Good idea to arrive 1-2 days ahead of the start. I too book my pre-nights hotel with AbD, always starting with two. You can make changes to your reservation up to the PIF date, which is 120 days in advance of start. Sometimes the availability of pre-nights with AbD will fill up, so if you’re not yet sure I’d suggest adding them to your reservation when you book. The deposit you pay is based on the AbD price, not including pre-nights, so it makes no immediate cost difference. Then you can research and decide whether to keep two, change to one, or drop all together in favor of your own plans.
AbD does send a virtual tour booklet now - if can be saved for offline viewing. It will be very similar to the itinerary you can download from the AbD website. While the river cruises have choices of port excursions to choose from, with a land adventure, there nothing much to plan except your free time. Some of that can be researched and booked ahead of time, ie with a free afternoon or else maybe a hard to get dining reservation that must be made well in advance, while other times it can be spur of the moment with a recommendation from your AbD guides.
Other things I did not know ahead of my first AbD -
- find an AbD Dis meets thread, which you’ve already done
. Even though people have different travel dates, it is a great place to exchange ideas, info, tips and planning. I got so much good info for my Japan AbD from the DIS thread.
-All times in the itineraries are approximate. The “afternoon on your own” may not start until 2pm. Lunch may not be at noon. Dinners may be later say 7pm or may be early like around 5:30 pm. You can call AbD ahead of time to get approximate times if you are wanting to book something around free time or tour timings, but allow extra cushion of time in case things are running long. The big unknowns are traffic and your fellow adventurers.
-you can venture off the tour for part of a day if you’d like. ie if there’s something in a city you really want to do, and it’s not included, you can decide to skip a portion of the tour or an included meal to go off on your own. You’d have to weigh what you’d skip, as there is no price adjustment for doing so, and you’d need to let your guides know both when you check in and again a day or two ahead of time.
-you don’t have to participate in each tour activity. Sometimes you may not be able to, maybe due to a physical limitation or due to personal preferences, or you’re just not interested in that wine tasting. You’d want to check with AbD ahead of time on this as well, as if transportation between Tour cities is involved it might pose a problem for you where you'd have to decide not to travel.
-they will give you a very nice sized duffle bag that folds & zips into a compact size. This can be used during the trip, as well as to be that extra bag to bring home souvenirs. So no need to pack an extra bag “just in case”. The color scheme changes each year. On a land tour, they’ll give you this at checkin with your AbD guide gratuity envelopes. For a River Cruise, since gratuities are included, it is mailed to you ahead of time with your other tour gifts.
-they’ve had water and snacks on the tour bus, so no need to bring or buy your own. Not sure if this is on all tours but has been the case with the one I’ve been on. You can ask your guides at checkin.
-tour order for a day may change - depending on local conditions. Ie the tour itinerary may say boat ride then lunch, where you end up with lunch and then the boat ride. Not really a big deal unless you are planning to skip part of the tour that day for something on your own, as what you think you are skipping may not end up being what you actually miss.
-If your tour gift is a tote or backpack that your planning to bring along, or you plan to use that tour duffle while touring, bring a unique luggage tag or bag identifier so you can easily find yours among the others as they will all look and be the same.
-gratuities for land tours are paid direct to the guides. Check the tour info for recommended currencies. A guide may accept a PayPal transfer rather than cash but you won’t know this ahead of time, so will need to be prepared if you don’t bring US dollars and will then need to hit a local ATM.
I think that’s it for now...if I think of anything else, I’ll post back. Let me know if you have any other questions. Have fun with your planning!