St Lawrence River Cruise?

[gemduncan]

Has anyone done a St Lawrence River cruise?  I'm looking at taking my family plus my dad (age 72) on St Lawrence River Cruise in late July 2020.  This is a dream vacation for my dad.  He wants to visit New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Fjords.  I've never been to Canada.  I've only done Caribbean cruises.  Any cruise lines that you would recommend or recommend to avoid?

[1025cruise]

You would probably need to look at river cruises. The mainline cruises mostly don't do the St Lawrence. Only a couple of smaller ships can get that far.

[gemduncan]

18 minutes ago, 1025cruise said:

You would probably need to look at river cruises. The mainline cruises mostly don't do the St Lawrence. Only a couple of smaller ships can get that far.

 

 

Which cruisecritic forum would you suggest that I ask my ask?  

[laverendrye]

Of course the mainline ocean cruise travel the St Lawrence. Québec City is a port of call or terminus for many lines and Holland America and Oceana among others visit Montréal. For fjords I assume you are thinking of the Saguenay fjord (rather than Norway) and quite a few St Lawrence cruises also do the Saguenay. It might be a bit harder to find a cruise that includes St John’s and the St Lawrence but I’m sure that there are one or two. 

[Twickenham]

47 minutes ago, 1025cruise said:

You would probably need to look at river cruises. The mainline cruises mostly don't do the St Lawrence. Only a couple of smaller ships can get that far.

 

???

 

I can assure you that here on the St. Lawrence, we get all the major lines. While the Laviolette Bridge in Trois-Rivières prevents anything larger than, say, 70,000 GRT or so from reaching Montreal, they can all come as far as Quebec City - the QM2 comes every year, for example.

 

OP, if you want to cruise in July, you're probably looking at Holland America, as they are the one mainstream line that has cruises throughout the summer

[gemduncan]

7 hours ago, Twickenham said:

 

???

 

I can assure you that here on the St. Lawrence, we get all the major lines. While the Laviolette Bridge in Trois-Rivières prevents anything larger than, say, 70,000 GRT or so from reaching Montreal, they can all come as far as Quebec City - the QM2 comes every year, for example.

 

OP, if you want to cruise in July, you're probably looking at Holland America, as they are the one mainstream line that has cruises throughout the summer

 

 

Thank you! I have looks at many big and small cruise lines and I have also concluded that Holland America might be the best option. 

[p_mori7]

AML Cruises here in Quebec offers several short cruises out of various Montreal & Quebec City.

 

You may want to consider shore side stays, combined with several shorter cruises which are really good at highlighting the local flavor & highlights of the St-Lawrence river.

 

~Phil.

 

[Zephyr173]

I saw Seven Seas Explorer in Montréal, late in the summer of 2018.

 

There have been HAL ship in town every Week in Montréal since late spring 2019.

[Kartgv]

Princess and Celebrity also do cruises that sail down the St. Lawrence.   Celebrity is usually round-trip from Newark (or sometimes Boston?) while Princess does one way cruises.    

[BarbinMich]

On 5/24/2019 at 8:21 AM, gemduncan said:

Has anyone done a St Lawrence River cruise?  I'm looking at taking my family plus my dad (age 72) on St Lawrence River Cruise in late July 2020.  This is a dream vacation for my dad.  He wants to visit New Brunswick, Newfoundland, and Fjords.  I've never been to Canada.  I've only done Caribbean cruises.  Any cruise lines that you would recommend or recommend to avoid?

Newfoundland is a very large island northeast of Nova Scotia.  Unfortunately, it's fairly inaccessible as one has to get there by ferry, cruise ship or plane.  As the entrance to St. John's harbor is quite narrow between two very tall cliffs, I'm not sure today's newer ships could get in there.  We visited there on the Crown Princess in 2009 and 2010, both on westbound transatlantic cruises from the UK, and enjoyed it very much.  It looks there are two car ferries from Sydney NB; one goes to Channel-Port-aux-Basques, NF (southwest corner) and one goes to Argentia, NF which is about 50 miles or so from St. John.  I'm not sure what Fjords you're referring to in Canada.  There are relatively small ships that sail up and down the St. Lawrence so I suggest you google them as I don't know their names.  Here's a site about how to get to NF:  http://newfoundland.hilwin.nl/PHP/en/gettingthere.php