P&O Stockholm on Your Own

[majortom10]

6 hours ago, tring said:

 

Nope.

 

Quite possible that has happened in the past and they may have docked at nearer terminals - there are a number of them.  From what I have read it seems that the terminal is a 15 mins drive out of the city and a public bus route takes 25 mins. 

 

However, we are booked on Aurora for the 24th May departure and as I said they are offering a "Stockholm on Your Own" as one of the excursions and charging £32pp.  We are select fare, but even so, if one of those OYO trips are offered then standard shuttle buses are not run.  It is of 6 hours duration and is advertised as follows, though further details do say a map is provided and there is an escort on the coach - so presumably you can ask questions as you arrive, should you wish to do so, which is always the case with standard shuttle buses in my experience:-

 

Stockholm On Your Own

 

29 May

Stockholm

£32

A hassle-free transport and the freedom to explore the city at your leisure.

 

 

 

We have cruised with P&O on a few occasions and always docked at a terminal out of town and been a 15 minute + coach journey but P&O have always provided a shuttle bus. which dropped you off near the Palace.

[The Padre]

12 hours ago, purplesea said:

When we were in Stockholm, about 3 years ago, P&O ran a shuttle bus from the port into the town.

It was a few years ago for us too, but P and O ran shuttle buses. From memory they had to provide transfers because it is a busy working port and walking wasn't an option - think we were on a Select Fare so didn't pay for the transfer. Worked really well and dropped off at a good location in town..

Stockholm is fabulous and the sail away through the islands is brilliant too.

[tring]

1 hour ago, majortom10 said:

We have cruised with P&O on a few occasions and always docked at a terminal out of town and been a 15 minute + coach journey but P&O have always provided a shuttle bus. which dropped you off near the Palace.

 

Interesting, but times have obviously changed.

[wowzz]

We are (hopefully) going to Stockholm later this year with Saga.

We are sailing into the city,  arriving mid day or so,  and leaving 24 hours later,  so will be fully able to enjoy the sail in/out.

One of the advantages of a smaller ship.

 

[tring]

1 hour ago, wowzz said:

We are (hopefully) going to Stockholm later this year with Saga.

We are sailing into the city,  arriving mid day or so,  and leaving 24 hours later,  so will be fully able to enjoy the sail in/out.

One of the advantages of a smaller ship.

 

 

All the terminals are well within the archipelago, so they will all have similar sails in/out, though some may be a tad nearer to the city so may get to see a very small amount of the built up area.  Which terminal are you docking at, or will you be tendering, which is, as I understand it, the only way passengers are delivered very centrally without a need for a shuttle bus?

 

I would hardly call the Saga ships small, Aurora is not much bigger than them and a fifteen minute bus ride is hardly a long way out, yet none of the terminals are any further away, they are just in different directions from the city centre in relation to each other.  One of the cruise port sites says Azamara use the terminal Aurora is docking at.

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by tring

[brian1]

7 hours ago, wowzz said:

We are (hopefully) going to Stockholm later this year with Saga.

We are sailing into the city,  arriving mid day or so,  and leaving 24 hours later,  so will be fully able to enjoy the sail in/out.

One of the advantages of a smaller ship.

 

The larger ships go there also Wowzz.We were on Emerald Princess,sister to Azura.

[wowzz]

8 hours ago, tring said:

 

I would hardly call the Saga ships small, Aurora is not much bigger than them

58,000 tonnes versus 76,000 tonnes, so 30% bigger. I'd  call that significantly larger, plus, of course, twice as many passengers as the Saga ships.  

[wowzz]

1 hour ago, brian1 said:

The larger ships go there also Wowzz.We were on Emerald Princess,sister to Azura.

Thank you and Barbara for helping with my geography.  I must buy an atlas !

 

 

[terrierjohn]

19 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Thank you and Barbara for helping with my geography.  I must buy an atlas !

 

 

Why buy an atlas when you have google maps?

[brian1]

29 minutes ago, wowzz said:

Thank you and Barbara for helping with my geography.  I must buy an atlas !

 

 

No worries,but at 116000 tons we were probably at the limit,cheers,Brian.

[Josy1953]

11 minutes ago, brian1 said:

No worries,but at 116000 tons we were probably at the limit,cheers,Brian.

Pretty close to the limit,  I remember that when we went in on Celebrity Eclipse the captain said that she was the largest ship to dock and she is 122000 tons.

It's amazing that they allow such large ships sail in through the archipelago, I am surprised that they allow such large ships to sail in.  I am glad that we had breakfast on the balcony so that we didn’t miss any of the sail in.

[brian1]

Just now, Josy1953 said:

Pretty close to the limit,  I remember that when we went in on Celebrity Eclipse the captain said that she was the largest ship to dock and she is 122000 tons.

