Back From Constellation Baltic Cruise

[Lyn Mc]

Had a great cruise, met some wonderful people. There were some things Celebrity did well and others not so well but overall it was a good experience. This was our 4th Celebrity cruise (6th if you count via the points system). We have also cruised with Princess and P&O.

 

I am posting this in the hope that this does not get deleted. Apparently you can only post opinions/reviews now in response to a request???!!! – see further down re St Petersburg or ask Host on Baltic Boards for explanation.

 

The following is just our opinion, others will have different thoughts/views but this is what we felt:

 

Celebrity did a fine job with embarkation and we didn’t have to queue at all, we are founder classic members and had completed all our paperwork online. However, we used the ordinary check-in line (rather than the suite/founder check-in) and were straight on, the glass of sparkling wine was soon in our hands. Cabins were not available until 1.00 p.m. but we were able to drop off our hand luggage etc.

 

Age wise this was the ‘oldest’ cruise we have been on. I think the split was 50/50 between Brits and Americans with a smattering of other nationalities. I have to say that we did not witness any particular instances of rudeness from passengers but I know that others did.

 

We thought the food in the main dining room at Dinner was very good for the first 3 to 4 days then there was a downward slide, however it picked up again for the last 3 days. Celebrity do not cook fish very well, the red snapper was sent back from our table and our waiter came back to tell us that this fish had been sent back to the galley from all second sitting tables. My husband had a ‘rib-eye’ steak, there was nothing else on the menu that he liked, when it came it had a lot of fat and was very tough. He should have ordered an ordinary steak which we had been told you could have any night or we could have sent this back but as there was nothing else on the menu he liked and a steak would have taken too long to cook, he just left it. All the lamb and the tournedos of beef that we had were fantastic. Our waiter Poly was the best waiter we have had on any of our cruises and gave very good recommendations. Food at lunchtime in the dining room was not so good, same goes with the service so we only had two meals in the dining room at lunch time and neither time did they get my husbands meal right. We only had breakfast in the dining room once, OK service and choices but I had to have my waffles with blueberries and cream so we breakfasted in the Buffet. You have to time this right or it becomes a ‘Bun-Fight’ but they now have 4 waffle machines and the long queues we have experienced on previous cruises were no longer there. The waffles are fantastic, can’t resist them, almost worth booking a cruise just for them!!!!

 

The one big problem with using the buffet area is the over-zealous clearing of tables. You can’t leave anything to go to the Buffet to get something else because you come back to find the table cleared. One of us had to go up and then the other to ensure that we kept the table. I thought about bringing up a reading book and my glasses so that the waiters realised I had not finished and would be coming back. One American lady suggested that a small (two sided) notice could be collected with your food/tray to state that you did/did not want your tray clearing. However the first thing that came to mind was the ‘saving the pool-chair fiasco’ so perhaps this idea although in theory would stop the enthusiastic tray clearing it might start a ‘save the table’ epidemic!

 

The Luncheon Buffet was varied and of a good quality and the aqua spa options were also very good. Coffee, tea, drinking chocolate, hot water, juice were available 24 hours, however sometimes the machines did run out and were not refilled very quickly or not until the next scheduled meal time.

 

The service on the Ship from the crew was outstanding. Everyone (with the exception of one waiter at lunchtime) was wonderful, the guest relations desk staff were the best we had encountered. The wait staff and the drinks staff (especially Liuvu in the Casino) were great, Our cabin stewardess Marites was fantastic and nothing was too much trouble for her. The only small problem was with our independent arrangements for our tour in Russia. Despite numerous visits/phone calls to guest relations who did all they could, to find out what the arrangements would be for disembarking at St. Petersburg, the behind the scenes staff making these arrangements kept us waiting until the last evening when we came back from (Late-Dining) Dinner. Celebrity definitely don’t like you to ‘do your own thing’ and make it as difficult as possible, but knowing this beforehand makes this slightly easier to cope with

 

Shows were much the same as we had already seen on previous cruises and we didn’t go to all of them. However the comedian Fed Klett and the Cirque du Soleil short (40 mins) preview were both excellent. Invitation to the Captain’s Wellcome Party is no longer delivered in an envelope, it is listed, among other events, on a separate page in the ‘daily’ and we missed this. It was on the first informal night, 3rd night of the cruise in our case.

