American Song

American Song is the ship that started the series. When she came out of Chesapeake Shipbuilding in Salisbury, Maryland in 2018, nothing like her existed on American rivers: the domestic river fleet was paddlewheel boats and paddlewheel replicas, and she was a flat-sided, squared-off, contemporary hull with a four-story glass atrium and a domed skylight through the middle of it. She was the first contemporary riverboat built in the United States, and every ship in the line’s modern riverboat line (Harmony, Jazz, Melody, Symphony, Serenade, Encore, and the Anthem, Grace and Beauty still to come) is a descendant of this hull.

She carries 180 guests over five decks. Every stateroom is an outside one with a private balcony; inside cabins do not exist on this line and never have.

What was new about her

Three things, and they are the three every sister has inherited.

The glass. The lounges sit forty feet above the water with something like triple the glazing of the paddlewheelers, and the atrium runs four stories up through the center of the ship under a domed skylight. On a boat this size that is an extraordinary amount of space to give to a vestibule, and it is the first thing anyone notices coming aboard.

The bow. It opens hydraulically and puts out a retractable gangway from the Main Deck, so she can nose into a bank and land 180 people where there is no dock, no pier and no port authority at all. On the Columbia and on the Mississippi alike, that is the feature that decides which stops are possible.

The drive. She is pushed by a pair of Veth azimuth thrusters, one forward and one aft, rather than shafts and rudders. Three-hundred-and-sixty-degree propulsion at both ends is why a 180-guest boat can be laid against a riverbank in a current without tugs.

Aboard: the River Lounge for the daily cocktail hour and the evening program, a Sky Lounge up top, the Back Porch Café for grilled lunches, one restaurant with a single open seating and everything cooked to order, an outdoor walking track, a fitness center and an elevator to every passenger deck. Cabins run from 250 square feet for a single with a balcony through 275 and 300 square feet for standard and deluxe rooms up to the 515-square-foot Sky Suite, which has two glass walls and a twenty-five-foot wraparound balcony.

Her cabins are noticeably smaller than the newest ships in her own family. The 2026 generation starts around 300 square feet where she starts at 250, and American Encore carries a single suite four times the size of her Sky Suite. That is eight years of iteration showing, and it is the honest way to place her in the fleet.

Where she actually sails

She debuted on the Mississippi out of New Orleans in the fall of 2018 and moved to the Pacific Northwest in 2019, and the Northwest is where she has stayed. Her whole schedule now leaves from one place, Portland, Oregon.

Almost all of it is the eight-night Columbia and Snake Rivers cruise, Portland upstream to Clarkston, Washington: Astoria near the river mouth, then Kalama, The Dalles, Richland, Pendleton and Lewiston, ending at Clarkston under the lip of Hells Canyon. It is one-way and it is upstream, out through the Columbia River Gorge and into the wheat country of eastern Washington, and a large share of the mileage is spent locking through dams rather than running open water.

The only other thing she sells is the fortnight-long National Parks and Legendary Rivers itinerary, which begins on the same water and then goes ashore for good, coach and lodge through Glacier National Park, Yellowstone and Grand Teton, finishing at Jackson, Wyoming. Understand what that is before booking it: it is a land tour with a river cruise on the front, not a longer cruise.

She is the strictest of the modern riverboats about this river. Her sisters on the Columbia mostly keep a short Gorge loop on the books for people who want a long weekend; she does not. Eight nights is the shortest thing she sells, and her season runs spring to early November before she lays up for the winter.

Who she suits

Somebody who wants the Columbia and the Snake with a balcony to watch them from and does not need the ship to be new. The product is the same one the whole fleet sells: an American crew, no passport, one open seating, the shore excursions and the drinks with meals and the gratuities inside the fare, and a lecturer or a local musician in the evening rather than a show.

She is wrong for families, wrong for anyone who wants a choice of restaurant or anything to do after nine, and wrong for anyone shopping on square footage; her younger sisters beat her on that comfortably and cost accordingly. She is also wrong for anyone who wants a short trip or a second river. Several of the hulls on this same run will sell you five or six nights in the Gorge; this one will not, and she goes nowhere else.