Problem getting off the Emerald Princess in St. Pete.

[MercedMike]

Also just off the Emerald Princess. We used a private tour company in St Petersburg and met them at 8:30 AM each day. NO PROBLEMS!!!!!!!! Do NOT consider going into St Petersburg without a tour of some sort. A passenger we met tried to get a private visa...$235 plus Russsia wasn't eager to grant visas to people ...he finally gave up and took a ship's tour. Russsia wants to play the game this way so we have to go along since its their "ball". LOVED St Petersburg but Tallin and Schwerin in Germany were my top two!!!!!!

 

This was our experience with Crown Princess last year. HOWEVER, in the pre cruise docs, and ALSO in the on board docs right up to the day of disembarkation, they continued to tell their LIES about requiring a visa unless on a Princess tour, and not being allowed to disembark.

 

In my way of thinking, this simply proves that Princess is DELIBERATELY LYING when they know very well that what they say is not true, and they are not able to enforce the LIES they are telling.

 

I congratulate them for having a fair and efficient disembarkation process. But I continue to condemn them for the LIES they deliberately tell before hand.

[dance4fun]

Just home from this cruise. The EP docked at the new cruise terminal on Aug 18 and 19th. The disembarkation was wonderful. Although they started the disembarkation with the PRincess tours from Deck 4 mid ship first, they also had a disembarkation point set up on deck 5 mid ship for non Princess tours. They opened this shortly after 7 am and we were off the ship very quickly. There were more than 15 immigration stations open at this pier so even that went very quickly. Copy of passport not needed at this cruise terminal as they have the technology to scan the passport.

 

We had booked the Complete St. Petersburg tour with Alla and we were in fact at the meeting point by 7:15, before the tour guide arrived. Alla was excellent and in fact took us to several places not on the program as we had the time and the 12 people on board were in agreement. We took a ride on the subway as well as visited a local, operating Russian Orthodox church...not the glitz of the cathedrals shown to the tourists. I highly recommend Alla Tours. Our guide was excellent and Alla herself comes to meet everyone. The luncheon on one of the days was excellent and even the box lunch was enjoyable. Absolutely no complaints about Alla. Some of the venues were very crowded, like the Hermitage, but not their fault.

 

Hope everyone enjoys their time on this cruise as much as we did.

Judy and Brenda

 

Great to hear your experience of EP actually declaring Deck 5 as a non Princess tour leave point. We used that location when we were there on July 15 sailing (July 19/20 in STP), but at that time Princess was actually still going with the policy of saying only Princess tours allowed off until 8:30. We did get off and in the hands of our tour by 7:30.

 

Princess - treating your customers better is noticed. As we said in another post here, our next cruise is on Celebrity, partly because of the way Princess failed to treat its customers on our two previous Princess cruises. We had issues with the messages sent via the Patter on StPetersburg tours and when the CB had engine difficulties in July 2008.

[Leejnd4]

This was our experience with Crown Princess last year. HOWEVER, in the pre cruise docs, and ALSO in the on board docs right up to the day of disembarkation, they continued to tell their LIES about requiring a visa unless on a Princess tour, and not being allowed to disembark.

 

In my way of thinking, this simply proves that Princess is DELIBERATELY LYING when they know very well that what they say is not true, and they are not able to enforce the LIES they are telling.

 

I congratulate them for having a fair and efficient disembarkation process. But I continue to condemn them for the LIES they deliberately tell before hand.

 

Mike - same thing with Crystal. They provided completely false information in their pre-cruise documents, AND their "Documentation Manager" at their corporate headquarters blatantly lied to me on the phone about the need for a Russian visa, only backpedaling and reversing herself when I presented her with irrefutable facts proving she was lying.

 

I posted this experience on the Crystal forum, and got ripped to shreds and called more names than I care to remember...and one of them actually EMAILED THE CREW ON MY SHIP telling them lies about me, trying to spoil my cruise. I'm still a pariah among several of the more passionate Crystal fans on that board. I am unsure if I ever want to cruise Crystal again, because of the fact that it's such a small cruise line (only two ships), and some of these passionate fans who hate me because I told the ugly truth about their beloved cruise line, cruise often enough that I can't guarantee that I won't run into them on a Crystal cruise.

