2021 Rhine River Cruise Meets Thread

Calfan

DIS Veteran
Joined
Aug 31, 2009
Thought I would jump in and start a Meets Thread for the 2021 Rhine River Cruises! I know there have been some threads started in conjunction with booking, etc., but, for those who actually went ahead and booked, I wanted to see if we could centralize on this thread to talk and share about this trip, including planning, and hopefully connect with other DISers on the same departure.
 
I will kicks things off! My family of four (me, DH, DD17 and DS 15) are booked on the July 15, 2021 Rhine River Cruise with the Wish excursion. This will be our first river cruise and 5th ABD. It's obviously a little early to start making much in the way of plans around this departure, but our tentative plan is to arrive in Basel on July 14 and to spend a couple of extra post nights in Amsterdam.
 
This will be our first AbD. We are platinum Disney cruisers and had been eyeing both AbD and a river cruise for a while. When we saw the Wish excursion, we couldn’t pass it up! Our son will be 16 at the time of our cruise. We are on the June 10th departure. We will probably spend a couple days in Zurich before the cruise and a few in Amsterdam after.
 
This will be our first AbD. We are platinum Disney cruisers and had been eyeing both AbD and a river cruise for a while. When we saw the Wish excursion, we couldn’t pass it up! Our son will be 16 at the time of our cruise. We are on the June 10th departure. We will probably spend a couple days in Zurich before the cruise and a few in Amsterdam after.

The Wish excursion is ultimately what reeled us in as well. I am also a Platinum DCL cruiser and am super excited to see the Wish in the shipyard!
 


We are booked on the 9/30 Adults Food & Wine cruise with the Wish excursion. I've always been interested in the river cruises but it's the excursion that made us book this one. We plan on spending a few days in Switzerland before the cruise as we had planned on visiting Switzerland next year anyways so this works well for us. This is our second ABD. We live in Florida and usually cruise with Disney, looking forward to the River Cruise experience.

Thanks for starting this thread!
 
This will be our first AbD. We are platinum Disney cruisers and had been eyeing both AbD and a river cruise for a while. When we saw the Wish excursion, we couldn’t pass it up! Our son will be 16 at the time of our cruise. We are on the June 10th departure. We will probably spend a couple days in Zurich before the cruise and a few in Amsterdam after.
The Wish excursion is what finally convinced me to give the river cruise a go. We were initially signed up for the very first ABD River Cruise (the DVC one), but I cancelled after a not-so-great experience on the ABD add-on for the DCL Baltics (we are platinum DCLers as well). I couldn't handle another city tour of a European country, LOL. DH has been really anxious to try one though and the pull of Amsterdam, which is on both our lists, and the Wish excursion was enough. I regretted not doing the DCL excursion for the Dream and Fantasy. Heard so much about them. We are a family of four, but our adult kids (23 and 20) aren't invited on this one :). We're doing the Food and Wine in October (14th, I think). Looking forward to @Calfan and family figuring out which of the excursions we should do!
 
The Wish excursion is what finally convinced me to give the river cruise a go. We were initially signed up for the very first ABD River Cruise (the DVC one), but I cancelled after a not-so-great experience on the ABD add-on for the DCL Baltics (we are platinum DCLers as well). I couldn't handle another city tour of a European country, LOL. DH has been really anxious to try one though and the pull of Amsterdam, which is on both our lists, and the Wish excursion was enough. I regretted not doing the DCL excursion for the Dream and Fantasy. Heard so much about them. We are a family of four, but our adult kids (23 and 20) aren't invited on this one :). We're doing the Food and Wine in October (14th, I think). Looking forward to @Calfan and family figuring out which of the excursions we should do!

We will happily be your guinea pigs, lol :)
 


We will happily be your guinea pigs, lol :)
I didn't want to use that word, but ... :)

I should have mentioned in my pp that we will probably be in London before the trip--and maybe after. I suspect we won't plan for extra time in Basel, but will stick around Amsterdam for a day or two.
 
My husband and I are currently booked on the May 27th departure. We were sailing on the Wonder when the Wish excursion add on was announced with no way to call in, so I took the first offer of a guaranteed ticket I found. Not my proudest moment, but this was a must do for both of us and at least it is sorted. :rolleyes1
 
I can't compare it to a regular cruise but our ABD river cruise was amazing. You'll have a great time.

This is great to hear. River cruising has been something I've been thinking about trying for a while. I can thank the lure of the Wish excursion for finally getting me there!
 