 

Dress – My husband and I are both fans of ‘dressing’ for dinner when on a cruise ship, we both go to town on Formal Nights with tuxedo for him and long gown for me (I don’t do casual in the evenings on my cruises, I just love to wear my dresses and suits because I don’t get much chance at home). Formal - there were very few tuxedos but lots of suits and ties for the men and lots of the ladies had long dresses. Informal - now no longer requires men to wear a tie but lots still did and the ladies wore dresses and suits. Casual – this ran the gamut from jeans and tee-shirts through to jackets and slacks. I actually did see someone (female) come in as if they had just been to the gym in a track suit. The question of dress has been discussed ad nauseam on these boards and I am not going to comment. I enjoy dressing up and so did the rest of our table, we all looked great every night.

 

Drink prices are always a question of what you are used to back home and we think they are rather steep considering that the cruise line themselves get everything at duty free prices but don’t pass any of these savings on. I have to say that some of the prices for a small can of beer or a reasonable bottle of wine are rather steep, when you consider the 15% service charge as well, but that is the customer’s choice, you can always remain tee-total for the length of your cruise, although I am sure they could sell a lot more wine/drinks and make a lot more profit if they trimmed the prices a bit.

 

We went to the Ocean Liners Speciality Restaurant on the final formal evening – have done the Lobster and Baked Alaska ‘thing’ too many times now - but I can understand that for some it is a great evening and the cruise line seems to keep to tradition in some things! There is a cover charge of $30. The meal was superb and I would recommend that everyone does this at least once on the ‘M’ Class ships. You can choose from two menus, one with wine suited to each course and the other without the wine. The ‘with wine’ menu was quite limited BUT you could have crepe suzettes for sweet which you could not get on the other menu. From memory I think they have dropped one course from the meal but I could be wrong, I thought we had entrée and a soup before but as I say I could be wrong. I do know that we enjoyed the cheese course very much, even though we usually have this at the end of the meal in the UK.

 

The Grand Buffet was not the grandest affair I had been to but I am not a fan of these anyway, we were around when they were clearing up and more than half of the food went back to the kitchen untouched. Lots of people took pictures but not many stayed to eat. I don’t know why they don’t do this at a lunchtime on a sea-day, they would have plenty of time to set this up after breakfast and plenty of time before the evening meal to reset the room. You wouldn’t have half the waste and the wait and kitchen staff could get to bed earlier!

 

We used the Ship’s laundry and dry cleaning facility and the service and prices are very good. There are no ‘specials’ as I have read about on other boards but on the final day you get same day service for no extra charge.

 

Celebrity now charge for the shuttle buses, $5 or 6$ one way, depending on the port. We never took these, there were also quite a high number of other passengers who either walked (we Brits are used to walking everywhere anyway) or took a taxi with others. The daily told you to get your tickets for the shuttle buses from the excursion desk but I don’t know if you could actually pay if you felt tired and would like to get the shuttle back from town in any port. Perhaps someone else could answer that one. The only place we took a taxi was Copenhagen because we did not dock where the daily paper stated. We should have docked in Langelinie near the Little Mermaid (the Jewel of the Seas was there in our place) but we had to dock a couple of kilometres further out at Frihavnen. There was no announcement about this on the ship and some people who didn’t realise had a really long and very tiring walk. Now X have started charging for shuttles and got away with it, other cruise lines will soon be following suit so I am sure this will soon become the norm.

 

We never took any ship’s tour, being independent travellers we did our own thing in all but one of the ports. In St Petersburg we had booked two mini-buses (along with 22 other CC’ers) with Alla’s Tours and had the most fantastic two days. Our highlight was St Isaacs, this definitely had the WOW factor!!! The Palaces are fantastic and beautifully restored, the Gold Room at the Hermitage is worth the extra and the Amber Room at Catherine’s Palace is exquisite, the Peterhof Gardens are also exceptional.

 

I did put a report on our St Petersburg trip onto the ‘Baltic Ports’ page for everyone to read but all my hardwork came to nothing because my post was deleted, apparently because I was stating how good our tour guide, Alla, was. I think there is some kind of conspiracy going on – not quite sure what. There had been some unsubstantiated allegations which have been left on the postings, even when others said that this was unfair. The Board Moderator stated the following in a posting on 22nd April, 2006

 

 

Originally Posted by Host CeciliaPlease reread Grammaof3's post. She says she read something and she came here to ask if it could be true. She didn't say it was true. She didn't say any of you are wrong for having good experiences. She's being a cautious traveler and making sure she's getting the right information. Instead of responding back with name calling and nastiness, you can respond with your own experience about this tour operator and ease her fears about this situation. Just because 99 people had a fantastic time with a tour operator doesn't mean that the 100th person didn't have an awful time or didn't have serious concerns. And because this board depends on reviews, good and bad, it's legitimate for someone to question something negative they heard. If you had a good experience, share that and help other's feel more comfortable with their choice.

