AmaReina

AmaReina is the senior ship of AmaWaterways’ 443-foot European standard, the hull the company has repeated more than a dozen times since 2011. She came out of Vahali Shipyards in Serbia in 2014, and the numbers she carries are the ones that define the type: 443 feet long, roughly 38 feet across, four decks, three of them with cabins.

Those two dimensions are not design choices. A ship that wants to run the Rhine, the Main and the Danube in one season has to fit the locks that connect them, and the locks decide the length and the beam before an architect touches anything. Every 443-foot ship in this fleet is the same size for the same reason, and the interesting differences between them are all inside.

What sets her apart from her own sisters

She carries more people. Eighty-one staterooms and 162 guests, against 156 on AmaSiena and 152 on AmaKristina, on an identical hull. The company has spent the last decade quietly taking cabins out of this design and making the remaining ones bigger, and AmaReina is from before that started. In practice she is a slightly busier ship, with fifty-one crew covering more guests than the same fifty-one cover on the newer boats.

What she gets for it is range. Nine stateroom categories is the widest ladder in this batch, from 170 sq ft riverview rooms at the bottom through the 235 sq ft twin-balcony standard, a 290 sq ft AA+ grade, and suites at 300. Most rooms and all the suites have the twin balcony, a French balcony and a small step-out veranda in the same cabin, which is the one feature AmaWaterways genuinely owns in this market.

The sun deck has a heated pool and a walking track, and she carries bicycles for guided or independent riding ashore, which on the Danube’s towpaths is a real part of the product rather than a listed amenity. Dining is the main restaurant and The Chef’s Table. The elevator does not reach the sun deck.

Where she actually sails

The Danube, and the canal that leads to it. Her schedule runs three seven-night products (Romantic Danube, Melodies of the Danube and Blue Danube Discovery) between Budapest, Vilshofen and Nuremberg, through Austria, Germany, Slovakia and Hungary.

The Nuremberg end is the one worth understanding. Nuremberg is not on the Danube. It sits on the Main-Danube Canal, the waterway cut through the hills of Bavaria to join the Rhine basin to the Danube basin, and a ship working up to it climbs over the European continental divide by lock staircase and then descends the other side. It is the least scenic stretch of any of these itineraries and the most impressive piece of engineering on them, and it is the reason the Danube and the Rhine are one cruising region rather than two.

Budapest is the other anchor, and it is the reason to book the ship at all: the approach at night, with the Parliament lit from the water, is the single best arrival in European river cruising.

Who she suits

First-time river cruisers, mainly. The Danube week is the standard-bearer of the category (four countries, Vienna and Budapest, a manageable amount of walking), and this is a well-worked-out ship for it, with a wider range of cabin grades than her newer sisters if the budget is tight at one end or generous at the other.

She is the wrong choice if you want the least crowded version of this hull; AmaKristina and AmaSiena are the same size with ten to twenty fewer people aboard. She is wrong for anyone who wants the ship itself to be the entertainment; there is one lounge, one pool and no theater, and the evening is a pianist. And she is wrong for a traveler who dislikes being organized: the excursions are guided, included and scheduled, and the day starts when the coaches do.