It's amazing that they allow such large ships sail in through the archipelago, I am surprised that they allow such large ships to sail in.  I am glad that we had breakfast on the balcony so that we didn’t miss any of the sail in.

LOL,the wake caused passing those little car ferries between islands was a bit close for comfort for them.Didn't feel anything on our balcony though.

[Fionboard]

Sailed into Stokholm 6 times on various ships - Britannia, Royal Princess, Queen Liz, etc. Only once docked outside at Nynasham but shuttles always provided. There must be shuttles from all terminals surely?

[tring]

2 hours ago, wowzz said:

Thank you and Barbara for helping with my geography.  I must buy an atlas !

 

 

 

Must admit I was very surprised when I looked at Google Earth compared to the cruise terminals.  The city is a very long way from the open sea and is obviously built on islands.

 

Regards size of ships, sorry, I have been feeling pretty umpty about Fred's newer ones and how difficult it is to find something more like the 30,000 ton level, which we have been able to from a variety of cruise lines over the years.  Borealis at under 62,000 Ton seems massive to us, even though we have never seen it with more than 500 pax, but at least we have been able to get some good itineraries, but not the places which were possible with the smaller ships - no docking centrally in Bordeaux now.  We really liked P&O's Artemis a lot, although not that small.  We hated Adonia with P&O, despite her size, since they had fixed dining and kept putting "entertainments", like quizzes etc in all bars at different times in the evening, so we seemed to spend a lot of time moving from one bar to another with drinks in hand trying to find somewhere with just music.  Yet as Minerva II she was our first cruise ship, which we fell in love with immediately, and now as Azamara Pursuit she has almost returned to that.

 

We have also been on Oceana, Oriana which were ok, though Aurora will be a first in May.  Also the odd larger ship which will be the future no doubt, but what we do remains to be seen, probably many more land hols.  I am now convinced it was more the US style I did not like on Sky, though she certainly did seem very crowded, perhaps mainly because of the weather.  Itinerary is the main thing for us though, so not entirely dependent on the ship, can be more the style of a specific cruise line that determines the itineraries.  The Carnival brands never did use good itineraries for their.Renaisance ships once Swan was curtailed, yet they could have done some great things with them.

 

Thought it best to explain myself, sorry, perhaps came over different to what I was actually thinking.  Just us and our likes/dislikes.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by tring

[majortom10]

2 hours ago, Fionboard said:

Sailed into Stokholm 6 times on various ships - Britannia, Royal Princess, Queen Liz, etc. Only once docked outside at Nynasham but shuttles always provided. There must be shuttles from all terminals surely?

Always had shuttle buses provided and we have never docked at Nynashamn.

 

[wowzz]

1 hour ago, tring said:

Thought it best to explain myself, sorry, perhaps came over different to what I was actually thinking.  Just us and our likes/dislikes.

Barbara - no need to explain. What seems small to some can appear large to others (as the actress said to the bishop!)

[tring]

We will go on the cruise with various info, but decide what to do when we get on board.  Having to pay a fair bit for a transfer (if we decide to).will not be a big problem given the reasonable cruise price and the itinerary is extremely good for P&O as well with 16 nights on the ship.  If they replace SPB, we will be extra pleased as well, since we had a hotel stay there and Moscow, with river cruise between a few years back as well as a visit on Arcadia in 2019. 

 

Also, if we do visit, P&O do a 7.5 hour "On your own" style trip in SPB with stops in three locations, which we have booked - we did that in 2019 and had a great time as we know the city so well, so we just wizzed off to where we wanted to go at the stops and surprisingly no restrictions were imposed on us, except to be back at the coach at the required time.  Cost of that has more than doubled since 2019 though, so becoming obvious how P&O intend to recover some of their losses from the last two years, as well as cutting out some shuttle buses.

 

 

 

 

Edited February 17, 2022 by tring

[Bill Y]

On 2/16/2022 at 2:22 PM, tring said:

 

Nope.

 

Quite possible that has happened in the past and they may have docked at nearer terminals - there are a number of them.  From what I have read it seems that the terminal is a 15 mins drive out of the city and a public bus route takes 25 mins. 

 

However, we are booked on Aurora for the 24th May departure and as I said they are offering a "Stockholm on Your Own" as one of the excursions and charging £32pp.  We are select fare, but even so, if one of those OYO trips are offered then standard shuttle buses are not run.  It is of 6 hours duration and is advertised as follows, though further details do say a map is provided and there is an escort on the coach - so presumably you can ask questions as you arrive, should you wish to do so, which is always the case with standard shuttle buses in my experience:-

 

Stockholm On Your Own

 

29 May

Stockholm

£32

A hassle-free transport and the freedom to explore the city at your leisure.