 

 

So,I thought when I got back I would take Cecilia’s advise and let everyone know how the tour went and how good a tour guide Alla actually was. I have to say that the tour was excellent and I posted my positive review/report of the tour but this was deleted and I was told to read the guidelines!! The reply to my e-mail was that my post, which was actually a supportive view of the tour guide in question and a review/report of our trip in St Petersburg, could only be posted if it was in response to a request for that information and they were sorry for the inconvenience ???

 

Since when do reviews/reports have to be in response to a request?? And if you read the above post – Posted By A Board Host/Moderator No Less – I am responding to a request – Am I missing something here?????

 

I have also compiled a short report on each port we visited which I shall also post on the Baltics Ports pages. We didn’t have a tour guide for these, so I think I am safe there – but you never know!!!

 

Anyway to get on with this report. At every port when coming back to the ship there were drinks waiting for you on a table near the security staff, depending on the weather there was water, juice, coffee, hot chocolate etc. This is a great touch by Celebrity and was really welcome.

 

As I say, we had a wonderful cruise and we are looking forward to our next cruise whenever that maybe. However, I don’t think I will be reporting/reviewing in future, the experience on the Baltic Ports Boards has left me feeling somewhat irked and I don’t feel that all the time and effort I spent is now worth it. Other posters (Susan you were so right!!) have also said that the Boards are getting very picky and I know that lots of the posters who I used to admire and had lots of information have gone over to other boards – I don’t blame them!

 

All the best for your future cruises

 

Lyn Mc

[CruisingChick]

Lyn,

 

Thank you for your review of your Baltics Cruise. We sail on July 1st. I do hope you filled out the comment card and noted the good along with the bad, esepcially regarding the food in the dining room. That's the only way they know there is a problem.

 

Did you have any "open seating" dinner nights?

 

Do you have any clue how far it is from where the ship docks in Copenhagen to get to the Town Hall Square? I'm not sure if we should buy shuttle tickets (there are 3 of us) or just get a taxi.

 

Thanks for all your help.

[BaltiGator]

Wow! Thanks Lyn for the great review. Now I'm looking forward to this cruise even more!

 

We noticed the same "overzealous" clearing of tables on our recent RCI cruise. But to be fair to the crew, a lot of times the tables were full and clearing away was done swiftly so other guests would have a clean place to sit. I agree that the best thing to do is just have someone stay at the table rather than having everyone go up for seconds (or thirds, or fourths...:D ) at the same time.

 

Drink prices may be high because the cruise lines count on that for a fair part of their profit model. Also, with all the alcohol problems recently - pax and crew - there may be a feeling in management that lowering prices would encourage more consumption and isn't necessarily a great idea right now.

 

I agree with your comment about the midnight buffets. What a great idea you have, to do it for lunch on a sea day! Doing them at midnight seems to be a leftover (sorry for the pun) from the prior age of cruising, and not something that is really needed anymore.

 

We will definitely try Ocean Liners and be sure to alert the service desk of our plans for a tour in St. Pete with a private company.

 

Thanks again for all the info! Glad to know you had a great time!

[jodisue]

Thanks for the review! We are looking at doing a family cruise in the Baltics next summer. I agree about Fred Klett...he was just on Galaxy and it was probably the show I enjoyed the most.

[cruisintwinsmom]

Thank you for the review. We will be on Century in a couple of weeks and was very excited to hear about Alla, as we will be using her company (althought we will have Anna). What time did you get off the ship and how did you pay her? Maybe I should pose this question on the Baltics Board so you can "respond to a request"?

[nu2sea]

Wonderful review, Lyn!

 

Not only do you do all of the legwork before the trip, you also do the write-up afterwards. Sure I can't talk you into the Panama Canal or the Millie TA or the Century Med?

:D

Susan

[Sky Sweet]

Thank you for your excellent review. My husband and I will be on a Constellation Baltic Cruise to Russia next month, and your post was very helpful :)

[Lyn Mc]

Thank you for the comments on my review, I have now downloaded the Baltic Ports review. This now includes the St Petersburg tour which was a separate post and which was deleted because I mentioned the tour guide as a new thread - and did not follow guidelines apparently!!!!!! However, luckily someone from our cruise had seen this before deletion and copied it so I didn't have to retype it all.

