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- Jan 7, 2005
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We are Platinum Castaway members, but our interest in seeing more of the country and world than DCL serves led us to book an American Cruise Lines Lower Mississippi Civil War-themed cruise. It was difficult to find any ACL trip reports, so I hope that this one is helpful others who are also interested in river cruising in the USA.
Let me start with the cost. ACL is expensive. The full price for a premium balcony cabin for two on our cruise was $13,150, which was certainly a lot for a seven-day cruise with a one-night stay at a hotel beforehand. I didn’t see any travel agents working with ACL offering deals, so I decided to call their reservation department and negotiate with them. The agent gave me a $1,000 discount, so I booked the cruise. It was fifteen-months out at this point, and as we got closer to the cruise, I noticed that they were now offering free round-trip airfare. I called again, explained that I had already booked airfare but wanted that discount, and they credited another $700. Even after these negotiations, we were still paying about $1600 per night, so my expectations were set accordingly.
Reviews all agreed that the typical ACL guest is elderly. DW and I are in our mid (her)- to late (me)- 50’s. I don’t want to be ageist, but on our cruise, we were by far the youngest of any guest not accompanying parents or in-laws. I could give many examples of how the majority of guests on our cruise at reached their dotage, but one of the most memorable was how one of the crew working the Back Porch Café, where they served a continental breakfast with two hot options each day, had to lead an orientation on how to use the fully-automated espresso machine (as in, push the picture of the drink you want and then put a cup under the nozzle).
The elderly clientele influenced many aspects of the cruise starting with dining. Every dish was bland. The chicken salad sandwich at the Back Porch Café, for example, was completely flavorless, ditto the guacamole. Sauces tended to be creamy and bland. I can only assume these decisions were informed by the dietary preferences of its guests.
The problems with dining extended far beyond the quality of its food. ACL justifies its high price in part because it includes tips. The resulting service was so poor that we sought out every opportunity to eat a meal when in port. In the ship’s restaurant, we had to consistently ask multiple times to get any refills, iced tea or even just water. Worse yet was the one time we mistakenly went to the restaurant for breakfast. DW ordered two sunny-side-up eggs, and I ordered an omelet with two sides and coffee. The server disappeared after providing the coffee and then returned quickly with my omelet. After ten or so minutes, DW’s eggs still hadn’t appeared nor had the sides for my omelet. With the server still MIA, I waved over the manager to ask what happened. She told me that the omelet station is separate from the egg station but that she would check into it and provide me with a refill of my coffee. Some time after finishing my eggs, I got my sides, and DW got her eggs.
The Back Porch Café is open for breakfast and lunch, but only the restaurant is open for dinner. There is open seating. At least during our cruise, there were only three two-tops, a few more four-tops, but most tables were either six- or eight-tops. The restaurant is open from 5:30-7:30, and when we went the first night at 6:30, we figured that we could sit at a vacant two-top. The server chastised us initially and explained that we had to sit at a table that was set, which led us to an eight-top occupied by another couple. The husband was a Cliff Clavin-type who immediately disparaged our state, bragged that this was his sixth cruise which resulted in his being upgraded to a suite, and then bizarrely boasted that the obstetrician who delivered him was the brother of a famous composer Richard Rogers (he actually said playwright in typical Cliff Clavin-form, and I couldn’t resist correcting him). There were on their dessert course when we joined them at least, but the server was so bad that Cliff’s wife had not been served her dessert by the time that he had almost finished his, so he stayed longer than he would have otherwise. The server later agreed when we were alone that we could sit at a table that hadn’t been set as long as we didn’t mind eating off a dirty tablecloth, since they won’t reset a table after a guest leaves. We were successful in avoiding having to sit with others either by successfully finding a two-top with its original setting or taking one of the four-tops farthest away from the entrance.
The poor service extended to housekeeping. There was a feature on the door where you turn a wheel to indicate your selection of do not disturb, maid service, or a neutral selection. One morning I mistakenly set the wheel to do not disturb, which I noticed when we got back from our excursion. I set it to maid service, and we went to lunch. When we came back, the room hadn’t been serviced. When I mentioned it to the housekeeper, she practically snapped, “The room was set to DND, and we don’t make rooms after 1:30.” I had changed the setting prior to 1:30, but there was no point to arguing. A turn-down service is also included, but any notions of towel animals and bedside chocolates was quickly dispelled. The only way to know that a turn-down service had ever occurred was that they closed the drapes. Housekeeping also emptied the trash cans and sometimes pulled the comforter back.
