A weekend of rain over Central Europe helped river cruise operators avert major headaches.
AmaWaterways president Rudi Schreiner said on Monday that
all routes were running on schedule, thanks to the rain. An extremely hot, dry
summer has caused low water levels, forcing operators to pull out their
contingency plans, including the practice of ship swapping.
For instance, when sister ships AmaPrima and AmaCerto recently
were sailing toward each other but couldn't cross the upper Danube, the crews
swapped the ships while the passengers went out on regularly scheduled
excursions to Salzburg from nearby ports. The guests came back to the same
cabins on different ships in different ports to resume their sailings. The
ships were swapped back on their return cruises.
Schreiner said that while ship swapping is a common practice
in low waters for lines that run a lot of 14-day cruises, most of AmaWaterways'
itineraries are seven days, and this was the first back-to-back ship swap this
year.
Last week, when ships were unable to get into Budapest, AmaWaterways
put guests in a hotel overnight while finding another ship to ensure they didn't
miss the traditional, must-see nighttime illumination cruise past Hungarian
Parliament. The next day, guests were bused to Vienna to embark their ship.
Uniworld Boutique River Cruises CEO Ellen Bettridge said
they were also having "slight deviations with low water but nothing too
extreme."
While such disruptions often irk customers, Schreiner shared
an email from one couple who, recognizing the logistical hoops the company had
to jump through, called their ship swapping experience the "holiday of a
lifetime."
"We will forever compare future vacations to our time
with AmaWaterways: you are our new standard of excellence," the couple
said.
It was the first season since 2015 that river cruise lines
have faced so many issues, Schreiner said.
"Last year was perfect," he said.
Fortunately, rain over the weekend cleared things up.
Because the ships have such low drafts, Schreiner said, the
difference in being able to sail or not comes down to matter of just a few
inches.
"If we had not
gotten rain now, it would have gotten serious," Schreiner said.