 

 

 

Is this the latest wheeze from P&O?

 

We have had shuttles provided over a greater distance than mentioned. Normally transfers "on your own" are to cities some distance away, for instance from Nynashamn 36 miles from Stockholm that some cruise lines use. The other disadvantage with transfers is that they are at fixed times not continuous.

 

Are there other examples of P&O trying this on?

[Fionboard]

5 hours ago, majortom10 said:

Always had shuttle buses provided and we have never docked at Nynashamn.

 

You are lucky, there is not much there if you do not go into city (which I did not on that occasion having been there so often).

[ann141]

2 hours ago, Fionboard said:

You are lucky, there is not much there if you do not go into city (which I did not on that occasion having been there so often).

On Emerald Princess once ,we were supposed to dock in Stockholm but the Captain decided that because of the weather we would dock at Nynashamn instead.The excursions went ahead as planned and even though there was no shuttle bus, we caught the local train to Stockholm and explored independantly.Lovely city and have to confess that if we went again would  like to visit the Abba Museum

[TMSA]

@tring how did this play out in the end? We are going to Stockholm in May and it was through trying to research the ports that I found this thread. How did you find where you were docking? I've tried but can't see. Ours is also showing the OYO experience so starting to worry we might be nowhere near the centre

[tring]

2 hours ago, TMSA said:

@tring how did this play out in the end? We are going to Stockholm in May and it was through trying to research the ports that I found this thread. How did you find where you were docking? I've tried but can't see. Ours is also showing the OYO experience so starting to worry we might be nowhere near the centre

 

That cruise was the year that itineraries were changed to remove St. Petersburg.  When our cruise was changed, P&O also got rid of a lot of other ports in the Baltic, so we were allowed to cancel for full refund, which we did.  We then booked a Fred cruise with a far better itinerary, which included two days in Stockholm.  That cruise tendered direct to the old town in Stockholm.  We really liked the city and spent all of our time in the old town, spending a fair bit of time at the Royal Palace.  There are a lot of different parts of the Palace you can visit, and we did most, possibly all of it, though enjoyed time just wandering round, with drinks stops as well.

 

Not sure I still have the link regards the port calls there, but if you search the relevant section of the ports of call board on here, you should find it, if not you could post a question there yourself.

 

Enjoy the cruise, lots of interesting ports in the Baltic.

Edited February 26 by tring

[happy v]

3 hours ago, TMSA said:

@tring how did this play out in the end? We are going to Stockholm in May and it was through trying to research the ports that I found this thread. How did you find where you were docking? I've tried but can't see. Ours is also showing the OYO experience so starting to worry we might be nowhere near the centre

TMSA, We have docked out of town in Stockholm and a shuttle was provided.

[tring]

8 hours ago, TMSA said:

@tring how did this play out in the end? We are going to Stockholm in May and it was through trying to research the ports that I found this thread. How did you find where you were docking? I've tried but can't see. Ours is also showing the OYO experience so starting to worry we might be nowhere near the centre

 

I just googled cruise schedules for Stockholm and came up with this site (I have searched for May/June ship visits to get this screen).  Looks like Britannia is docking in STADSGÅRDEN.  I then googled that to find out it is quite near the centre, so a shuttle will likely be available.

 

[twotravellersLondon]

11 hours ago, TMSA said:

We are going to Stockholm in May and it was through trying to research the ports that I found this thread. How did you find where you were docking? I've tried but can't see. Ours is also showing the OYO experience so starting to worry we might be nowhere near the centre

 

We were there a few months ago.

 

From Stadsgården It's also a short walk to the Line 2 bus that's 20 minutes to the Opera. A taxi took less that 5 minutes... there's the Line 82 ferry across to the Vasa and the ABBA Museums. The ferry ran every half-hour and cost about £5.  

 

Things have changed very rapidly in the Baltic since St Petersburg was dropped from cruise itineraries... and almost ever ship that now doesn’t visit St Petersburg requires two nights in berths elsewhere in the Baltic... in locations where there are facilities and the potential for excursions. That's put enormous pressure on quays and caused immense concern about environmental issues... so much so that the EU is financing quays and power connections.

 

Stockholm is looking for Stadsgården to be the major cruise quay. When we were there, they were building the facilities at Stadsgården quay berths 167 and 160 makes ports of Stockholm the first port in Sweden to offer cruise ships onshore power connection... that will remove 6,000 tonnes of cruise-ship exhaust gasses from the centrum ever year. So the emphasis is on making Stadsgården accessible.

 

Sometime cruise-ships go to the adjacent Masthamnen Cruise Terminal but it's also equally well commented to the centrum and the museum area.

 

There were lots of shuttle busses when we were there... but many people also used the public transport system.