good evening ladies and gentlemen and thank you so much for coming this evening to learn about luxury
river cruising with the amawaterways i want to thank jackie and john matthews for inviting me to
share my stories with you on on the waterways and this fabulous itinerary that they have
group space on they are going to be hosting melodies of the danube escorting their group
on september the 13th of 2021 so i'm just going to have an absolute delightful evening with you
we're going to talk about amawaterways i'm going to walk you through a day in the life on ama tell
you a little bit about us and then i'm going to walk you through this fabulous wonderful itinerary
i've been with on waterways for 11 years and have done all of our itineraries
and i'd like to say that in actuality melodies of the danube is the most requested itinerary
in all of the rivers of europe it really is just such an incredible opportunity for you to be able
to visit five countries in seven nights and to be able to see not only the world-class cities
of budapest and and vienna and prague but also to be able to see the fairytale towns
along the river and they are so delightful and so special in their ways so it is great fun for me to
be able to do this with you this evening you know you might have been an ocean cruiser and oceans
do take you to countries but you know rivers take you through them what's so incredible about river
cruising first of all we carry very few people our ships are carrying 156 guests and every bend
in the river is another castle another vineyard another fairy tale town this is an absolutely
lovely picture of what it's like to be on the river and 24 hours a day you are wrapped in
the culture the language the libation the food the architecture um the beautiful mountains the
wonderful vineyards you just are immersed and it makes for a very very special opportunity for you
with taking a river cruise a little bit about our company we were founded in 2002 by ruby
rudy shriner christine carson gary murphy and that we're family owned so we're a family-owned company
and the really important thing about amawaterways is that we are a debt-free company rudy shriner
um it pays cash for our vessels so i have 25 ships uh by the end of next year
and um they are all paid for so in this time of pandemic and businesses having you know maybe some
issues and whatever i just want you to feel very confident about sailing with on waterways rudy
shriner actually has is really the if you will the godfather of river cruising not only does he
design our vehicles vessels he is the architect of them but he does some really wonderful amenities
that i'm going to talk about that is different from some of the other river cruise lines um
out in the marketplace you know the one fabulous thing about river is that we dock in
the heart of town embarkation and disembarkation is just so easy when we stop you simply
walk off it's great you can take off on your own do what you like to do or you can take advantage
of one of the many many tours that we offer that are included uh in your in your travels without a
waterways the ship stock again very close to the center of the city which is really great fun here
you see one of our vessels and it's just a delight not to have to wait for a tender to pick you up as
you do in ocean cruising we have award-winning ships we are very proud to be rated the highest
river cruise ships in europe and uh again rudy creates our vessels with elegantly appointed very
spacious state rooms this is called a twin balcony cabin which is something that he designed you have
not only a french balcony where you see the orange chair there which you would open the doors but you
don't step out but then to the left we have a proper walkout seated balcony as well so great
fun you use use them both often or depending on the time of the year that you're traveling
river cruise actually starts in the end of march and goes all the way through christmas new year's
the beds come in twin or the big bed and our bathrooms are beautifully appointed they are
shower three shower heads which creates a spa shower um and uh again beautifully
appointed if you happen to stay in one of our suites the suites we have on board we
have four of them they are 355 square feet and they would have full tub and separate shower
incidentally the cabin you're looking at ranges from 210 to 235 square feet
i'll make one mention of a very special vessel and this is called ama magna she is one of a kind it
was the dream of our owner rudy schweiner to build this vessel and the difference in her
is instead of being like everyone else 443 feet long and 38 feet wide she is 72 feet wide so
double the width all the things i'm going to tell you about amawaterways are incorporated into this
one-of-a-kind vessel that we have and she just has an amazing amount of personal space she actually
is we consider her all sweets um she uh is fully balconied all except the ten standard cabins we
have four dining venues instead of two we have a fabulous zen wellness center of course a pool with
a pop-up bar she also has the only elevator um of any other river cruise ship that goes all the way
to the top sun deck now on the waterways because of her width only travels on the danube and um the
upper and lower danube we are sustainable very very proud of our green awards which we have
gotten for our sustainability we are so very interested in minimizing our carbon footprint uh
rudy builds the ships with fuel efficient engines micro filtration um and we are able to come into a
docking area and plug in to the grid which makes it absolutely fantastic and we it allows us to
have priority docking spaces so if you're able to plug in that is really a good thing and we
are very very proud of our green awards within the vessel you're going to have complimentary wi-fi
to say the least um we spend more money actually on bandwidth than we do on fuel so you want to
be able to be connected take all of your devices whether you're in your cabin or you happen to be
up on the top deck or whatever it's complimentary 24 7. and we do have an ama cruise app now you're
able to download that on your phone if you would like to when you get on the vessel and
it's going to have everything that's going on with your cruise it's really kind of fun because
you've got it right in your hand instead of the daily cruiser piece you know kind of paper that
we give you and we're going to continue to do that but more and more people just always have
