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Avalon Waterways, the river cruise
company that is part of the Globus Family of Brands, chose Amsterdam as the site
of its christening ceremony for Creativity, the company’s eighth new ship
in Europe since 2004.
The Creativity debuted only two
months after Avalon’s last new ship, the Affinity, set sail for the first time.
After its christening, Creativity set out on its first cruise, the Romantic
Rhine itinerary, an eight-day trip between Zürich and Amsterdam. In 2010 it will
move to France where it will sail the Grand France cruise.
Avalon’s newest ship is the latest in the ongoing evolution of river cruising.
Creativity embodies a combination of the elements that have proven to be
successful in the marketplace.
The river cruising product has
only taken hold in the American market since the early 1990s after the Main
Danube Canal was completed in 1992, making it possible to travel by river from
the Rhine delta at Rotterdam, Netherlands, to the Danube delta at the Black Sea.
Since then the product has grown in popularity by leaps and bounds, and the
handful of companies in the market are hustling to provide enough ships to
accommodate the demand.
The architecture of the new Creativity is fundamentally the same as that of the
Amalyra of AMA Waterways, on which I sailed a few months ago. The two ships have
different styles and interior designs, with some variations in features, but
they essentially have the same basic layout. These new entries represent how the
product is evolving through the ongoing interaction between suppliers and their
customers. The ships of other major competitors, such as Uniworld and Viking
River, also incorporate many of the same basic concepts.
The dimensions of river cruisers are determined by the size of the locks on the
canals. The canals are 12 meters wide, so at 11.4 meters in width the Creativity
is as large as it could possibly be and still get through the canals. It is 110
meters long and six meters high. The ship is long and pencil thin, with three
decks of accommodations and a sun deck on top that resembles a narrow football
field with gray and green Astroturf.
The Creativity is so long that it would be difficult to maneuver at all if it
had a traditional propeller/rudder steering system. But it has a pod propulsion
system, which enables it to maneuver with agility. Instead of pushing in one
direction and modifying the direction with rudders, the pods can effectively
propel the ship any direction the captain chooses, even straight sideways if
necessary.
The cabins in Creativity are spacious. Indeed, Avalon claims they are the
largest in the market. They would be small for a hotel room, but they are large
for a ship’s cabin. The official dimension is 172 square feet and suites are 258
square feet. There is a real bathroom with a real shower. A sliding glass door
with railing effectively turns your little living room into a balcony.
Staterooms are finished with a nice warm, red and brown carpet, a functional
desk built into the wall, a plush bed, a colorful painting, plenty of closet
space and a flat-screen TV. The ship also has a fitness room, library, hair
salon, gift shop, Jacuzzi, club room, sky deck, and, of course, a large
restaurant with open seating.
Like ocean cruising, river cruising has the advantage of not requiring its
passengers to pack up and move from city to city and river cruising has the
advantage of taking you right into the hearts of the cities. You can open up
your sliding glass picture window, or even go up on the sun deck and see the
landscape without even a pane of glass obstructing you.
River cruising is the tour industry’s secret weapon for targeting the vast
numbers of dedicated cruisers who take a cruise every year or so. The aquatic
aspect of the river cruise product is familiar to people who take ocean voyages.
In fact on a small ship you are much closer to the sailing lore than you are on
a vast vessel that is more like a floating hotel than an actual sailing
experience.
River cruising also is a good product for people who have never bought into the
escorted tours model. In many ways, the river cruise culture has more in common
with escorted touring than big ship cruising. It is destination-focused, not
ship-focused. The ships are surrounded by land at all times. On a river cruise
you are always at the destination. You don’t just visit for a little while and
then go out onto the vast blue sea again for most of your time.
Besides the sailing experience, however, what river cruises share with big
cruises is the freedom to unpack once and not worry about it again till you are
going home. |
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