The menus themselves were limited. At the Back Porch, it never changed from day to day. The lunch menu features a soup of the day, and when DW asked the crew member what the soup of the day was on the first day, he responded that it was clam chowder and added, “It’s supposed to change each day, but to be honest, it’s going to be clam chowder every day.” The breakfast menu did feature a sandwich which changed each day, as did the fruits. Some days there were caramelized bananas, which were a treat, and other days there were half-grapefruits; however, there were no grapefruit spoons, so they were impossible to eat. Apparently it would have been too much to serve them in sections as they do on DCL. The restaurant’s dinner menu featured only a soup and salad as appetizer. There were usually four entrees from which to choose, a meat, fish, poultry, and vegetarian option. The most curious thing about the menu items was that they never served anything fried. When I asked the chef about it, he replied that they can’t have any open flames on the ship, and all their appliances have to be electric. I guess ACL didn’t want to spring for an electric deep fryer?
The elderly clientele also influenced the entertainment. On this cruise, the enrichment and almost all of the entertainment were provided by a husband and wife duo, Bill Wiemuth and Laura Sable. They run a site called historyhighlights.com, where they sell books which form the basis of Bill’s lectures advertised as “Fascinating [sic] True Stories in Less Than 100 Pages.” Bill’s lectures were part infomercials for their site and its merchandise and part opportunities for him to chew up the scenery by reciting passages from Mark Twain or acting out some of the historical events he was presenting. When Bill wasn’t “lecturing,” he could be found on the keyboards, singing along with his wife as part the nightly happy hour and evening entertainment. The caliber of their singing skills was probably consistent with that of performers at senior centers and was definitely less than I would have expected or hoped based on the exorbitant price of this cruise.
The final way that the clientele influenced the cruise was in the excursions. I don’t mean just the slowness in getting on and off the buses, but the kinds of excursions offered. ACL had four buses for this cruise which would meet us at each port, and there would be up to four different excursions in the morning and four in the afternoon. Having their own buses meant that some excursions were completely free, and those were the ones for the least mobile people. The other excursions still involved taking one of the buses but also involved some walking. There was only one walking tour which did not involve taking a bus. We took that excursion, and the tour guide explained that initially the tour was a 2 1/2-hour walking tour but that the ACL asked them to modify it to a three-hour walking tour with multiple stops for people to rest. As a result, the typical excursion involved a long bus ride combined with shorter stops for tours. There were exceptions, but even the large size of the bus meant that there were less opportunities for asking questions and interacting with the guides than you have with small-group excursions on smaller buses.
The week was not without positive experiences. The salaried crew members were uniformly friendly. On embarkation day, Captain Andy greeted all guests upon boarding, saying to me, “Good to see you,” like we were old friends instead of two people meeting for the first time. Our cruise director, Austin “Buzz” Buzzard, was a constant source of amusement, imparting his announcements with “tootles” and other folksy and outdated expressions. He and the assistant manager Julio, who I never saw break his deadpan expression, were always present when we left and returned from excursions. Julio scanned us in and out, addressing us each by name in his salutations.
There was one aspect to ACL which for DW made this line best in class for any cruise ship: the fitness center was open 24/7. It consisted of two rooms well-supplied with treadmills, elliptical machines, stationary bikes, weights, and Pilates balls. If she couldn’t sleep, she was glad to be able to go to the gym at 5 AM or even earlier. The ship also has a walking/jogging track on the top deck. My preference is to use jogging tracks, not treadmills, so the first morning at 6, I hit the track. The track is not particularly long and takes 11 laps to make a mile. In fact, it was so short, I was almost getting a little dizzy from running in circles. I was joined for a while by a couple who were walking and crew members working. After 40 minutes, the same Cliff Clavin from the night before came upstairs to yell at me, asking if I thought I owned the ship, that this was his sixth cruise, that I was disturbing all of the guests staying in the suites, which were all immediately under the top deck, and that I couldn’t use the deck until 8. I then went downstairs to the Back Porch Café where Julio, who impressively seemed to be always on duty and available, told me that in fact that deck did not open until 8. I then I overheard another suite guest complain to him about the noise that I had caused. Later in the cruise, I saw a small sign posted by the door saying that the jogging deck was only open from 8 am to 8 pm. From that point onward, I used a treadmill, and I can’t imagine ACL will ever receive a complaint about insufficient equipment or overcrowding in their fitness center.
