Danube River Cruise--recommendations?
 

We are considering a Danube River cruise in September, 2005. Has anyone taken a Grand Circle cruise? Please send your comments on Grand Circle or any other river tour you have experienced. What did you like? We are particularly interested in Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Salsburg. Can you recommend a ship?

River cruise sounds lovely. Fascinated to learn more. Assume Grand Circle and Danube river are 2 different cruises -- unless Prague just moved from the Vltava (or "Moldau") to the Danube? Basically: How do you get from Prague to Vienna?

Sorry for the confusion--the Prague portion is an optional add-on at the end of the cruise! And the places of interest to us are not necessarily in that order. Anybody out there who has done a similar cruise, or had experience with Grand Circle?

Will be posting trip report tonight on Prague (left there on Monday) if you are needing hints on that city.

Thank you, tedgale. Will enjoy reading about your experiences.

Just a quick word of caution - my wife and I wanted to book a similar cruise for the same time. We started working with a travel agent last week, and could not find a single cruise line with any openings earlier than November. We finally gave up and are planning on this trip for Sept. '06 instead.
Hope you have better luck!

We did the Grand Circle trip in June, 2003, and thoroughly enjoyed it. With any trip on the Danube, you may be subject to the whims of high and low water levels, each of which can disrupt travel. We had no such problems. We were on the River Symphony. The ship and crew were excellent as was the itinerary. My recommendation on this ship, and it's sisters, is to get the cheaper, lower level cabin, as the balcony on the upper decks actually takes away from cabin space, and there is plenty of outdoor space on the sun deck. If you have extreme mobility problems, however, the lowest deck is the only level without an elevator, but there are only four or five stairs from the elevator.
Since you said that Prague is a post-trip, you should be starting in Vilshofen, which is a quaint little town not too far from the Munich airport. In Vienna, there is a Metro station not two far from the dock, for free time, and the transportation system is execellent. We loved Budapest and Prague. I believe the hotel being used in Prague is the one we stayed in, and the location is excellent. For Salsburg, the optional tour did not give enough time. I would skip the lunch and get something on your own. Too much time was spent on a very mediocre lunch. I'll respond again with more detail, when I have some time to go over the trip in my mind. A friend of mine did a very extensive trip summary on Vienna and Prague on this forum. Just search for AmyB. She was travelling independently, but, you'll have a significant amount of time available in both cities to do things on your own.
If you have any specific questions, we'll be glad to answer them, either in this forun or by Email.
We have enjoyed Grand Circle so much that we have taken four trips with them in the last three years and have two more booked for this year.

Jack and Ann

I've never taken a river cruise but we considered it last year and received brochures from Viking Cruises. You may want to check into them as well.

Good luck!
Tracy

The responses we get to our travel questions in this forum really enhance our travel experiences. Thanks to all of you who generously share your experiences and expertise. It makes the planning more fun and enables us to get the most out of each trip by learning from some others' experiences.
A big thank you for sharing.

Dear Paul2887--We are finding exactly the same thing--nothing available with the itinerary we want in September--we are just about ready to postpone until September, 2006. If you find out anything otherwise, please post! Thanks.

Grand Circle does have October 21 and October 25 departures available.

We thought it might not be too comfortable to do that itinerary in late October.

On the spur of the moment, we just signed up for the Grand Circle river cruise from Budapest to the Black Sea for June 21 - July 3. They were offering great discounts and I coudn't resist! I've always wanted to do this.
Friends have done it and had good things to say about the GC trip.

Has JaneB posted a report of her trip on the Danube with Grand Circle? We are taking that trip in reverse..Bucharest to Budapest leaving the end of August. Would love any tips.

I haven't done a trip report but I'll answer any questions you have. The trip went smoothly. We flew Luthtansa from Houston. Coach going over was above average and we were up-graded to business class at the gate in Frankfort coming home!!:) The ship (the Aria) is fairly new and very comfortable. Our room was in "steerage" but the same as other rooms with the window being the only difference--ours was at eye-level inside and water-level outside! (4th deck had smaller rooms and very small balconies--however, everyone passed through their corridor to get to meals!!) Food and wine were excellent. Staff couldn't have been better--from Captain on down. We were divided into 4 color-coded groups each assigned to a different bus when leaving the ship. This system worked well. I felt that the guide, "Radu",assigned to our group for the entire trip was far superior to the other guides. We had excellent weather for the trip. My complaints: I would have preferred to spend 1 day more in Bucharest and 1 day less in Budapest (which I had already visited); both of the hotels were too far from the city centers; they never played waltzes aboard the ship!!??. We took the optional day tour of Bulgaria but none of the others. It was definitely worth the money!

You can't miss with Grand Circle. The passengers will be in their 50's plus but the staff and guides are wonderful
Everett

I don't know why some of you couldn't get space on some of the Sept.'05 trips as GC is offering discounts on some of their cruises.

Har,

European river cruises are often sold out well in advance. The better the cruise the quicker they sell out. I typically book a year in advance

I have cruised the Danube many times. My favorite cruise is one offered by Cruise Muse. Prague, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Passau, Salzburg, Linz, Melk, Vienna, Bratislava and ending in Budapest. Aboard Amadeus Waterways MS Symphony.

If you plan on September, 2006 I highly recommend you contact Cruise Muse. They have cabins available for Sept. 06. The email address is [email protected]

Fredisimo