Spirit of Dubuque Sightseeing & Dinner Cruises

Great value. Sunday dinner, 2 hour cruise. Dinner and tap beer included for $ 29.95. Honestly we booked for the entertainment and were pleasantly suprised how good the food was for the price.
We saw eagles nesting, barges going by, and the peacefulness of the Mississippi River. Great way to see the sunset. Would recommend.

I booked an evening dinner cruise event on the Spirit of Dubuque for myself, my wife, and some colleagues from Germany. I wanted to give them a flavor of Iowa and show them the mighty Mississippi river.
Unfortunately, I gave them a bad flavor of Iowa. The experience was not at all what I expected. I had thought we would have a nice dining experience with wait staff, classy music, and good décor. Instead, the boat interior was very dated, it smelled of smoke embedded in the carpet and walls from years past, and the dinner was a buffet line. The foot was alright, but nothing great.
The worst part of it all– the entertainment was an old bluegrass/​country/​folk singer who played noisily over an old, cracking speaker system. We couldn’t hear anything we were saying to each other and the music was not good. His guitar work was decent, but he certainly could not carry a vocal tune.
Finally we decided just to ditch the dining area and go on top of the boat for views of the river and valley. It was nice up there, but the exhaust from the old diesel engines was quite strong. There’s no getting around that (it was an old river boat) and I don’t fault them for it. But still, it nauseated my wife. We didn’t want to go back downstairs to the noise, and so we just waited out upstairs until the trip was finally over.
This is definitely targeted towards older, retired couples who want value experiences and a buffet meal before they head back to the casinos.
I do not recommend.