 

CruisingChick, I think you might find the answers over on the other board but be quick I am sure someone is just waiting to pounce!!!

 

Cruisintwinsmom - I like your style !!!! Anna was the other tour guide on our second bus - you will not be disappointed at all, she is lovely and great to be with. If you go to the Baltics Tour Page you should find my review it has the details of our debarkation fiasco at St Peteresburg. We paid in cash - dollars.

 

Hi Susan - how are you and my favourite American Ed? You were right about the boards gettin pickey!!! Did my best though. Would love to cruise with you both again, as long as you get one of those gorgeous royal suites again, I'll see what Malc's wallet looks like when we have paid for the expenses on this trip, we could probably afford an inside but then come up and bunk with you (and all that chocolate)!!

 

Sky Sweet - there is more about Russia on the Baltic Cruise Boards - if you are quick!!

 

All the best Lyn

[dogsrule]

Thanks for your great review of the Connie Baltic cruise. Did you have to wear layers or rain gear during the day and also did you have any weather conducive to sitting out on the deck by the pool? Also, who was the captain? Thanks again...:)

[nu2sea]

We really did get lucky with the weather, didn't we Lyn? Crisp, blue skies, temps in the 50's, 60's and once in a while 70's. Had a little rain at sail-away, but luckily Terry's FV balcony was covered. Also had some rain in Oslo and rough weather on our return to Dover diverted us to Harwich.

 

I noticed that in Oslo, during our only rainy tour, nothing changed due to the rain, the tours continued as planned. Fortunately it wasn't that cold or windy so an umbrella over my Gore Tex jacket was all I needed.

 

And Cruisintwinsmom, I rode back to the ship with Anna in the other van (Lyn arranged for two vans to accomodate our group of 24) the first afternoon. Anna was just as charming as Alla, with the same depth of knowledge of Russia's history, art and culture. Extremely good English and a lovely smile.

 

Oh, the captain was Ioannis Papanikolaou.

 

Susan

 

We don't have the Royal Suite for the Millie or the Summit, Lyn, will a Celebrity Suite do? It's got huge windows!

[cruisintwinsmom]

Thank you for the comment, Susan. When we were booking Alla gave us some references for Anna, and of course, they were wonderful. It is reassuring to have an independent referal, when one does all this over the internet, it is difficult to determine relationships.

Glad you all had such a pleasant cruise. Hope our weather is as nice when we get aboard Century in a couple of weeks.

Happy Sailing!

[SF]

Great review, thanks for posting. We're thinking of taking a Baltic cruise next year on Constellation so it really helped reading what you had to say.

 

Susan, we're still deciding on what type of cabin and was wondering how Terry like the FV cabin. Is that the family stateroom with the balcony? Did you feel a lot of vibration being at the aft of the ship? What about noise? Would you have or know of any place I could see a picture of this type of room?

 

Appreciate any help you could give. Thanks.

[insidecabin]

Great review Lyn,

 

 

One thing to add here is the food, we too were not totaly happy with it on this trip.

 

Some was fantastic but there were a lot of repeats and due to the itinery they ended up close together.

 

Overall the ingredients were good but the DUCK(3 times) and LOBSTER were bad, both were cooked ok but tastless.

 

Beef very good with prime rib(3 times) and sirloin(3 times) but rib eye lucky dip.

 

We had more success with the fish mine were all good and one of out table companions had fish every night.

 

Veil chops were very good, as was the lamb.

 

One thing missing from the menu is the allways available selections so best to check first night so you know.

 

Portions were mid size so doubling up on coarses was possible even for us brits.

 

Presentation was average

 

The outdoor grill and the spa grill did very good food probably the best "outdoor" selection on any trip so far.

 

Lunch buffets OK but having the permanent seperate stations for pizza,pasta and sandwiches helps a lot.

 

Really enjoyed the sushi(pre-late dinner) and allthough we did not use the casual dinning the 3 day rotating menu looked good.

 

We were never in lines for lunch or breakfast but the schedule could make it busy if it meant a lot would eat on board(eg 2.pm docking)

[spearmint]

Hi, Lyn. I read your great report under "Baltic Ports" and ran it off. :D Now I have questions, which I hope you will answer!

 

(1) When you are leaving the ship at 7:30 or 8:00 a.m. for an excursion, is there enough time for breakfast? I have forgotten what time the cafe or dining room opens.

 

(2) At what time does one need to get up in order to see the vista into Stockholm, which I have seen on these boards as being better than the Inside Passage to Alaska?

 

(3) If you have a second seating dinner assignment, how does open seating dinner affect that? We expect to be on board every night.

