volume so as not to disturb the people who came into the lounge and just wanted to talk to each other.  The volume was usually so low that we had trouble hearing them from 25 feet away.  A couple of times they turned up the volume a little so that we enjoyed it better (and some people got up and danced), but apparently some passengers complained that the music was too loud.  One problem is that the “bandstand” and dance floor is in the middle of the lounge, so it would be difficult to escape the music and find a place to talk quietly.  If they were going to go with this kind of entertainment, the band and dance floor needs to be at one end of the lounge and accommodations for talkers/conversations at the opposite end, with some kind of sound curtain between them.

Oh, one thing that was tried one evening was a “silent disco”, with participants wearing headsets, listening to one of three different songs, and dancing.  It was a bit strange watching 15 or 20 people out dancing in seeming complete silence, although we had seen this before on a Celebrity cruise.  After the cruise Marcia told us that Kristen and Rudi did not like the silent disco and it would not become a regular thing on AmaWaterways cruises.

Excursions

I will describe the various excursions in the day-by-day section, but it would help to understand how AmaWaterways structures their excursions.  First, with only one or two special exceptions, all excursions are complimentary so there is no additional costs involved (other than any tips you want to give to the guides).  About 20 bicycles are carried on the boat and there were bike tours offered at four or five of the places we docked at.  On our cruise, these bike tours were lightly attended because of the weather we encountered and Susan and I did not join in.

Ama Prima after our excursion to that fortress on the hill

For most excursions, three versions were offered, the “gentle walkers” version, the normal version, and the “active” version.  If you think of a typical excursion as one that visits a fortress or castle up on a hill over looking the river, it would work like this.  The “gentle walkers” would take a bus up the hill to the fort, take a tour, and then take the bus back down to the ship.  The normal excursion would take the bus up the hill, do the tour, and then walk down.  The “active” walkers would walk up the hill, tour the building, and then walk down.  Sometimes other activities might be also be added for one group or another, depending on time available.  Susan and I, of course, always did the “active” version.

Most of the tours were nicely done: they were well planned and executed and the guides were pleasant, informative, and interesting.  A couple of the tours will probably be dropped or significantly modified based on our experience and the fact that this was apparently a test-run.

The Crew

The crew were very international, both the officers and staff.  All the crew that we had contact with seemed friendly and very willing to help in any way they could.  Our cabin attendants were very efficient, always getting our cabin cleaned and organized while we were away.  The servers in the restaurant were efficient, but sometime they tried a little to hard to be friendly or carried on a conversation a bit too long.  We always enjoy talking to the employees whenever we travel, but this seemed to be a case of forced familiarity.  The reception desk people were always smiling and helpful and the servers in the lounge quickly learned that we like some cognac after dinner.  But the person who really made the cruise and visits to Paris and Prague as pleasant as they turned out to be was certainly the Cruise Director, Marcia.

Marcia and Susan:  yes, she really is that tall.

Marcia provided information about the cities like she had lived there for years, she seemed to know all about the various towns we stopped at, and the tours we were offered.  Most impressive, to me, was her very appropriate handling of the “excursion from hell” that went bad.  With one short “comment”, she acknowledged the problem and largely defused the complaints that were bound to be made.  Kirsten and Rudi should definitely approve of her performance on this cruise.

The High Water Levels

As already mentioned, we experienced quite a bit of rain and the area had been having that rain for some time before we got there.  One result is that the water level in the rivers was very high for that time of year.  Last year at this time there was a drought and cruises were being heavily modified because of the low water, now we had too much water.  The starting point for the cruise was a couple of miles further downriver from Trier because of the current flow.  Throughout the cruise, we encountered strong currents and high water, probably at least two feet above the normal river levels.  Perhaps we would have had to go through just as many locks in normal water levels, but I suspect we experienced more drastic raising and lowering through the locks.  The captain mentioned transiting something like 150 locks on this itinerary, and I believe it.  We got used to seeing the inside of rather tall locks: the one in this video was only about a 12 or 15 feet drop, but some were as high as 30 feet.

The lock was full, before letting the water out. 

This is the same lock as in the video linked above.

OK, let’s get on with the cruise!

End of Chapter 2

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