Rhine River water levels

Hi Jerry -
Your best resource is likely to be Viking itself. Why not contact them with your question? Low water levels also tend to be temporary so they'll want to know when you're traveling and on which cruise/ship.

Click the "Contact Us " text under "Company Information" at the bottom left of this linked page, and type + submit your information into the form that comes up.

https://www.vikingrivercruises.com/

Hi,
You can also go to CruiseCritic.com.
Select "Boards" from the menu.
Scroll down to "Roll Calls".
Select "Viking River Roll Calls".
Select one of the Rhine River topics. I'm sure there's some discussion if the water level is low.

I think you can read the roll call postings without signing up (free). I know you need to sign up in order to post.

We were on a Viking Rhine river cruise in June, with the post-cruise extension to Oberammergau for the Passion Play. The river was quite full of water. But we caught covid during the lunch in Oberammergau, the only time we didn't wear masks and couldn't distance while eating because we were all jammed into one room. Fortunately, we were landing at our home airport before Robert leaned over and said "I think I'm getting sick". I caught it from him. Fully boosted so we were not too sick. While we were on the cruise, the US removed the testing to return requirement and the masks came off! We stayed masked all the time, so that's why we're pretty sure where he got it.

Here's how they managed our low water cruise.

Note that the Rhine is controlled by locks all the way, except for the middle scenic portion through the gorge.

Our ship departing from Amsterdam, cruised upriver normally, until a point somewhere where it became shallow. Everyone disembarked there and transferred to a smaller day cruiser (shallower draught) that continued the cruise through the scenic part of the river. Somewhere upriver, we transferred to buses which took everyone to another town upriver where we then boarded another ship that completed the trip to Basel. The second boat was an identical twin of the first so everyone had the same cabin numbers, and they had transferred all the luggage from the first ship to each cabin so it was pretty seamless. Not an ideal trip, but it was a fair workaround that did not incovenience us too much, except I think one stop was skipped (maybe Rudesheim).

But note that we had no advance notice that there would be a glitch. I think we were told the day before the switch so as to pack our bags. Still a positive experience.

Check with Viking as someone suggested. We ran into the same issue back in 2015 on our Viking cruise from Budapest to Nuremberg. When we moored in Passau we had to have everything packed and ready to transfer to a different Viking boat further up the river. We ate lunch in town, then got onto buses that drove us to the new boat. The people on the other boat did the same thing going to opposite direction. While the boat was identical, the crew and their personalities were different. Since there were only a few days of the cruise remaining we never got to know, or even tried to know, the new crew. As Stan said, it wasn’t ideal but it worked.

"Note that the Rhine is controlled by locks all the way, except for the middle scenic portion through the gorge."
I'm afraid this isn't correct. The last lock is at Iffezheim near Baden-Baden. From Iffezheim there aren't any locks all the way down to the North Sea. Just now the barges on the Rhine can only take about one third of their normal load. If the dry weather doesn't change in the near future I think the cruise ships will be affected as well.

Wow, I hadn't realized how low some of these numbers are.

Rhine water depths/levels (Pegelstand Rhein), from WetterOnline:

Tendenz : trend; red upwards arrow/increasing, green downwards arrow/decreasing
Station : reporting station
Abweichung vom Mittel : difference from 10-year average; left/below average, right/above average
Mittel (cm) : average, in centimetres
Aktuell (cm) : latest, in centimetres
Meldezeit (MESZ) : last reported measurement, Central European Daylight Time.

Viking is not a good source. Emails and called to get update on the last cruise regarding busing and excursions and they said they did not have that information. Very disappointed in Viking and frankly angry.

My newsfeeds report that low water levels are affecting almost all the big rivers of the northern hemisphere: Colorado, Rhone Rhine, Danube, Yangtze, etc.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-18/rhine-river-at-key-german-waypoint-set-to-rise-through-weekend

Looks like there could be improvement over the weekend.

I am sailing with Viking from Basel to Amsterdam. The Rhine is now open all the way. Today we had a beautiful day to see the castles, and we are now in Koblenz. We were very lucky because a ship docked by us yesterday going to Basel had to be bussed for 5 hrs to Strasbourg. I think that we were the first ship going to Amsterdam that made it through. In regards to notifying passengers ahead of time, our ship was not notified until the day before that we could make it through. We were told that it was very likely that we would be swapping ships. It has been a great trip and the staff are wonderful.