 

Fortunately Crystal did NOT cause any problems whatsoever with respect to disembarkation...so in that regard they are better than many of the other cruise lines. But that doesn't excuse the fact that they provided false visa information pre-cruise, and lied to me on the phone, all in an apparent effort to dissuade people from doing private tours instead of their overpriced shore excursions.

 

This whole thing with how the cruise lines handle Russian visa and disembarkation issues in St. Petersburg is a serious blemish on the cruise industry.

[Grannycb]

I wonder if the better treatment disembarking at St. Petersburg will carry over to next year?

[CB Group]

We just returned from the Emerald Princess, and had also hired a private tour for four people, both days in port in Russia. I read repeated horrow stories about what went on while people who had paid for tours outside of the cruise ship attempted to get off the ship. I wasted every minute of that time worrying over nothing... Here are the facts.

 

1) Make sure you have all paperwork required. (a) Original passport (b) copy of passport © Immigration card that will be given to you on the ship. Make sure you fill out the passport information on line under documents. The immigration form you will receive from Princess is preprinted with your information. (d) The ticket for the private tour company that you hire. We used Denrus.

 

2) You will received notices in a letter, in the padder, and from the ship's employees about how all cruise paid excursions people will be required to get off the ship before those who have booked outside of the cruise company for an excursion.

NOT TRUE. THE RUSSIAN IMMIGRATION LOOKS AT THE FOUR PCS. OF PAPER I MENTION IN #1, THEY HAVE NO IDEA WHO IS WITH A PRIVATE TOUR COMPANY OR WHO IS WITH THE CRUISE TOURS UNTIL THE SEE THE 4TH PC. OF PAPER WHICH IS YOUR TICKET. PRINCESS OUTRIGHT LIED TO EVERYONE ABOUT THIS. I AM IN THE PROCESS OF PUTTING A LETTER TOGETHER TO SEND TO PRINCESS CRUISE LINES CORPORATE OFFICE.

 

3) Once the ship has cleared customs, in our case it was about 6:45 am. You can leave the ship. The only thing you are required to do for Princess Cruise lines is punch your cruise ticket in the machine as you leave. This is their record of who has departed the ship. Myself, my husband and our two friends went to deck 4, which is where the gangplank is. We did not go to the lounges as they had instructed us. We had no intentions of waiting until 9:30 to leave for a tour we arranged to begin at 7:30 am. Two people stopped us, one being the cruise director. I politely said tot he first person who stopped us, and I quote; "We have all my paperwork in order, and I am getting off the ship." We kept walking, the second person to stop us was the cruise director herself. I repeated the same statement, knowing Princess Cruise line has no right to discriminate against passengers who choose to look for a better bargain, and not use their tour company. We walked right past her and were off the ship by 6:55 am. We went through Russian immigrations who took the paperwork I listed above, returned our ticket, and passport, and the copy.

 

Second day, we had no problem at all. No one stopped us, no one asked a thing. Don't worry about it, don't be intimidated, and don't allow any Princess Cruise employee to tell you, you can not get off of the ship.

[eljinx]

I just got back from the Emerald Princess cruise, and I thought I would share my St. Petersburg disembarkation experience with you.

 

We were a group of 6 and were fully expecting to have someone try to keep us on the ship. We weren't really worried, because what is the point of worrying about it and ruining the first half of your trip, right? You just deal with it if it happens.

 

Anyway, happy surprise!....it turned out to be the fastest disembarkation of all the ports and we were off the ship in less than 5 minutes at about 7:15. We went to deck 4 and it did look like everyone else around us were part of a tour, because they all had their stickers. We just avoided eye contact with any of the princess people, and casually held up our paperwork to cover where a sticker would be. Nobody tried to stop us from getting off the ship at all. The second day was just as easy, in fact, we were there before our tour guide!

 

What an amazing city! We had a great tour guide and driver from DenRus, and they took us everywhere and overloaded us with information for 2 days. I had a really great vacation, and I would recommend it to anyone :) I think I will write a full review when I am over the jet lag. (just got home from Copenhagen yesterday and couldn't sleep in past 4am today--yikes!)

[treesah]

Thanks for posting, Eljinx. We're leaving for Copenhagen on Friday and will be on the 9/13 cruise on the Emerald. Quite a relief to know the disembarkation fiasco in SP has stopped for now. Once you've recovered from your jet lag could you please post a short review of your experiences and impressions of this cruise, i.e. the weather, the ports, your favorites, etc. TIA.

