AmaWaterwaysReviews of amawaterways.com

AMA Waterways is great at offering more than the usual slow moving limited sightseeing that many riverboat cruises do. It has some biking, and 2 or 3 levels of sightseeing. However, their come on to spend $1000 and they would take care of air travel was a terrible idea. They and many cruise lines use the abominable TAP Air Portugal airlines, which is a disaster of an airline. You are lucky to get warm water in a small paper cup, even if flying 6 hours. They offer more on overseas flights; but it is an airline decidedly far below US airlines. Their cruise manager talked a good talk but really did not follow up on any issue whatsoever.

I booked a river cruise with Ama after being told by a representative at a seminar, when I asked about possible droughts that “Ama has never had any problem with droughts cause they are the shallowest ships and they provide a 5 star vacation as we are a family run business. “ Well here we are just over a week till departure and my trip has been substantially modified. I spent 2 hours with my travel agent, who after this experience won’t be recommending your company as she was shocked and appalled that you are refusing to honour our package. Options are to continue with modified agenda which isnot good. Or Book later in 2026 and lose $4,400 because you refuse to honour the pre and post 5 nights in Budapest and Prague Book in 2027 and lose $6,000 because you refuse to honour the pre and post 5 nights and airfares. Not sure how these are even considered an option. So basically you are forcing us to continue with a ruined holiday. That you wait till 8 days before flying out to tell us. The fact that we are spending our first 2 river cruise days, first taking a bus and then sitting going nowhere looking at nothing is ludicrous, then we get 1 day of sailing, then pack your bags and move ships on day 4 and so basically I get 3 days of stress free sailing but pay for 7. Absolutely no compensation for ruining our dream vacation. Oh we get 40% off future cruise. Like anyone would book another cruise with your company who has just told us thanks for giving us $22,000 for a dream vacation that you are not willing to provide. You obviously care about payment but not your passengers. Compensation should be full refund.

Two weeks out from our Danube river cruise with AMA, I received notification of a vastly different itinerary. Three options were provided, one of which was a 100% future cruise credit (FCC) and to be able to book another cruise for 2027. Excellent. HOWEVER, be aware that if you are also doing a pre- or post cruise itinerary, THAT is not part of the FCC, and those funds are gone! This was noted in the "fine print" of the original email, several pages into the email. This should have been stated right after they offered the 100% FCC and not buried in the email. What does AMA think people are suppose to do pre or post cruise if you're not going? I understand hotels are booked and they would be taking a hit, but rooms get cancelled all the time, and I'm sure these hotels are not suffering. For us retirees, $4-6000 is alot of money, whereas for these corporate businesses, this is a speck of dust in their money pot. AMA, please do the right thing and FCC the entire cruise package! You don't realize how far that gesture would go with loyal customers! Call it good will, call it whatever you want, but you need to make this right to maintain your former reputation. Please don't fall back into the lower eschlon of river cruise companies! Stay on top and do the right thing!

When a cruise scheduled for seven nights is reduced to five, the countries to be visited are reduced from five to three (one of those by bus only), the active cruising hours reduced to 20% of the original plan, and the cruising distance reduced to less than 25% of the original plan, a responsible company either cancels the cruise, provides its customers an off ramp in advance, or at the very least makes partial refunds proportionate to the degree the cruise is so severely disrupted. AMA Waterways did none of those things when conditions on the lower Danube resulted in the above on the river cruise we took in late August - moreover, their communications both prior to and following the cruise were insincere and disrespectful. Be aware they have the contractual right to make massive changes in their itineraries even when it is not the right thing to do - believing that never cancelling is a badge of honor when it is anything but. Never again. Responding to AMA's response - it is illustrative of their insincerity and disrespect. My review was only posted after two reasonable requests for resolution of our concerns were rejected, and after my partner was removed from a Facebook group by AMA for posting similar concerns. Bottom line - they don't care.