The ship provided free WiFi; however, it usually was no faster than 8 Mbps. However, the ship frequently passed areas with strong enough 5G coverage to get our speed up into the 20s. The stateroom was large, with a full bathroom and shower with a rainshower and handheld combo. There was an impressively large TV, and it was easy to set up my Apple lightning HDMI adapter to stream shows and movies.
The cruise gave us the opportunity to visit parts of the country that we likely would never have otherwise seen. The town of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was particularly fascinating. The town’s museum in a converted courthouse includes a multi-room shrine to Jefferson Davis, a man who, as related by Erik Larson in his new book, “The Demon of Unrest,” took his second wife during their honeymoon to visit the gravesite of his first wife. It was pretty shocking in this day and age to see this in a museum:
There were even moments which reminded us of Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood. Our first antebellum mansion excursion was about two miles from where the ship had docked, so DW and I decided to walk back rather than take the bus. We came upon this wonderful mural in tribute to It’s a Small World:
In Vacherie, Louisiana, we took a Cajun Pride swamp adventure in a pontoon boat reminiscent of the Jungle Cruise. Here was our skipper:
He mentioned that there are only alligators in Louisiana, but we passed by a child’s croc shoe floating in the water. Not missing a beat, our skipper informed us, “Here’s our only croc. He’s been here a year and has been really thriving. We’re really proud of him.” No Jungle Cruise skipper couldn’t have managed it better.
Finally, Vicksburg was a pretty impoverished town, with many buildings in disrepair and unable to be torn down for historic reasons. As a result, this house was still standing and had me wondering if Norman Bates was creeping around:
The views from our stateroom and verandah were mostly unpleasant for the duration of the trip. Until we passed Baton Rouge, it was nothing but container ship after cargo ship. The water remained murky, but we then had unobstructed views of bare trees, all of their leaves already have fallen. However, as we were docked in Memphis, a full moon finally gave us a visual worth remembering of the mighty Mississippi River:
Another favorite memory is the local who, seeing my Disney “LA Strong” shirt in reference to our recent wildfires, jokingly called out to me, “LA. Is that Lower Alabama?” I still chuckle when I recall it.
Let me start with the cost. ACL is expensive. The full price for a premium balcony cabin for two on our cruise was $13,150, which was certainly a lot for a seven-day cruise with a one-night stay at a hotel beforehand. I didn’t see any travel agents working with ACL offering deals, so I decided to call their reservation department and negotiate with them. The agent gave me a $1,000 discount, so I booked the cruise. It was fifteen-months out at this point, and as we got closer to the cruise, I noticed that they were now offering free round-trip airfare. I called again, explained that I had already booked airfare but wanted that discount, and they credited another $700. Even after these negotiations, we were still paying about $1600 per night, so my expectations were set accordingly.
Reviews all agreed that the typical ACL guest is elderly. DW and I are in our mid (her)- to late (me)- 50’s. I don’t want to be ageist, but on our cruise, we were by far the youngest of any guest not accompanying parents or in-laws. I could give many examples of how the majority of guests on our cruise at reached their dotage, but one of the most memorable was how one of the crew working the Back Porch Café, where they served a continental breakfast with two hot options each day, had to lead an orientation on how to use the fully-automated espresso machine (as in, push the picture of the drink you want and then put a cup under the nozzle).
The elderly clientele influenced many aspects of the cruise starting with dining. Every dish was bland. The chicken salad sandwich at the Back Porch Café, for example, was completely flavorless, ditto the guacamole. Sauces tended to be creamy and bland. I can only assume these decisions were informed by the dietary preferences of its guests.
The problems with dining extended far beyond the quality of its food. ACL justifies its high price in part because it includes tips. The resulting service was so poor that we sought out every opportunity to eat a meal when in port. In the ship’s restaurant, we had to consistently ask multiple times to get any refills, iced tea or even just water. Worse yet was the one time we mistakenly went to the restaurant for breakfast. DW ordered two sunny-side-up eggs, and I ordered an omelet with two sides and coffee. The server disappeared after providing the coffee and then returned quickly with my omelet. After ten or so minutes, DW’s eggs still hadn’t appeared nor had the sides for my omelet. With the server still MIA, I waved over the manager to ask what happened. She told me that the omelet station is separate from the egg station but that she would check into it and provide me with a refill of my coffee. Some time after finishing my eggs, I got my sides, and DW got her eggs.