[tequilatamm]

Treesah, we'll see you there! We leave today, 8th September (long flights from Australia!) and touch down midday on Wednesday, 9th, in Copenhagen.

 

We're going to the Ice Bar get-together... are you?

[treesah]

Hi, Tequila, see you on the 14th. We're flying out of LAX on 9/11 and our flight arrives in CPH at 7:20 pm so it'll be too late for the Ice Bar. My friend Beverly will be there. I think. She'll be alone so please say hello to her. She'll be in CPH for a couple of days (she's in Dubrovnik right now).

 

Bon voyage to you and your family. I don't think I could handle a 30 hour flight.

 

I want to touch bases with you since we'll be in Australia in December (first timers) and I hope you'll share some information. You did mention you are a California girl, right? We're from San Diego.

[bgelb]

I just got off the Emerald Princess on 9/13 and we had no problem getting off in St. Petersburg. I was not looking forward to any issues but we had a private tour, met in the international cafe on deck 5, right near the gangway, and no one stopped us from gettting off. We were there at 7:00 when the ship was cleared. I don't know if there were any problems later in the day, but we had absolutely no problems, toured St Petersburg with STB and they were just great. We had a fabulous tour and saw much more than people traveling on the Princess Tours. We had no problem getting back to the ship on time. We also planned nothing for the evening and were happy because we had a very intense tour and were beat by the evening. Anyone that went to the ballet said that it was beautiful. If you want to do an evening event, you might want to have a less intense tour. They had 3 levels of tours depending upon how much you wanted to see in a day, and how much energy it took.

[lwf99]

My husband and I are taking our two young sons this summer on the Star Princess. We have always had excellent cruises with Princess in the past. This time we decided on a private tour in St. Pete's, but am now worried about trying to get off the ship. I am hoping I will not run into any problems with Princess staff while our children are with us. We need to get off by 7 AM for our tour. Any advice? :confused:

[MATHA531]

This is all obviously an attempt on the part of the cruise lines to try to scare people and get them to book their overpriced shore excusions. I would not stand for it and if on my cruise they try to pull this garbage, I will sue the pants off of them. It is up to us, the clients, to make surte they don't continue to get away with this garbage. It is obvious there is no letter from the Russian government telling them to allow only their shore excursion passengers off the ship first.

 

I didn't go through all the posts in this thread, but I wonder if any cruise ship employees tried to justify this.

[Giantfan13]

this has been covered so many times already. The crusie line CANNOT prevent one from getting off the ship, once in port. they can feed you all the garbage they want, and blame Russian immigration all they want, but it just isn't true. They are only doing this to scare passengers into taking their own tours. What are they going to do if you want to get off, physically restrain you??> I seriously doubt that.

 

Who knows what this years crop of stories will be??. Hopefully the cruise lines will have learned from past experiences and made things a lot easier. We were worried also, when we cruised in mid August, but we even surprised ourselves at how quickly we were off the ship and how speedily we moved thru Russian immigration. Even the Russians got the hang of this business as they has about 10 agents checking people thru. THAT was the biggest delay for most of the 'earlier' cruisers, Russian immigration had just a few agents trying to check 2000 visitors thru.

 

And regardless of what time your tour is booked for, NO tour will leave without you, even if you do not get off the ship until 9:00. They will wait and make up the time.

It is a good idea, if you have a group from your ship already planned, to meet as a group and try to disembark together, so you will basically get off at the same time.

 

Don't fret about it, it all works out, so do NOT let some minor glitches spoil your vacation.

 

Len

[traveler525]

Totally agree. We were on Princess last year and they did not try to keep us from going off. My DH was not feeling well so we were 10 min late meeting the other two in our group and they reported that while they were waiting, one Princess rep asked them if they were on a private tour and invited them to go ahead and leave. (No line at all at 7:15 am the first day.) Very fast and very easy. Just bring the requested items from your tour operator.

 

Having a small group tour in St Petersburg is so very worth it. (Actually, it was not as expensive as the ship's tour and we saw more and were able to go at our own pace and make small modifications as we went along.) So do not worry, you are about to have a fabulous experience!