AmaWaterwaysReviews of amawaterways.com

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.

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.

Further Update: After reading Amawaterways response below, as they suggested I sent an email to their customer services team outlining the disappointing experiences we had received from them. I haven't had a reply, just an automated confirmation of receipt. It appears that their suggested approach was a hollow attempt to give the impression that they are a caring company, when obviously they are not. Be careful when booking a holiday with Amawaterways, as based on our experience they aren't interested in trying to put things right. Original Comments: My wife and I are very disappointed with the service provided by Amawaterways, I would have given it zero stars, if the system allowed it. We booked a holiday in November 2025 for a cruise down the Danube (melodies of the Danube), for the first week in August, all seemed well at this point. However: • In January, we were advised that they now intended to make the cruise a “Latin touch” for Spanish speaking passengers only, therefore it was no longer suitable for us. We were offered the option to change the cruise to another date, so we rebooked another cruise departing a few days later. However, in doing so we incurred additional costs associated with the changes to parking, airport hotel for the night before and dog care arrangements. No compensation was offered, so we had to pick up these additional costs ourselves. • Then, less than 2 days before we were due to travel, we were advised of an Itinerary change, due to the low water level in the Danube. The holiday was now changing from a 7 day cruise, to two half day cruises, with coach trips to a revised set of destinations. The ship would to all tense and purposes become a largely moored hotel. We would also now need to change to a different ship part of the way through the week. A totally inferior holiday to that which was purchased. We therefore chose to cancel the holiday and have a refund. o We were again out of pocket for our parking, airport hotel the night before travel and dog care arrangements. This non-holiday was proving to be very expensive. • There was no offer of compensation for the revised itinerary, only a 15% discount off a future booking and only if we accepted their revised holiday. We recognise that the water levels isn’t something that Amawaterways can control, our problem is focused on how Amawaterways handled the situation: o There was no offer of compensation for the revised / inferior holiday offering. o Amawaterway gave us very little advance notification of the problem (less than 2 days), even though they would have been aware of the problem for several weeks. This limited time notification inhibited our opportunity to rebook another holiday for the same period. In my opinion, this was a deliberate act to force us to accept their revised inferior holiday experience. o There was no offer to transfer the cruise to another date and no offer of compensation for our inconvenience and the costs we had incurred. I have since spoken to the UK customer services helpline and outlined all of the above, they said sorry, but again there was no offer to try and put things rights. In short, Amawaterways don’t appear to care about their customers, or how to manage customer retention. Overall, very poor customer service and we have now not had a holiday this summer.

We booked a Mekong Delta river cruise with Amawaterways. We are elderly travellers 75 and 80 years old and therefore to make the travelling smoothly we booked Business class fights with Emirates. A few weeks before the holiday Emirates changed the flight times which resulted in us arriving 1 day late at our precruise hotel. We contacted Emirates but they referred us back to Amawaterways to organise new flights. The alternative resulted in a layover in Dubai of 8 hours this was unacceptable to us. The compromise to eliminate the layover agreed with Amawaterways was to book us into a hotel in Dubai for 2 nights. When we received our amended itinerary they had only booked us in for 1 night. We arrived in Dubai at 1.05am but they only booked the following nights accommodation resulting in a wait to check in of 12 or13 hours and for elderly passengers this was unacceptable. Amawaterways were made aware of this mistake 10 days ago and still at this time await a resolution. This issue was initially raised with Amawaterways on the 22nd July and as of today this has not been resolved. From my perspective this shows a total disregard for the passengers wellbeing and the unnecessary stress caused. **************************** EDIT: Again most disappointing the reply from Amawaterways appears to be stock answer. If they had read my post and understood the content they would have understood that we had already been in contact with the people they are suggesting we contact. Most likely an AI response. Just not good enough 😕