AmaViola

AmaViola and AmaStella were christened at Vilshofen on the same June day in 2016 and are, as hulls, the same ship: 443 feet, seventy-eight staterooms, 156 guests, fifty-one crew, four decks named Sun, Violin, Cello and Piano. Anyone telling you there is a meaningful difference in the fit-out is guessing. The two real differences are what she was built to carry and where she now goes.

The family ship

When AmaWaterways introduced her, AmaViola was the boat configured for multi-generational travel. She was given connecting staterooms (a genuine rarity on a river vessel, where the hull is one cabin wide on each side and the plumbing does not want to cooperate), and a set of rooms that sleep three rather than two. She was the ship AmaWaterways put behind its family departures, including the Adventures by Disney Danube weeks, which is the reason the configuration exists at all.

That matters more on a river than at sea. A standard river stateroom is 155 to 235 square feet with two beds and no sofa; there is no such thing as a family suite and no third or fourth berth folding out of the ceiling. On most boats in Europe a family of four books two cabins with a corridor between them. On this one they can book two that open into each other. If you are traveling with children, that single fact is worth more than anything else on this page.

The rest of the ship is the fleet standard and is good: twin balconies in the suites and upper categories, meaning a French balcony and a separate step-out veranda in the same room; a heated pool on the Sun Deck; bicycles carried aboard and lent out for nothing in port; a fitness room, a massage room and a salon; and three places to eat; the Main Restaurant, The Chef’s Table with its open kitchen and set menu, and the open-air Al Fresco Terrace.

Where she actually sails

The Rhine and the Dutch waterways, at seven nights, and nothing else. Her bookable schedule is Enchanting Rhine and Captivating Rhine between Amsterdam and Basel, and Tulip Time round-trips on the Dutch and Belgian canals in spring, with around nine in ten of her departures leaving from Amsterdam.

This is the clean split with her twin. AmaStella also runs the fourteen-night Amsterdam-to-Budapest transit through the Main–Danube Canal; AmaViola does not run a single sailing longer than a week. If you want the Danube, or the long crossing of the continent, she is not the ship, whatever the line’s general fleet description says about the rivers she is capable of.

Who she suits

Families and groups, first; she is the one with the connecting rooms and the three-berth staterooms, and on this river that is a short list. Also anyone who wants a single week rather than a fortnight: the Rhine between Amsterdam and Basel packs four countries, the gorge and the castles into seven nights, and it is the most efficient European river itinerary there is.

She does not suit anyone who wants the long haul, because she does not offer one. She does not suit passengers hoping for a children’s program, a kids’ club or anything to occupy a bored eleven-year-old on a rainy afternoon; the cabins accommodate families, the ship does not entertain them, and the evening amounts to live music in the lounge. And in the spring Tulip Time weeks the Dutch canals are flat, short and heavy on tulip fields; that is exactly what some people want and it is a long way from the Rhine gorge.