Since AMA is no longer family owned but corporate they are using lies and schemes to trick people into booking future cruises. The water levels interrupted our cruise itinerary during our Eastern European cruise and we were promised a 40% return on our cruise fare to use on a future cruise. If we put down an additional deposit we would get another 5% off to stack on top of that. Normally a 2 year grace period applies for such a promotion. After we had been home for 3 weeks we were informed that we had 3 months to book the next cruise and it had to be for the following year. Overseas travel is usually booked 1 and 1/2 to 2 years out. Our calendar was already full, It is evident that Ama does not care about repeat business. They seek to scam you once then move on to the next person. We did contact customer service at AMA and were told nothing could be done. Basically they do not care.

I was on the Rhine River cruise and it was very bad experience. The river is dry so we got 40% off our next cruise but I will never use AMA again ( even if free). The ship docked in horrible locations. Food was subpar as well as ship(s). It was more of a bus trip ( maybe 16 hours on buses). The people were lovely. The shore excursions were just okay. They need to vet their tour guides much better! To top it off, when I got home, I opened a gift they gave us - a scarf. Mine had a hole in it! Just like my trip left a hole in my heart and wallet. Skip AMA and do not do the Rhine until you know water level.

This was my second cruise with AMA, the first at startup after Covid I gave them benefit of doubt. This one on the Rhine was during the drought. I get that. We should have been offered the opportunity to cancel for future travel. They did not. We were forced to sail. 7 days prior they gave an alternative to sail the canals then board a bus for a relatively short distance then re-embark. Fine plan but once onboard they changed it then they changed it again. Result - the first 4 days of the cruise we spend less than 9 hours in any port. To give you a glimpse at how bad it was on our “bus” day they did not provide lunch or restroom compensation except for money we had to use in their gift shop! To make it worse we were on a bus where the “guide” showed up an hour late so there would be no stops for pictures or anything. I was in a suite. I never met a butler - so forget that. They did not even make up my room6 for the first 36 hours even after I requested directly to the hotel manager. I had to go find a maid to get my room made up. Never once during this whole cruise was I addressed by name, not once. I am sugar free. What was served as a dessert were embarrassments. A glob of chia pudding with a strawberry on top and that was at the chef’s table. Other things presented to me as sugar free were tasted and left for the garbage. They had no enrichment talks - not one. They had a solo musician as the entertainment onboard and he was the ONLY entertainment, no games, no talks, nothing. They had one night of “cultural “ entertainment and that was good. They had one tours were walking tours and since we had no set itinerary often were quickly put together spiels. The one tour we enjoyed was a bus trip where we planned our own day. We have sailed for decades and with many lines and many, many cruises. This is the first time I can say this cruise line is not a good choice . I cannot recommend. Update: they left the message below to contact us, I did and got no response. They are putting on a public show of customer service but beware, they take your money and do not deliver the product nor customer service.

Two weeks prior to our river cruise, I heard there were issues due to low water levels along the Danube. I emailed AMA twice asking if our itinerary would be affected, I received no information from AMA. We had booked two nights in Budapest before embarkation, as we particularly wanted to enjoy that city. During the second day in Budapest, the cruise director called a meeting for important information. We would not begin our river cruise as planned, instead, we would leave Budapest to spend four hours in a coach travelling to Vienna, bypassing Bratislava. 240 km viewing the inside of a coach instead of the Danube valley. We were offered a two hour round trip by another coach to visit Bratislava. We declined the offer as we do not travel well by coach. We embarked on a sister ship in Vienna and felt that we had begun a river cruise. That did not last long as the cruise director once more called a meeting for important information. He told us the water level ahead was too low, and we must pack our travel luggage for another coach trip bypassing the low water levels. Then join another sister ship to unpack our luggage again. More time viewing the inside of a coach instead of the Danube valley, and another day wasted. The river cruise continued at last to the final port of call. A final coach trip to Munich airport then back home. Initially we were told there would be a reply to our list of complaints within 28 days, we waited through August with no response from AMA. Then we did get a message from AMA, stating it could take up to 60 days to find out if there was any kind of compensation offered. AMAwaterways clearly cannot be trusted to respond to customer concerns. No information prior to our holiday, and serious delays with response after the holiday. We are still waiting for an improved offer than "15 % off future cruise bookings", as if we would like to repeat the experience with AMAwaterways. They have effectively abandoned us at the end of our holiday. Be warned, AMA think that a river cruise by coach is acceptable, I do not agree. AMA think they can take up to 60 days to respond to valid complaints, I do not agree.