The Back Porch Café is open for breakfast and lunch, but only the restaurant is open for dinner. There is open seating. At least during our cruise, there were only three two-tops, a few more four-tops, but most tables were either six- or eight-tops. The restaurant is open from 5:30-7:30, and when we went the first night at 6:30, we figured that we could sit at a vacant two-top. The server chastised us initially and explained that we had to sit at a table that was set, which led us to an eight-top occupied by another couple. The husband was a Cliff Clavin-type who immediately disparaged our state, bragged that this was his sixth cruise which resulted in his being upgraded to a suite, and then bizarrely boasted that the obstetrician who delivered him was the brother of a famous composer Richard Rogers (he actually said playwright in typical Cliff Clavin-form, and I couldn’t resist correcting him). There were on their dessert course when we joined them at least, but the server was so bad that Cliff’s wife had not been served her dessert by the time that he had almost finished his, so he stayed longer than he would have otherwise. The server later agreed when we were alone that we could sit at a table that hadn’t been set as long as we didn’t mind eating off a dirty tablecloth, since they won’t reset a table after a guest leaves. We were successful in avoiding having to sit with others either by successfully finding a two-top with its original setting or taking one of the four-tops farthest away from the entrance.
The poor service extended to housekeeping. There was a feature on the door where you turn a wheel to indicate your selection of do not disturb, maid service, or a neutral selection. One morning I mistakenly set the wheel to do not disturb, which I noticed when we got back from our excursion. I set it to maid service, and we went to lunch. When we came back, the room hadn’t been serviced. When I mentioned it to the housekeeper, she practically snapped, “The room was set to DND, and we don’t make rooms after 1:30.” I had changed the setting prior to 1:30, but there was no point to arguing. A turn-down service is also included, but any notions of towel animals and bedside chocolates was quickly dispelled. The only way to know that a turn-down service had ever occurred was that they closed the drapes. Housekeeping also emptied the trash cans and sometimes pulled the comforter back.
The menus themselves were limited. At the Back Porch, it never changed from day to day. The lunch menu features a soup of the day, and when DW asked the crew member what the soup of the day was on the first day, he responded that it was clam chowder and added, “It’s supposed to change each day, but to be honest, it’s going to be clam chowder every day.” The breakfast menu did feature a sandwich which changed each day, as did the fruits. Some days there were caramelized bananas, which were a treat, and other days there were half-grapefruits; however, there were no grapefruit spoons, so they were impossible to eat. Apparently it would have been too much to serve them in sections as they do on DCL. The restaurant’s dinner menu featured only a soup and salad as appetizer. There were usually four entrees from which to choose, a meat, fish, poultry, and vegetarian option. The most curious thing about the menu items was that they never served anything fried. When I asked the chef about it, he replied that they can’t have any open flames on the ship, and all their appliances have to be electric. I guess ACL didn’t want to spring for an electric deep fryer?
The elderly clientele also influenced the entertainment. On this cruise, the enrichment and almost all of the entertainment were provided by a husband and wife duo, Bill Wiemuth and Laura Sable. They run a site called historyhighlights.com, where they sell books which form the basis of Bill’s lectures advertised as “Fascinating [sic] True Stories in Less Than 100 Pages.” Bill’s lectures were part infomercials for their site and its merchandise and part opportunities for him to chew up the scenery by reciting passages from Mark Twain or acting out some of the historical events he was presenting. When Bill wasn’t “lecturing,” he could be found on the keyboards, singing along with his wife as part the nightly happy hour and evening entertainment. The caliber of their singing skills was probably consistent with that of performers at senior centers and was definitely less than I would have expected or hoped based on the exorbitant price of this cruise.
The final way that the clientele influenced the cruise was in the excursions. I don’t mean just the slowness in getting on and off the buses, but the kinds of excursions offered. ACL had four buses for this cruise which would meet us at each port, and there would be up to four different excursions in the morning and four in the afternoon. Having their own buses meant that some excursions were completely free, and those were the ones for the least mobile people. The other excursions still involved taking one of the buses but also involved some walking. There was only one walking tour which did not involve taking a bus. We took that excursion, and the tour guide explained that initially the tour was a 2 1/2-hour walking tour but that the ACL asked them to modify it to a three-hour walking tour with multiple stops for people to rest. As a result, the typical excursion involved a long bus ride combined with shorter stops for tours. There were exceptions, but even the large size of the bus meant that there were less opportunities for asking questions and interacting with the guides than you have with small-group excursions on smaller buses.
