Learning About River Cruises

Today is a busy day for learning! Our day starts in the convention center where we hear from each river cruise line in attendance. There are also some other fun presentations in the mix. My favorite was a panel of travel journalists. After a morning a learning, we’re headed back to the ships.

The conference includes lunches and dinners onboard the ships. We had to sign up ahead of time for the places we would eat. Today’s lunch is on Avalon Impression. It’s a buffet which is common for lunches onboard riverboats, and I go for the spaetzel with a couple sausages as well.

Time for more learning! There are three education sessions after lunch. The first one is aboard the Avalon Illumination and is basically a roundtable where travel advisors share useful information with each other. It was moderated by Anne Marie Moebes who is a Travel Industry Veteran and Strategic Consultant. They also had two high-producing river cruise advisors there who answered the majority of the questions.

Amadeus Nova

Next, I headed to the AmaLea for, “All Rivers Run into Sales!” This was a presentation given by Scott Koepf who is the Chief Strategy Officer at Cruise Planners. I finished with “From Plans to Profits: Mastering Group Travel Momentum” which was given by another travel advisor. All sessions were great with useful information in each one.

In addition to learning from the speakers, I took the time to tour each of the ships where my learning took place. I was able to tour Avalon Illumination, AmaLea, and Amadeus Nova.

The evening ended with dinner on the Uniworld S.S. Maria Theresa. There were six of us that tried to plan our meals together, but this event is pretty intense when it comes to booking. If you don’t have a fast internet connection or aren’t fast to click when the window opens, you aren’t getting what you want. Luckily, I have a fast internet connection and Disney has trained me well. I got all the meals and education sessions I had wanted. Only three out of six got the dinner for tonight.

Uniworld S.S. Maria Theresa

The Uniworld S.S. Maria Theresa feels like it belongs inside of Schönbrunn Palace. It makes you feel like an empress going on a trip, but without the difficult wardrobe. Would I decorate my house like this? Absolutely not, but I did love it for here. It fits with the region and is very unique compared to the other ships. Dinner amazing with a delicious salad as a starter and then Wiener Schnitzel as my main course. Dessert was a chocolate caramel thing which was also very good. We stuck around after dinner for their after-party. They had a DJ, but word hasn’t gotten out about the party. I actually really enjoyed this because it meant it wasn’t too loud or crazy. The DJ played some nice music that was fitting for having conversations. We ordered chocolate martinis. This was by far the best alcoholic drink of the trip.