their you know phone in their hand so that's fun and you're able to actually it has a map
with your ship and where you are on your itinerary it gives you information about all of the
different show excursions the level of activity and so forth also the times you need to be on and
off the ship or whatever so it's just really great the other thing is because you have your contacts
in your phone you're actually able able to send uh like an e-postcard every day to your list if
you'd like to the postcards are from where we are it's really fun of course there's no cost
and it's great fun to be able to use my ama app i'd like to make some comments about our crew
our crew is incredibly special and they will make your trip absolutely spectacular on the left we
have a picture of one of our cruise managers these people stay with us for years and years and years
they are a very very important part of your cruise you know they're the people that are going to talk
to you every day about the different tours about the levels of activity and they get to know you um
they're going to know your your wishes and wants and make those kinds of things come true martina
here has been with us for i think 15 years they are multilingual they are from around the globe
and the cruise manager i would say is about the second most important person on board other than
captain driving the vessel and maybe the hotel manager or the restaurant manager feeding you
but they're really incredible and incidentally english is the language spoken on the waterways
then we have a picture of a crew member she happens to be have a beautiful cocktail um
looks like uh serving we do have a sip and cell cocktail hour that is an hour before dinner people
tend to meet in the lounge it is complementary and be able to enjoy themselves but the crew are very
very special they are coming from eastern europe mostly um hungary bulgaria romania
those are serbia those areas and they just want to make your trip incredible they the number one
comment that we get from our guests um as they are disembarking the ship we asked them to do
a survey is the crew made me feel like family and amawaterways ama means love and we are all about
family yeah the libation policy let me go over that as well because hey you're on holiday we are
offering fine beers wines and soft drinks at lunch and at dinner and may i say very freely poured
and we change our wine every day to be able to complement this wonderful food that we're going
to be serving you through the five countries that you're going to be traveling on this itinerary
also we start you out with sparkling wine at breakfast
quite a nice way those are my mimosa people and it's a nice way to get your day going
so ladies and gentlemen where do we go we want i wanted to make you understand that all the blue
lines that you see here on this map of europe is where we are traveling so we're doing just
absolutely wonderful opportunities for you to see europe on a river cruise 14 rivers
and waterways 23 countries with 33 itineraries and we're going to be doing a very special one
uh in a couple of minutes which is going to be from budapest up to the town of vilshofen
however just to give you an idea of of the scope of this if you were to start in the netherlands
here in the north sea and come down the rhine to the main danube canal and the main danube canal
was built in in the mid 1990s and it connects the danube here we go here the danube all the way to
the black sea if you were to do that that would be a 21 day cruise but you would have traveled
through 10 different countries 3 000 kilometers so it's really amazing what you could do with river
most of our cruises are seven nights but we do have some 10 and 11. we do have a few four
teams and you're able to book back to back-to-back cruises if you'd like to do that we do have three
rivers in france absolutely gorgeous areas we are on the send in normandy and brittany we are on
the zone and the rhone rivers here in the upper and lower coast of rhone um and and in burgundy
uh prov and provence here in the in the lower area and we're in bordeaux of course world-class wines
from bordeaux and we are in portugal on the douro it's a very special river in a beautiful beautiful
location the ship only carries 100 guests and we are doing gorgeous tastings of port and the
vino verde wines that are there and seen the wonderful quintas which are the wine chateaus
up in to uh into the mountains in in portugal then we have an exotic product we are in egypt on the
nile this is new for us next year uh in in 2021 it is a seven night cruise from luxor to aswan
as well as including four knights in cairo um and it does have pre and post land arrangements
pre in dubai and in jordan or post in israel now we have actually pre and post land arrangements
on all of our cruises and you know you're able to do none of them if you would just like to do
get on the ship do the cruise and get off fine or we have pre and we have post when i
do the itinerary for you today i'm going to talk about the pre and budapest and the post in prague
so and this is these land arrangements are an extra cost to your cruise
in asia we are in vietnam and cambodia on the mekong river one of my very favorites it's
beautifully exotic with an amazing land program in hanoi ha long bay semreep where you have the
the monuments of angkor wat and in saigon or ho chi minh city and then africa africa is a niche
product for us a very special product the boat not a ship but the boat only carries 28 guests
it's 14 cabins and it is four night float through the animals on the chobe river that's how i'd like
to explain it because when you're on the ship a river brings the animals to you so you're going
to see an amazing amount of wildlife after that wonderful four night float we are then going to
take you off the ship to victoria falls for two nights fabulous victoria falls all things
and it is just really a world-class um world unesco site to be able to see victoria falls
but you're not just going to africa for six nights at least most people aren't and so jackie or
john would have talked to you about choosing one of five safaris to complete your cruise
so ladies and gentlemen the rivers and the wine they continue to flow it's been my great pleasure
to be able to walk you through this wonderful melodies of the danube group that jackie and
john matthews are going to be escorting thank you for listening to my stories i look forward
to having you come on on the waterways and really have a vacation of a lifetime
thank you so much