Champagne Cruise in Paris: Seine River Cruises with Drinks

A glass, a drinks cruise or a tasting: three different products

Under the word "champagne", the companies sell three things that have little in common. The first is a classic one-hour guided cruise with a glass included in the ticket: the most common formula, and the simplest. The second is the evening drinks cruise: a boat with no guide, music, a bar on board, and you pay for your drinks on top or as an option. The third is a real tasting, with a sommelier and several champagnes: only one offer of this kind exists on the Seine, from Ô Chateau.

The price follows the same logic. A cruise with one glass runs around €30 to €40, the price of a plain ticket plus about a dozen euros, which is exactly what Vedettes de Paris charges for a glass added on board. A tasting costs about twice that. And as soon as champagne comes with a meal, you're into Seine dinner cruise formulas, some of which pour half a bottle, others a single welcome glass.

Our advice: before booking, find the line on the listing that says how many glasses are served, and of what. "With champagne" in the vast majority of cases means one glass, sometimes swappable for a beer or a soft drink. If the idea is mostly to have a drink in front of the floodlit monuments, the evening drinks cruise does the job for less; our night cruise page tells you what time to go.

Vedettes de Paris: the drinks-and-music cruise and the champagne cruise

At Port de Suffren, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower, downstream of the Pont d'Iéna, Vedettes de Paris sells the two simplest formulas on the Seine. The Apéro & Musicale cruise sails every evening, roughly from 7 pm to 10:30 pm (later in high season): €22 online, €25 at the counter, €13 for a child, on the company's website. No guide: a playlist of French chanson replaces the commentary. Drinks are bought at the bar, by card; the company also sells the formula with champagne at €38 and with wine or beer at €32.

The Croisière Champagne is the one-hour guided cruise (live guide in French and English, plus an app) with a glass included, from €32 per adult. It's better for a first visit, since you keep the explanations. Both turn near the Institut du monde arabe and come back to the Eiffel Tower.

What sets them apart: an electric (and one hybrid) fleet, so it's quiet, a step-free ramp from the Pont de Bir-Hakeim, and free cancellation up to 24 hours on timed tickets bought online. On the platforms, the drinks cruise sells as an evening cruise with music. Our Vedettes de Paris review covers the rest.

The Eiffel Tower sparkles for five minutes at the start of every hour after dark, until at least 11 pm; on some evenings, especially in summer, it carries on later — check the tower's website for the day.

Notre-Dame and champagne: the Bateaux Parisiens cruise from Montebello

From April to September only, Bateaux Parisiens runs a separate cruise from the Quai de Montebello, on the Left Bank, facing Notre-Dame. Four departures: 5 pm, 7 pm, 8:30 pm and 10 pm, for one hour on the water. The boat is the Jean Marais, 107 seats, with outdoor platforms; a guide gives live commentary, in French and English only. The ticket includes a glass of champagne, or a beer, or a soft drink, with a cookie.

Prices on the company's website: €39 per adult, €30 for ages 4 to 11, free under 4. It's more than a standard one-hour cruise, but leaving from the historic heart changes the perspective: you start with the islands instead of reaching them half an hour in, and the boat turns around at the Eiffel Tower.

Three constraints to know. Tickets are dated, for a fixed time, and can't be canceled or changed. If you miss your departure at Notre-Dame, the ticket is accepted as an exception at the Eiffel Tower pier; the reverse isn't true, and an Eiffel Tower ticket is worthless at Montebello. Finally, this departure isn't wheelchair accessible. We didn't find this cruise at our partner platforms: you book it on the company's website. In September, the 8:30 pm departure falls at about sunset; month-by-month times are on our Seine sunset cruise page.

Ô Chateau: the only real tasting on the water

Ô Chateau is a wine bar in the 1st arrondissement, on rue Jean-Jacques-Rousseau, that runs a tasting cruise aboard a Vedettes de Paris boat. Meet at the pontoon at Port de Suffren fifteen to twenty minutes before the 6:30 pm departure; the cruise lasts an hour and costs €79 on Ô Chateau's website. On the program: three grower champagnes, presented by a sommelier. The session is in English, which suits most readers of this page.

It's a very different product from the "with a glass" cruises. You come to learn to tell champagne styles apart, with Paris sliding by in the background. So judge the value as you would a workshop, not a cruise: three glasses with commentary for the price of two or three plain cruises. It isn't a meal; plan to have dinner afterward.

On GetYourGuide, the Ô Chateau champagne tasting is very well rated by travelers. Cancellation terms and minimum age weren't on the organizer's page when we checked: read the listing before you pay. At departure time, the light depends on the season: in midsummer it's broad daylight; in winter, it's already dark.

