Returning To Russia?

[bob brown]

I am aboard the Dawn, on our 20 June Baltic cruise, and went to the CruiseNext lecture yesterday. They distributed the latest NCL itineraries, and to my surprise saw that they were including stops in St. Petersburg and Petropavlovsk in 2024…

Seems pretty optimistic….

[bluesea777]

That's the "wait and see" kind - just like the Covid-19 during 2020-21 ....

 

 

Edited June 27, 2022 by bluesea777

[tony s]

Ain’t this the same cruise line that hit a glacier in summer 

[casofilia]

@tony s

 

Ain’t this the same cruise line that hit a glacier in summer 

 

When did this happen?  Nothing about "hitting a glacier" has appeared on Cruise Critic recently!!

 

[The Shrike]

8 minutes ago, casofilia said:

@tony s

 

Ain’t this the same cruise line that hit a glacier in summer 

 

When did this happen?  Nothing about "hitting a glacier" has appeared on Cruise Critic recently!!

 

Yep, yesterday.  Here's the link to the thread posted by someone on board.  And it wasn't a glacier, it was a small chunk of ice in thick, heavy fog.

[LGW59]

10 minutes ago, casofilia said:

@tony s

 

Ain’t this the same cruise line that hit a glacier in summer 

 

When did this happen?  Nothing about "hitting a glacier" has appeared on Cruise Critic recently!!

 

Happened in Alaska on Friday 

[casofilia]

@LGW59

 

The Sun hit a GROWLER NOT a Glacier; a heck of a difference.

 

@The Shrike

 

And it wasn't a glacier, it was a small chunk of ice in thick, heavy fog.

 

Not such a small piece but certainly not a glacier.

 

@tony s

 

You seem to be making a "Mountain" out of a "Mole Hill".

Edited June 27, 2022 by casofilia

[Rob_H]

44 minutes ago, bob brown said:

I am aboard the Dawn, on our 20 June Baltic cruise, and went to the CruiseNext lecture yesterday. They distributed the latest NCL itineraries, and to my surprise saw that they were including stops in St. Petersburg and Petropavlovsk in 2024…

Seems pretty optimistic….

 

Often the brochures distributed are out of date, printed weeks or months ago.

 

The October 2023 Jewel transpacific from Seattle to Tokyo skips Petropavlovsk.  This sailing was only announced recently, so maybe more realistic. 

 

[casofilia]

@Rob_H

 

The October 2023 Jewel transpacific from Seattle to Tokyo skips Petropavlovsk. 

 

That is interesting to read.   The return trip in April 2024 has disappeared completely from the website and I can't get an explanation from the Sydney office!!

 

It is actually very interesting to look, in the NCL website, at the whole period between the Jewel in October 2023 and its return to Seward in April 2024.   There are lots of holes!!

 

[casofilia]

@bob brown

 

They distributed the latest NCL itineraries, and to my surprise saw that they were including stops in St. Petersburg and Petropavlovsk in 2024…

 

Interesting as the NCL website is not showing any cruises visiting Petropavlovsk at all when using the "Explore Ports" tools

[cfelbab]

I have 2024 Baltic cruise booked because they had some ports in the docket that I had never been to. Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland. The itinerary shows an overnight in Saint Petersburg but I fully expect that to be changed by then. Hopefully there is sufficient interest in the Baltic without Russia that NCL does not cancel its 2024 sailings in the region but we will see. I did get a chance to see Saint Petersburg and Moscow on a different Baltic cruise about five years ago. I am glad that I went when I did because it was very interesting to see these places and I do wonder if people from the USA or most of Europe will be traveling there again in my lifetime. This feels like a long term geopolitical shift back to a world that is de-globalized. The message in all this is not to put off travel to places you want to see because there is no guarantee that you will be able to do so in some distant future date. I was lucky on Cuba as well managing to get a cruise in before the restrictions were put back in place. I have my eyes on China in the near future now because it is not too hard to imagine China being off limits at some point in the future and I do think it would be cool to see the Great Wall.

[Rob_H]

3 minutes ago, cfelbab said:

The message in all this is not to put off travel to places you want to see because there is no guarantee that you will be able to do so in some distant future date. I was lucky on Cuba as well managing to get a cruise in before the restrictions were put back in place. 