 

(4) We plan to use credit cards as much as possible; how did you manage with finances? Did you use mostly cash? If so, were you able to use American or British money, or did you find it necessary to change to local currency for each (most?) country? (Did you pre-buy any foreign currency before you left home?) I realize that you are from the UK, and I am from Canada, but you might still be able to help; we will taking American money for sure, and since we will be in London for 3 days prior, we will probably buy some British pounds before we leave home. Naturally, I wonder if I should get some currencies from other countries, too. Thanks in advance for anything you can tell me. Bill.

[Lyn Mc]

Hi Susan and Phil,

 

Thanks for your input. It helps to have back-up!!!! - Hope you are OK

 

Thanks for the comments on my review.

 

Spearmint - the Breakfast Buffet and the Dining Room are open around 6.30. There is of course Room Service Breakfast. You fill out the card the night before and hang this on your door. We never bothered with room service breakfast though being early risers. As I said in my review I have to have my two waffles and hot blueberries with cream to set me up for the day!!!

 

With regard to the swedish archipelago. You hit this at around 5.30 a.m. but you are sailing through this for over 3 hours so you don't have to get up that early and, of course, you sail back out of it at night. We thought this was great being in the dining room at night and having this vista was fantastic.

 

Have to say that we were so late back that we had room service on the 'open seating night' at St. Petersburg and just went down to the dining room with our usual dinner partners when at Warnemunde so that we could sit together.

 

We used local currency on our trips but credit cards when shopping. You can get most of the currencies from the ship but not the zloty (poland) and estonia kroon (Tallin). We purchased our currency on board ship. NOTE: You cannot charge this to your shipboard account you have to take dollars/pounds etc to the onboard bank and exchange actual notes!! They will also exchange back notes but not coins. However, having said all this we would not do this again the ships exchange rate is not that good and we lost out big time. We would use the local ATM's they are plentiful and only a small charge from your bank. There are banks that don't charge you and I would recommend looking into this if you are planning a trip could save you quite a bit on a Baltics cruise. In Russia they will take dollars but the market and some small stall holders only take roubles but our tour guide helped us out there and we repaid her in dollars. In Tallin they took euros but the change came back in estonian kroons, we gave all our coins from all the ports to our room stewardess.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Lyn

[Scott Cyn]

The Grand Buffet was not the grandest affair....I don’t know why they don’t do this at a lunchtime on a sea-day...

Lyn Mc

 

Because that would take away the favorite story told by every Cruise Director since the beginning of time. Now the answer to the question would be, "Why, the midnight buffet is at noon, of course."

 

By the way, great report, Lyn. I'm leaving today headed for Dover to catch Constellation this weekend and you have really helped me get ready.

 

Scott

[spearmint]

 

Spearmint - the Breakfast Buffet and the Dining Room are open around 6.30. There is of course Room Service Breakfast. You fill out the card the night before and hang this on your door. We never bothered with room service breakfast though being early risers. As I said in my review I have to have my two waffles and hot blueberries with cream to set me up for the day!!!

 

With regard to the swedish archipelago. You hit this at around 5.30 a.m. but you are sailing through this for over 3 hours so you don't have to get up that early and, of course, you sail back out of it at night. We thought this was great being in the dining room at night and having this vista was fantastic.

 

Have to say that we were so late back that we had room service on the 'open seating night' at St. Petersburg and just went down to the dining room with our usual dinner partners when at Warnemunde so that we could sit together.

 

We used local currency on our trips but credit cards when shopping. You can get most of the currencies from the ship but not the zloty (poland) and estonia kroon (Tallin). We purchased our currency on board ship. NOTE: You cannot charge this to your shipboard account you have to take dollars/pounds etc to the onboard bank and exchange actual notes!! They will also exchange back notes but not coins. However, having said all this we would not do this again the ships exchange rate is not that good and we lost out big time. We would use the local ATM's they are plentiful and only a small charge from your bank. There are banks that don't charge you and I would recommend looking into this if you are planning a trip could save you quite a bit on a Baltics cruise. In Russia they will take dollars but the market and some small stall holders only take roubles but our tour guide helped us out there and we repaid her in dollars. In Tallin they took euros but the change came back in estonian kroons, we gave all our coins from all the ports to our room stewardess.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Lyn

It surely does! Thanks so much for taking the trouble to answer me and everyone else.

