Avalon Imagery II Review

4.5 / 5.0
95 reviews

Value Not Worth The Price

Review for Europe River Cruise on Avalon Imagery II
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Breeze253
2-5 Cruises • Age 50s

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Sail Date: May 2016
Cabin: Outside Stateroom with Window

The ship is new and beautiful and clean with nice bathrooms and very comfortable beds. The staff was excellent and the food very good. My problem is with the excursions and with labeling the river as the "Romantic Rhine." The river is dirty, polluted, and for the most part completely non-descript save for the numerous industrial complexes that you pass along the way, interrupted only by thousands of trees. Trees are good - don't get me wrong - but when that's all you see, you could be on any river in the universe and it would look the same.

The much-hyped Rhine River gorge with castle scenery was about 45 minutes long out of a 7-day trip and, as European castles go, no big deal. No place along the Rhine did we see anything like what is shown in the tv commercials. And the itinerary being governed by where the boat can or must stop to dock along the way, the cities are places you would never go to otherwise - not counting Amsterdam where the cruise began and Basel where it ended. The other towns had similar histories and looked the same. The local tour guides were repetitive and some spoke as if we were children that they were teaching a lesson to while trying to keep us engaged. Also, calling one of the excursions a trip to the Black Forest was again misleading, because it consisted of nothing more than a one hour bus ride to a cuckoo clock shop, one hour's time inside the shop (for maximum shopping potential) and a one hour ride back to the ship, never getting anywhere close to an actual tree - until we got back to the ship, that is, and sailed again.

Finally - and this may be picky but I am annoyed - on the last night while at dinner, they take the robes out of your room so you can't steal them, which means on the last morning you have no robe when exiting the shower. Really?? Over $8000 for two people, and you take the robes away from us on our last night? Rather than finding a way to penalize those who steal (like charging their credit cards) they chose to penalize everybody, which I think is the easy and lazy way out. We had fun on this cruise because the staff was friendly, we were with family and friends, and we were on vacation on a beautiful ship; but because of the above I would not choose Avalon again and cannot really recommend it.

Cabin Review

Outside Stateroom with Window

Small but with an excellent bed. Furniture and closets are so dark wood that it was very difficult to see your clothing inside them. Problems with volume on tv were fixed reasonably promptly.

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