This is great to hear. River cruising has been something I've been thinking about trying for a while. I can thank the lure of the Wish excursion for finally getting me there!
It's not quite as "intimate" as a regular ABD (you don't have the same people on excursions from day to day, and will also have different Adventure Guides for different excursions, so you just don't get that "family" feel like you do with land ABDs. However, the river cruises themselves are fabulous. It's so wonderful to actually dock in the city you're visiting in most cases rather than hours on a bus to get there. And to be able to head into town after dinner some times, things like that, since the ship generally doesn't leave until nighttime. It's was such a *relaxing* trip! And of course, like regular cruising, you don't have to unpack/repack multiple times. I really love river cruising. I think you'll really enjoy it.

And AmaWaterways is really great. Beautiful ships, great crews.

Sayhello
 
This is great to hear. River cruising has been something I've been thinking about trying for a while. I can thank the lure of the Wish excursion for finally getting me there!

After doing the Danube we couldn't book the Rhine fast enough. I love river cruising.
 
It's not quite as "intimate" as a regular ABD (you don't have the same people on excursions from day to day, and will also have different Adventure Guides for different excursions, so you just don't get that "family" feel like you do with land ABDs. However, the river cruises themselves are fabulous. It's so wonderful to actually dock in the city you're visiting in most cases rather than hours on a bus to get there. And to be able to head into town after dinner some times, things like that, since the ship generally doesn't leave until nighttime. It's was such a *relaxing* trip! And of course, like regular cruising, you don't have to unpack/repack multiple times. I really love river cruising. I think you'll really enjoy it.

And AmaWaterways is really great. Beautiful ships, great crews.

Sayhello

I'm not too worried about it feeling different from a regular ABD. I definitely did not sign up expecting the typical ABD experience. And, as you know, for group travel my family has actually veered away from ABD since we strongly prefer smaller traveling groups. So there shouldn't be any expectations issues. I'm going into this one only expecting to get a river cruise experience and really liking that this is with ABD since the stereotype of the *typical* river cruise demographic has played a role in making me hesitate to book one previously as a family trip. (I do realize that Tauck Bridges offers family-oriented river cruises, but for some reason those have never grabbed me. Until the Wish excursion came along, I had been focusing on a European Christmas Markets river cruise and having trouble lining up dates with school holiday breaks.) So glad to hear that the AmaWaterways ships are beautiful and that the crews are great.
 
[...] Until the Wish excursion came along, I had been focusing on a European Christmas Markets river cruise [...]

Same. We went to the Christmas markets in Cologne and Leiden (where my brother lives) right before Christmas and it was even better than I had imagined. We thought for sure that would be the timing for any potential river cruise until this excursion came along. Now we'll know if we even like river cruising - maybe we'll decide it would be better to do another land trip for the markets some other year instead.
 
Same. We went to the Christmas markets in Cologne and Leiden (where my brother lives) right before Christmas and it was even better than I had imagined. We thought for sure that would be the timing for any potential river cruise until this excursion came along. Now we'll know if we even like river cruising - maybe we'll decide it would be better to do another land trip for the markets some other year instead.

My thoughts have been running along the same lines. If we love the river cruise experience, then we will look to do the Christmas markets via river cruise once we can line up the dates. Otherwise, we'd likely to a land-based trip around visiting my DD at university in Scotland during one of her holiday breaks.
 
Waiting for the inevitable cancellation of our second big Disney summer trip (after Greece DCL last year was cancelled). We are on one of the mid-June Rhine departures for this summer and are looking to move it to a 2022 date once they cancel it.

I was comparing the 2022 detail itinerary to 2021 and was surprised to still see the Meyer Werft excursion listed for 2022. I wonder if they are thinking one of the other ships will be far enough along for the excursion. The Wish excursion was the driving force in my son choosing this trip for his graduation trip. Not sure if we would want to spend the 3.5 hours of bus time each way if the ship was not very far along.

I also noticed that the horseback riding is gone from the activities as is the Porsche museum (which was another draw for him).

Is anyone else considering moving to 22?
 
I hadn’t checked out the excursions so didn’t realize there had been changes, but clearly I need to. Thanks for the heads up! Ours isn’t until mid-October so I’m slightly more optimistic that it will go. But the big draw for us was the wish excursion too so I want more clarity from ABD about that
 
I hadn’t checked out the excursions so didn’t realize there had been changes, but clearly I need to. Thanks for the heads up! Ours isn’t until mid-October so I’m slightly more optimistic that it will go. But the big draw for us was the wish excursion too so I want more clarity from ABD about that
I am hopeful that October will be a go for you guys and I think at that point the Wish will be pretty far along so if they are allowing visitors to the shipyard it would probably be an awesome time to be there.
 
I am hopeful that October will be a go for you guys and I think at that point the Wish will be pretty far along so if they are allowing visitors to the shipyard it would probably be an awesome time to be there.
I hope so, but with the way things have gone the last 12 months I'm not banking on anything! I will PIF when the time comes though and play chicken with Disney. I have no interest in moving my deposit.
 

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