2022 Tour code: OBR22
About the tour
Take your seat for the world-famous Oberammergau Passion Play, held in the heart of Bavaria, then travel to Switzerland to begin a spectacular cruise that reveals the majesty of the Rhine River in all its fairytale glory. We'll also enjoy tickets to the Floriade flower show, another unique event which only occurs every ten years.
Highlights
What’s included
Itinerary: Basel - Amsterdam
Some departures run a reversed itinerary – View reversed Amsterdam - Basel itinerary (ORR22)
Itinerary: Amsterdam - Basel
You are viewing the reversed itinerary – switch back to Basel - Amsterdam itinerary (OBR22)
We meet at our dedicated Departure Office at London St Pancras where we board the Eurostar service to Brussels. From here, we join the rail service to Stuttgart. We spend the night here.
Today, meet your Tour Manager and the rest of your group at London St Pancras* before travelling on the Eurostar service to Amsterdam, where you'll be escorted to the ship. This evening, we enjoy a welcome cocktail before dinner this evening.
*If you would like to travel by air, view our Fly & Cruise option here.
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Reviews
3.0 / 5 · 18 reviews
J C DOWNING
Submitted 3/Aug
Our experience was marred by exhausting disrupted train journeys, inability to join the boat at Basel, an unexpected 3 hour coach journey to Mannheim, an unexpected 3 hour coach journey from Amsterdam to Brussels instead of a 1 hour train journey. Before we left there were multiple changes to the trip which were poorly communicated by phone and through the website portal with frequent inaccuracies as to dates and class of travel. Our tour manager Phil Orbell worked hard to manage these disappointments.
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Peter
Submitted 29/Jul
A superb holiday let down slightly by the "Butlins" approach of the Cruise Directors. The initial Tour Director (Philip Obell) was first class, as a guide he was brilliant but he really came into his own when issues arose with the health of one tour participant. His calm manner and approach resolved some very complicated issues. I cannot praise him highly enough. Sadly the Cruise Directors seemed to think the Cruise Participants needed to be jollied along. Not the approach I and other participants either wanted or needed. There were also ageist and sexist comments. Of a more suspect issue was the decision not to broadcast announcements into cabins, as not everyone was in communal areas. The boat crew were brilliant. One criticism of the boat was the lack of a lift to the very top deck. For persons of limited mobility this was unacceptable in a boat built less than 3 years ago.
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J Curtis
Submitted 30/Jun
The Oberammergau Passion Play was wonderful, but the much anticipated Rhine Cruise was a real disappointment. There were ongoing problems with river locks and we missed planned visits to both Strasbourg and Speyer due to the locks and associated docking issues - the real frustration was the lack of communication from both our Tour Guide and Captain and being stuck on board for over 40 hours with little explanation and just an ice cream and beer to keep us happy! As our boat cruises regularly back and forth along the Rhine, it is inconceivable that these issues were not apparent when we all joined the cruise as Basel. There were also issues travelling home from Amsterdam when we almost missed our Eurostar connection - for some reason travelling by bus to Brussels. All-in-all a very disappointing and not inexpensive holiday!
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Ian Willson
Submitted 29/Jun
Booking ref XXXXXX We have enjoyed several GRJ holidays over recent years, and our expectations of this one was that we were about to experience a similarly high standard. Although we have taken numerous excellent river cruises with another company in the past, we were expecting as good, of even better from Amadeus! Having met our excellent Tour Manager Iain Russell-Jarvie, we knew we were in good hands, especially as we were aware of the potential difficulties that could arise as a result of the rail disaster at Garmisch. Iain coped with these admirably, and our visit to the Passion Play was an amazing and memorable experience. Sadly, our 5-star cruise was disappointing in several ways; Iain had to leave the group after we embarked the Imperial, so we lost the tour leader assigned to our specific group for the duration of the cruise. A number of destinations had to be missed due to delays and alterations to the schedule; right from the start, our visit to Strasbourg was cancelled (as was the Black Forest trip looked forward to by many) we didn’t get to visit Speyer, and worst of all, we failed to make our Eurostar connection at Brussels on our homeward journey. We ourselves fared better than others of our group, in that on arrival at St. Pancras, we managed to scramble aboard a Leeds-bound train, which arrived ten minutes after our Harrogate train had departed. After a 90minute wait at Leeds we boarded the last train home (fortunately not cancelled) finally arriving at our door at half past midnight. Again.our original Tour Manager who returned to see us safely home, was on hand to sort out the mess as best as he was able. We had no complaints about the standard of the ship, facilities were good and the crew and food were excellent. Just a pity that the itinerary didn’t work well; we suggest that GRJ should stick to rail journeys which you do well, and leave cruising to the companies that specialise in cruising. Jean and Ian Willson
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DA
Submitted 29/Jun
While the play was fine and the cruise ship was very comfortable and elegant, the overall organisation of rail travel and cruise ship timings was not up to the standard we expect from Great Rail - too many delays, missed links and poor planning. Is this a result of people lost during the pandemic? Will they improve again in future? It all felt far too hand-to-mouth during the transfers
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Mr Ronald Sumner
Submitted 29/Jun
The first part of the holiday, the Passion Play was excellent was worth the lifetime's wait to experience it. Would have benefitted from a little more time in Oberammergau. The second week was the Rine Cruise, advertised as 5-star but did not match up to that level..Too many problems occurred with the itinerary and two excursions were missed. and, at the end, we came home with Covid. The bus journey from Amsterdam to Brussels was horrendous, resulting in missing our Eurostar service to London and having to wait 6 hours to be rebooked on "the next available service." Poor show by Eurostar
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Experience the theatre event of the decade before taking in the attractions of the majestic Rhine and attending the exclusive Floriade flower show
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