The week was not without positive experiences. The salaried crew members were uniformly friendly. On embarkation day, Captain Andy greeted all guests upon boarding, saying to me, “Good to see you,” like we were old friends instead of two people meeting for the first time. Our cruise director, Austin “Buzz” Buzzard, was a constant source of amusement, imparting his announcements with “tootles” and other folksy and outdated expressions. He and the assistant manager Julio, who I never saw break his deadpan expression, were always present when we left and returned from excursions. Julio scanned us in and out, addressing us each by name in his salutations.
There was one aspect to ACL which for DW made this line best in class for any cruise ship: the fitness center was open 24/7. It consisted of two rooms well-supplied with treadmills, elliptical machines, stationary bikes, weights, and Pilates balls. If she couldn’t sleep, she was glad to be able to go to the gym at 5 AM or even earlier. The ship also has a walking/jogging track on the top deck. My preference is to use jogging tracks, not treadmills, so the first morning at 6, I hit the track. The track is not particularly long and takes 11 laps to make a mile. In fact, it was so short, I was almost getting a little dizzy from running in circles. I was joined for a while by a couple who were walking and crew members working. After 40 minutes, the same Cliff Clavin from the night before came upstairs to yell at me, asking if I thought I owned the ship, that this was his sixth cruise, that I was disturbing all of the guests staying in the suites, which were all immediately under the top deck, and that I couldn’t use the deck until 8. I then went downstairs to the Back Porch Café where Julio, who impressively seemed to be always on duty and available, told me that in fact that deck did not open until 8. I then I overheard another suite guest complain to him about the noise that I had caused. Later in the cruise, I saw a small sign posted by the door saying that the jogging deck was only open from 8 am to 8 pm. From that point onward, I used a treadmill, and I can’t imagine ACL will ever receive a complaint about insufficient equipment or overcrowding in their fitness center.
The ship provided free WiFi; however, it usually was no faster than 8 Mbps. However, the ship frequently passed areas with strong enough 5G coverage to get our speed up into the 20s. The stateroom was large, with a full bathroom and shower with a rainshower and handheld combo. There was an impressively large TV, and it was easy to set up my Apple lightning HDMI adapter to stream shows and movies.
The cruise gave us the opportunity to visit parts of the country that we likely would never have otherwise seen. The town of Vicksburg, Mississippi, was particularly fascinating. The town’s museum in a converted courthouse includes a multi-room shrine to Jefferson Davis, a man who, as related by Erik Larson in his new book, “The Demon of Unrest,” took his second wife during their honeymoon to visit the gravesite of his first wife. It was pretty shocking in this day and age to see this in a museum:
There were even moments which reminded us of Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood. Our first antebellum mansion excursion was about two miles from where the ship had docked, so DW and I decided to walk back rather than take the bus. We came upon this wonderful mural in tribute to It’s a Small World:
In Vacherie, Louisiana, we took a Cajun Pride swamp adventure in a pontoon boat reminiscent of the Jungle Cruise. Here was our skipper:
He mentioned that there are only alligators in Louisiana, but we passed by a child’s croc shoe floating in the water. Not missing a beat, our skipper informed us, “Here’s our only croc. He’s been here a year and has been really thriving. We’re really proud of him.” No Jungle Cruise skipper couldn’t have managed it better.
Finally, Vicksburg was a pretty impoverished town, with many buildings in disrepair and unable to be torn down for historic reasons. As a result, this house was still standing and had me wondering if Norman Bates was creeping around:
The views from our stateroom and verandah were mostly unpleasant for the duration of the trip. Until we passed Baton Rouge, it was nothing but container ship after cargo ship. The water remained murky, but we then had unobstructed views of bare trees, all of their leaves already have fallen. However, as we were docked in Memphis, a full moon finally gave us a visual worth remembering of the mighty Mississippi River:
Another favorite memory is the local who, seeing my Disney “LA Strong” shirt in reference to our recent wildfires, jokingly called out to me, “LA. Is that Lower Alabama?” I still chuckle when I recall it.
