My wife and I don't do much cruising but wanted to treat ourselves so signed up for the St. Louis to St. Paul route. The American Eagle is a clean ship with a good crew who provided excellent service during our week on board. Breakfast and dinner meals were uniformly very good with excellent presentation, reasonable portions fast service. Open seating at all meals allowed us to meet a large number our fellow passengers. Lunch tended to show less attention to detail in food prep and selection. Beer, wine and hard liquor were available at meals and happy hour and were of average to very high quality. Our on- board historian Bill Weimuth was excellent, knowledgeable, enthusiastic and always available. His wife Laura Sable was one of the musical entertainers and was similarly superb with an excellent voice. Together they were the highlight of the trip. We had excellent weather most of the trip and our port calls were interesting if not exciting.

Our only reservations lie with the average age of the passengers which hovered probably in the mid-70's most of whom were very interesting and friendly but a much younger couple or family with young children may want to look elsewhere. The expense was also a negative factor. I'm not convinced to value received is worth the price and felt the "suggested" tip level was also on the high side.