American Symphony

American Symphony is the fifth of American Cruise Lines’ modern riverboats, a clean-lined vessel rather than a paddlewheel replica, built at Chesapeake Shipbuilding in Salisbury, Maryland, delivered in August 2022 and christened at Natchez on the thirtieth of that month, three days into her maiden voyage. She carries 175 guests in ninety-one staterooms over five decks, and is US-built, US-flagged and US-crewed, which is not a boast but the legal condition of carrying passengers between two American ports at all.

What separates her from her sisters

The atrium. A four-story glass-walled vestibule runs up through the middle of the ship under a pair of glass roofs, which is an unusual thing to spend space on at this size and is the first thing anyone notices coming aboard. Above it, the fifth-deck skywalk carries an ellipse that cantilevers over the Ellipse Café one deck down.

She goes to sea, more or less. American Symphony runs a Gulf Coast itinerary between New Orleans and Pensacola, Mobile, Biloxi, Gulfport, Ocean Springs and a call at Ship Island out in the Mississippi Sound. A riverboat working salt water is unusual anywhere, and on this fleet it is close to unique. It is also not a sideline: the Gulf week is the single largest block on her calendar.

She is the fleet’s generalist. Her sisters mostly specialize: one river, one season, one week repeated. Symphony does not. Over a year she works the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Ohio, the lower and upper Mississippi and the Arkansas, which is very nearly every navigable mile American Cruise Lines sells.

The bow opens. Like the rest of the modern class she carries a retractable bow gangway, so she can land directly on a levee or a riverbank without any port infrastructure. Vicksburg and Natchez are a step off the bow rather than a bus ride from a terminal.

What she actually sails

Her year has two halves and they do not resemble each other.

Winter and early spring: the Gulf Coast. A week or so between New Orleans and Pensacola, run in both directions from late autumn through April, calling at Mobile, Biloxi, Gulfport, Ocean Springs and Ship Island. This is the largest single itinerary she has and it is the reason a boat filed under rivers keeps turning up in a Southeast search.

The rest of the year: everything else with a lock in it. The Tennessee Rivers cruise between Chattanooga and Nashville is the biggest of them, a week and a bit through Florence, Decatur and Savannah, Tennessee, up a river almost nobody else cruises. The Ohio run from Louisville to Pittsburgh is close behind, calling at Madison, Cincinnati and Marietta over eight or nine nights. Then the Lower Mississippi between Memphis and New Orleans, the classic week of this fleet, with Vicksburg, Natchez, Baton Rouge and Oak Alley; a shorter round trip out of New Orleans for people who want the antebellum stretch without the repositioning; the Music Cities run from Memphis to Nashville by way of Paducah, Dover and Clarksville, which leaves the Mississippi for the Ohio and then the Cumberland; a stretch up the Arkansas from Tulsa to Little Rock; and an occasional upper-river week from St. Louis to St. Paul.

Two further things are worth knowing. She carries an eleven-night Smoky Mountains itinerary between Knoxville and Nashville with a day in the national park, which is as far up the Tennessee as passenger traffic goes. And she is one of the boats the line uses for its fifteen-night grand voyages, St. Paul to New Orleans down the whole Mississippi, Pittsburgh to St. Louis down the whole Ohio, New Orleans to Nashville by way of the Cumberland. Those appear a few times a year rather than weekly, and they are the deepest itineraries in American river cruising.

Life aboard

Ninety-one staterooms, all outside, all with a private balcony: the fare columns for inside cabins are empty for this line because the cabins do not exist. They run from 250 square feet for a solo studio to 650 for a Grand Suite. There is a River Lounge on the third deck, a Sky Lounge on the fourth, the Ellipse Café, a single-seating dining room serving regional cooking, a fitness room, a yoga studio and a walking track on the sun deck. No casino, no theater, no second seating, and an evening that is a lecture or a local musician rather than a production show.

Who she suits

People who want the river towns of the American South at a slow pace, with the shore program included and an average passenger age well above an ocean ship’s. Getting on and off is easy throughout: alongside berths or a bow gangway, an elevator to every deck, no tenders anywhere in the schedule. She is also the right boat for a repeat customer: somebody who has already done the Lower Mississippi can come back to this same hull and crew and get the Tennessee, the Ohio or the Gulf without learning a new ship.

Not the ship for families, for anyone who wants a choice of restaurants, or for a traveler who needs something to do after nine in the evening. And the Gulf Coast week, for all that it is the interesting one, is the itinerary where a shallow-draft river hull meets coastal water; anyone unhappy in a swell should take one of her river weeks instead, where the worst motion of the day is a towboat’s wake.