[shakespeare]

Hi Lyn! Susan mentioned she met you on this cruise and that you had posted a review. Just thought I'd pop in to say hello:)

 

Are you sure you can't be convinced to join us on the November TA?;)

 

Glad to hear you enjoyed your cruise...hope we meet up again in the future.

 

Liz

[Lyn Mc]

Hi Liz,

 

Its lovely to hear from you. How are you and Rick? I've not quite got myself together with the other boards yet, but will join you over there soon.

 

I would love to join you all in November on the TA, I am working on it but its the time off from work and 'the wallet' which probably won't allow it this year (although I'm not quite sure what the cabins are costing at the moment).

 

Thanks for the posting.

 

Speak to you again soon,

 

Lyn

[bpolan]

thanks so much for all the info on the baltics cruise. we are on the century aug 2 to sail. Can't wait. I think you've convinced me we can do all the ports except st. petersburg on our own. did you notice whether or not you could hire a taxi for an entire day at any of the ports? WE did that in Marseilles and it was incredible.

thanks again for your posting.

bpolan

[jaxon41]

Thanks for the excellent review. Yes, I found last May on our Century trip to the Baltics that X does not like independents, at least not in St. Petersburg. I can hardly believe that in a year, they still have not worked out the glitches with their independent travelers. X nearly messed up our entire program (2 days with DenRus) when it told part of our group to go to one place, and part to another, being separated with zero assistance to correct the problem from the ship -- because we were independent-- resulted in a loss of coordination for disembarking. Thankfully, our group was kind enough to wait over an hour for us as we tried to find them and get off the ship without our tickets which they had. Except for that, we loved Century and the cruise.

[BaltiGator]

We just got our cruise docs for our August sailing to the Baltics on Connie, and the text includes two prominent warnings:

 

(1) Unless you're on a Celebrity excursion, you need a visa to visit St. Pete.

 

(2) If you're not on a Celebrity excursion, you can "expect" to get off the ship in St. Pete around 9:30am - not sooner.

 

The first statement is a known falsehood. The second is an insult and affront to reasonable accommodations for all pax.

 

My understanding is that, with a little advance planning, neither of these "warnings" need affect those pax who are, in fact, touring St. Pete with other tour companies not affiliated with Celebrity. But shame on the cruise line, IMO, for this kind of written "bullying" of pax. And shame on the other cruise lines, too, because what I hear is that they all print this strong-arm crap.

[nu2sea]

Hi Liz,

 

Its lovely to hear from you. How are you and Rick? I've not quite got myself together with the other boards yet, but will join you over there soon.

 

I would love to join you all in November on the TA, I am working on it but its the time off from work and 'the wallet' which probably won't allow it this year (although I'm not quite sure what the cabins are costing at the moment).

 

Thanks for the posting.

 

Speak to you again soon,

 

Lyn

 

Lyn, it's going to be a wonderful cruise, please do try to join us. TAs are usually cheaper than some of the other types of cruises. Personally I think they are much more fun. Just think, one week of western med ports and then a week of sea days to recover.....

 

Susan

[daju22]

We just got our cruise docs for our August sailing to the Baltics on Connie, and the text includes two prominent warnings:

 

(1) Unless you're on a Celebrity excursion, you need a visa to visit St. Pete.

 

(2) If you're not on a Celebrity excursion, you can "expect" to get off the ship in St. Pete around 9:30am - not sooner.

 

The first statement is a known falsehood. The second is an insult and affront to reasonable accommodations for all pax.

 

My understanding is that, with a little advance planning, neither of these "warnings" need affect those pax who are, in fact, touring St. Pete with other tour companies not affiliated with Celebrity. But shame on the cruise line, IMO, for this kind of written "bullying" of pax. And shame on the other cruise lines, too, because what I hear is that they all print this strong-arm crap.

 

Hi Balti,

We're on Constellation in August with an independent tour of Saint Petersburg. We are to meet with our tour as soon as the ship is cleared. This wording is very upsetting to us. How are you planning to get off the ship earlier than 9:30?

Thanks for your thoughts and the warning.

Judy

[BaltiGator]

I agree, the wording is upsetting.

 

However, from reading the Baltic Ports section of the board it appears that reality is different from Celebrity.

 

Everyone recommends getting down to the area where you get off the ship as early as possible, and if necessary, not being intimidated by Celebrity personnel who try to coerce you into remaining on board. Apparently the Russian authorities don't care what excursion you're doing, and they don't need to see a visa - they do need to see your passport and documentation of your tour arrangements. The tour company should send you those docs, so check with them.

 

But still, yes, it's upsetting that the cruise lines even try this underhanded baloney.