CruiseNorway.com and Hurtegruten

[exsausd]

Thinking of the hurtegruten Fram this Dec. Ran across CruiseNorway.com. I can find no reviews of this company. Does anyone have any experience with them?

[janetcbl]

Thinking of the hurtegruten Fram this Dec. Ran across CruiseNorway.com. I can find no reviews of this company. Does anyone have any experience with them?

Check www.hurtigruten.us for the website or call 1-866-552-0371 for more information. It is a first rate company! I have traveled with them 3 times on the Norway Coast cruises.

[comcox]

I sailed on the older Nordkapp a few years ago late April/early May roundtrip and it was a wonderful experience. The scenery puts any Alaska cruise to shame.

 

Cabins are very basic and small. I was on my own so size not an issue but I found the bed quite narrow and hard. I hear the few suites on board were a much nicer way to travel. There were very few Americans on my sailing; I only found three plus one Canadian. The rest of passengers were mostly French, German, and locals. Food was not not very interesting but that's not very important for me. This is a ferry and not a cruise ship so as long as you go with that in mind you won't be disappointed.

[gaelsail]

Fram is the Hurtigruten explorer ship and sails the polar regions rather than the regular ferry route.

 

Very nice ship, good food, relaxed and casual with minimal entertainment- passengers go for the destinations, scenery & wildlife.

 

Search for forums for Hurtigruten and you'll find many posts.

[uppitycats]

Thinking of the hurtegruten Fram this Dec. Ran across CruiseNorway.com. I can find no reviews of this company. Does anyone have any experience with them?

 

I was on the Fram this April (2010) and loved it... loved it SO much we're looking to book another cruise on Hurtigruten next year.

 

The Fram is a lovely ship, with a real personalized experience. Very friendly and accommodating crew, interesting mix of passengers. On the cruise we were on -- which was marketed heavily in America and France, there was naturally a larger group of both than is usual, I'm told.

 

The food is mostly served buffet style (think "smorgasbord"), and we found it to be very interesting and varied. While many dishes were the same each day (for lunch, for example,) there were so many choices we didn't have to have the same thing twice..unless we wanted it.

 

Unfortunately I became ill onboard and so wasn't able to participate in many of the excursions, but my husband did -- and found them to be well organized, informative (not your usual "selling" excursions like on the main lines), and targeted to the history, geography, natural settings in Norway.

 

The cabins are compact, but with plenty of room to store everything.

 

We're really hoping we can work out the details for our next trip, on the MS Nordlys...

[dpro]

Thinking of the hurtegruten Fram this Dec. Ran across CruiseNorway.com. I can find no reviews of this company. Does anyone have any experience with them?

 

If you mean Cruisenorway, we booked through them for our Antarctica cruise on the Fram for our sailing in Feb. 2010. We also booked through them just a few days ago for a Polar cruise to Spitsbergen in Sept. of next year. They do not do email very well, by that I mean they almost always will not reply back via email to your questions, but they were always available to talk to by phone. Our agent was Mark, who was always able to answer our questions, there may be other agents available. We were a little put off by not getting written responses to our emails, but in the end everything went smooth and we had a great trip. They offered us a past pax discount for Spitsbergen and between that and other discounts, we were not afraid to use them again for next year.

 

If you mean the Fram - we found the crew to be exceptional, especially the dining room crew. We thought the food was "recycled" a bit too much for us, in other words, they used the food from one day in the next day's menu but in different ways. The food was okay but that was all. That being said, we did not expect too much in the way of food based on our research, since just being in Antarctica was enough for us. We were in the MG suite, so have no experience on other cabins, except to say the inside cabins are pretty small, and the outside cabins had no balconies at all, only the MG suites had them. We did not use any laundry services, there is no self service laundry that we knew about and internet in AA was not a concern for us. They run the zodiacs with extreme precision and there is not a wasted moment in getting to/from shore. We had a tour of the bridge, met all the staff officers, etc. Cabins were kept very clean and serviced very well. If you desire to read our report with pictures, email to mrqcace@yahoo.com

 

As for the company of Hurtigruten itself, they canceled two of our bookings to Antarctica, once when the ship we were to take was sold, the second time just 4 days before our fly date, we were called and told the sailing was "oversold" and they wanted us to take a different date. They ended up offering us a much longer cruise than we paid for and gave us the MG suite to boot, we in the end we were very happy and were able to take the new sail date. They also gave us our air cancellation charges for both sailings, so even though we had some fretful days, in the end they honored their commitment.

 

Regards,

 

RonC