russian visas

[karwheez]

We're sailing on the Grand Princess 5/29/04.We have a private tour ready for us in St. Petersburg and have submitted our paper work for our visas 7 weeks ago. Just receiced phone call that Princess is not approving our visas because we're not traveling thru their tours.
I feel that this is extortion and would like to get other opinions. First time Princess cruiser, might be last!

[socrmom]

How is it that Princess won't approve the visas? We have a private tour and our cruise line (Celebrity)had nothing to do with our visas. We used the private tour agency for our visa support letter and then applied on our own to the embassy for the visas. Not a problem. I agree that it is extortion-the prices for those tours are sky high! We are not going with Red October but using Premier Travel-I'll let everyone know our experience when we get back. I understand with Red October you won't need a visa. This may be an option for you.

[shoshona2]

Hi,

If your Tour group doesn't have a group visa for you and you only have two weeks, I would contact Red October right now and arrange for a tour with them. I can't believe what Princess has told you. We use [url="http://www.ziervisa.com"]www.ziervisa.com[/url] for our Visas, but last year used Red October and had NO problem.

[karwheez]

Thank you for the quick reply. I did apply thru
Zierer and they say that Princess is holding back even though I've been checking weekly and was told paperwork was going thru OK. My TA has
has never had aproblem with any other cruise lines (Celebrity quite often) Zierer coulnd't even expain why we were'nt notified earler. It's problaby to late but I'll look into Red October.

[shoshona2]

Email redoctober tonight and you should get an answer tomorrow. I even heard that the Princess won't let anyone off the ship for two hours after docking unless they are on Princess tours. Someone was going to report back on this. They also dock an hour outside of Stockholm and you have to tender and then get a train to get into Stockholm if you haven't booked their tours. We used R.O. last August and got off the our ship right after the Moscow tour group left the ship.