AmaPrima

AmaPrima is the ship in this fleet that does not stay on one river. Her schedule sends her onto the Rhine, the Main, the Moselle and the Main-Danube Canal, sometimes inside the same week, and one of her regular embarkation points is Wasserbillig, a Luxembourg village at the mouth of the Sûre that exists on very few cruise schedules. That is the whole case for choosing her.

Same box, ninth category

She is the fourth of the 443-foot Concerto hulls, delivered by Vahali in 2013 and christened at Vilshofen in Germany. Physically she is what the class always is: 443 feet by 38 feet because the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal will not take anything wider than 11.45 meters, three accommodation decks under a Sun Deck, twin balconies (one French, one step-out) on most cabins above the waterline, and fixed windows on the Piano Deck below it.

Where she is not quite standard is the cabin plan. She has nine stateroom categories against eight on most of the class, and the extra one is AA+, at 290 square feet. That matters because her suites are 300 square feet. On this ship the gap between the top stateroom and the suite is ten square feet and a bathtub, which makes the suite an unusually poor value and the AA+ an unusually good one. On AmaVerde and AmaMora, where suites run 350 square feet, the arithmetic is completely different.

The elevator reaches Violin and Cello Decks and nothing else. Piano Deck and the Sun Deck are stairs, on this ship and on every 2010s hull in the class.

Four rivers in seven nights

The itinerary that defines her is Europe’s Rivers & Castles, which runs between Luxembourg and Nuremberg and touches the Moselle, the Rhine, the Main and the Main-Danube Canal in a week. That is more lock cycles than most river cruises attempt, and the Moselle leg is the part people remember: the river is narrow and slow and turns constantly, the Riesling terraces come down to the water, and the boat spends real time in places like Bernkastel and Trier rather than running overnight between capitals.

The rest of her year is the Rhine between Amsterdam and Basel, the Dutch and Belgian waterways in tulip season, and a small number of longer sailings that push out to eleven nights. Her booked homeports reflect exactly that mix: mostly Amsterdam and Basel, with a solid block at Wasserbillig and a handful at Nuremberg for the canal itineraries.

Compared with her sisters, this is the more restless deployment. AmaSerena and AmaVenita shuttle the Rhine on a seven-night metronome. AmaPrima keeps leaving it.

Who she suits

Anyone who has already done the Rhine and wants the tributaries. The Moselle and the Main are the reason to pick this hull, and the Luxembourg embarkation makes a genuinely different trip out of the same ship and the same crew.

She does not suit anyone who dislikes locks. Four rivers in a week means a great many of them, often at night, and a lock cycle is not silent. She does not suit guests who need an elevator to their stateroom unless they book Violin or Cello Deck. And if you want a suite, look at the AA+ first and then ask what the extra money is buying.