 

Totally agree, our approach is why wait, do it now. We cruised a LOT in 2018 and 2019 (as newlyweds), always saying yes to opportunities. Went to Cuba, St Petersburg, Petropavlovsk and many places in the middle east that would be difficult now.

[Cruise Wonderland]

3 hours ago, casofilia said:

It is actually very interesting to look, in the NCL website, at the whole period between the Jewel in October 2023 and its return to Seward in April 2024.   There are lots of holes!!

 

The hole from 11th Nov to 11th Dec is likely to be drydock period in Singapore.

[casofilia]

@Cruise Wonderland

 

That was my thought too as the last dry-dock of the Jewel was in 2018.  Also to include a shake-down cruise to Port Klang.

 

I did wonder about the gap  22nd Dec to 5th Jan and again 31st Mar to 10th Apr.   And then why is the 10th-24th April Transpacific absent from the website?

[BirdTravels]

7 hours ago, The Shrike said:

And it wasn't a glacier, it was a small chunk of ice in thick, heavy fog.

 

"Small" is a relative term. When hit head on, it was big enough to damage the ship and cause the rest of the cruise to be cancelled. Remembering Iceberg 101 where what is above the water is a small fraction of what is underneath. And what is underneath caused one ship called the Titanic some problems. 

[YVRteacher]

7 hours ago, casofilia said:

@Rob_H

 

The October 2023 Jewel transpacific from Seattle to Tokyo skips Petropavlovsk. 

 

That is interesting to read.   The return trip in April 2024 has disappeared completely from the website and I can't get an explanation from the Sydney office!!

 

It is actually very interesting to look, in the NCL website, at the whole period between the Jewel in October 2023 and its return to Seward in April 2024.   There are lots of holes!!

 

The Jewel is going back into dry dock but I don’t know the exact dates.

The plan is to replace La Cucina with Onda, revitalize O’Sheehans and likely make it The Local, redo the public spaces and change Moderno into something else.

[casofilia]

@YVRteacher

 

That would explain why there is a month missing from the Jewel's itineraries in Asia.   With that number of changes the cruises before and after could be a little "shambolic" as we have found out previously.

[bob brown]

David, the CruiseNext manager, said the itineraries he had printed were the latest, and were NCL’s intention, but I agree with the poster who said they were like the Covid period…they we’re optimistically hoping international relationships would “normalize” by then, or would eliminate those ports later.

As long as Putin is the dictator, I wouldn’t go there, but hope that in my lifetime, things change there for the better…

[LGW59]

15 hours ago, casofilia said:

@LGW59

 

The Sun hit a GROWLER NOT a Glacier; a heck of a difference.

 

@The Shrike

 

And it wasn't a glacier, it was a small chunk of ice in thick, heavy fog.

 

Not such a small piece but certainly not a glacier.

 

@tony s

 

You seem to be making a "Mountain" out of a "Mole Hill".

I suppose if one considers a tractor truck small.  And it is still being referred to as a glacier.

[njkate]

I think NCL is being hopefully optimistic, I also think any Russian ports will be replaced or become just sea days. There would have to be a huge shake up in Russia before it would be a safe place to travel,

I was able to visit St Petersburg in 2018 on a Baltic cruise and glad I did so

[The Shrike]

8 hours ago, BirdTravels said:

 

"Small" is a relative term. When hit head on, it was big enough to damage the ship and cause the rest of the cruise to be cancelled. Remembering Iceberg 101 where what is above the water is a small fraction of what is underneath. And what is underneath caused one ship called the Titanic some problems. 

 

When some news outlets and CC members continue to claim it hit a glacier, a bit of perspective is needed.
Plus, growlers ARE small icebergs.  The definition:  "Growler is the term given to the smallest classified iceberg; it is defined as being less than 3 feet high above the water and less than 16 feet long. Very small considering the tallest iceberg seen in the northern Atlantic was measured at 550 feet above sea level.."

[FlGoodShips]

Hoping NCL will make the right choice and not have any Russian itineraries.

[ontheweb]

7 hours ago, njkate said:

I think NCL is being hopefully optimistic, I also think any Russian ports will be replaced or become just sea days. There would have to be a huge shake up in Russia before it would be a safe place to travel,

I was able to visit St Petersburg in 2018 on a Baltic cruise and glad I did so

Ditto, except our visit was in 2007.