Happy hour, crêpes and treats: the cruises "with something"

Plenty of products add a little extra to the one-hour cruise. On GetYourGuide, an evening happy hour cruise leaves from Port de Suffren; Vedettes de Paris itself sells no product under that name, its evening offer is called Apéro & Musicale. At Vedettes du Pont Neuf, Square du Vert-Galant, there's a Champagne & Happy Hour cruise at €29 online, with a 7:15 pm departure and another at sunset, and a "goûter" (afternoon snack) cruise at €20, on the company's website. Paris Canal also runs a 1h30 Happy Hour cruise on the Seine at €18.

For crêpes, Bateaux Parisiens sells its Croisière Gourmande with a crêpe from €21: you pick the crêpe up at the kiosk on the quay, before or after the cruise. Bateaux Mouches has its version on GetYourGuide, the cruise with a pistachio crêpe. At Vedettes de Paris, the "pause gourmande" (a crêpe or cookie with a drink) costs €6 extra on board.

Watch the titles: there's no official ice-cream, waffle or crêpe cruise at Vedettes de Paris. The "ice cream or treat" products sold from their quay are offered by a reseller, Global Tours And Tickets. Nothing wrong with that, but the reseller handles the voucher and how it's exchanged on board. These sweet formulas also work well with kids: see our family guide.

"Drinks included": what it really means

This is the most misleading line on meal-cruise listings, because it changes from one company to another, and even from one formula to another at the same company. What the official websites say:

• Bateaux Parisiens: kir and wines included at lunch and dinner, from the Étoile service up; a glass of champagne from the Découverte (8:30 pm dinner) and Premier services.
• Bateaux Mouches: wine included (a bottle for two) at the 6 pm service and in Prestige; on the 8:30 pm Découverte menu, water only.
• Paris en Scène: three formulas, Water, Wine or Champagne; in the last two, 37.5 cl for two people, a little over a glass each.
• Paris Seine / La Marina: drinks extra on the standard cruises (a glass of champagne is €13 on their list); the Festif formula includes a glass.
• Le Diamant Bleu and Le Théo: half a bottle of water for two, everything else from the drinks list.
• Le Capitaine Fracasse: nothing in the Fracasse formula, half a bottle of wine per person in Amiral.
• Ducasse sur Seine and Don Juan II: base menus without drinks.

One last point: in France, prices include service. A tip is a gesture; a few euros for your waiter on a dinner cruise is plenty.

Champagne with your meal: the formulas that pour it

If champagne is the point, some dinner formulas serve more than a welcome glass. At Paris en Scène, at Port de Javel Haut, the Champagne formula costs from €85 on the company's website, departures at 7:15 pm and 9:45 pm, for a 1h45 cruise: it's the cheapest way to have champagne through a whole meal, even if the quantity stays modest. The Paris en Scène dinner also sells on the platforms; see our cheap dinner cruise page.

Higher up, the Bateaux Mouches Excellence menu (€170) serves champagne as an aperitif and at the table, with priority for a window seat; Le Calife offers a Prestige Champagne Ruinart formula at €219, bookable only direct, at Port des Saints-Pères facing the Pont des Arts. Le Diamant Bleu adds a "Pétillante" option at €40, half a bottle of champagne per person. Maxim's sur Seine includes a glass and amuse-bouches, with a pianist-singer; Le Capitaine Fracasse pours a glass in its Signature formula at €119.

These dinners are compared in detail on our luxury dinner cruise and dinner cruise with live music pages. For a midday drink, Le Capitaine Fracasse's "Champagne Brunch" is described on our lunch and brunch page.

A drink at the quay, or a boat all to yourselves

Two alternatives are worth knowing. The first: drinking by the water without sailing. The floating hotel OFF Paris Seine, Quai d'Austerlitz, has a bar around a pool; it's moored and doesn't cruise, as our OFF Paris Seine review points out. Le Son de la Terre, a jazz barge facing Notre-Dame, doesn't move either.

The second: a private boat with a skipper, the real answer if you want to hire a boat for drinks with friends. Paris Boat Club lets you bring your own drinks and food, for up to nine people, from €449 for two hours on its website. Green River Cruises includes two bottles of wine (or champagne on the romantic cruises), from €55 per person with a minimum of six passengers. Worth remembering: license-free boats are banned on the Seine in Paris, so every private boat there comes with its own pilot. It's all explained in our private Seine cruise guide and, for groups, on the bachelorette and birthday page.

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See everything on GetYourGuide →See everything on Tiqets →See everything on Headout →Prices checked on October 17, 2026