Time to get on/off the ship

We'll be doing a Disney Baltic cruise this summer and trying to plan port excursions. Anyone know how much time it will take to get on/off the ship? I'm not sure if this is more ship specific or port specific. Is there some sort of passport control or customs sort of line? Or is it just walk on and off, like our French Polynesia cruise (my only other cruise experience.)

This is predominantly for St. Petersburg. I'm trying to decide if we should do one long day and into the night, or if we'd have time to get back to the ship, freshen up and rest, then go back out for the ballet. We'll have grandparents and younger kids that can push thru if they need to, but do better with a short rest.

Most ports, people will start getting off as soon as the ship is cleared. From the time the ship is cleared, you can be off in minutes usually.

But SPB is different. You will go thru a passport check. Everyone is trying to clear at the same time. The lines can be very long, but they seem to move steadily. If you are trying to get off at the first rush, I would allow at least 30 minutes to get street side.

You do realize you need a visa for SPB, or coverage by a tour vender's blanket visa? You don't just wonder off and on in SPB unless you have a visa.

Leaving aside SPB, at all other ports where the ship is berthed you should have no difficulty getting off the ship as soon as an announcement that the local authority has cleared it for disembarkation. There may be a bit of a line for the first ten minutes, then it should run like clockwork. Other than SPB I don't know of any Baltic port where you're required to take ashore more than your cruise card (plus possibly photo-ID).

In this respect it's all very similar to your Polynesian cruise.

I don't know of any Baltic tender ports (ship moors off-shore & passengers are ferried ashore by boats) but these could take longer, and priority for first tenders goes to those on ship-sponsored tours.

List your ports for confirmation.

St Petersburg is the oddball.

If you take a ship's tour OR a pre-booked tour with one of the many authorised local operators you will not need a visa. Cruise lines generally (I don't know about Disney) are quite ingenuous about the need for a visa - they'll stress that you don't need a visa if you take a ship's tour, they'll stress that you do need a visa if you go off independently, they forget :rolleyes: to mention that you don't need a visa if you've booked with a local operator.

But you do have to pre-book. The tour ticket e-mailed to you gets you through immigration visa-free. (some folk say the operator fixes a group visa or the ticket includes a visa - that's not quite accurate, it's actually "visa-free". But the result is the same :)

Although you do have to pre-book, you don't have to pre-pay. Or even quote a card number. They trust you. You pay when you're there.

Check out Alla Tours, SPB Tours, TJ Travel, Best Guides, DenRus & a number of others. ALL are well-respected, ALL get great independent reviews here on CC, on T/A etc.

But to stress, if you prefer to totally do-your-own-thing & just take a taxi you'll need to have bought well before your cruise an expensive & quite complicated personal visa.

Most prefer the smaller groups & more personal service offered by the local operators, they're usually cheaper than ship tours, and there are other advantages as well, as you'll see in reviews. That said, its the same operators who provide ship's tours - and folk on ship's tours also have nothing but praise.

You will need to take your passport ashore at SPB, plus your tour ticket or visa.. Try to get ashore super-early,lines do build quickly for immigration. The immigration routine for the second & subsequent days is much more streamlined, with no long slow lines.

Both ship & local operators include evening excursions for those who want. You'll certainly have time for a day excursion followed by an evening excursion, though some folk may feel it would be too tiring.

For the ballet you'll be taken back to the ship after the tour & collected for the ballet after you've refreshed, changed, & mebbe had a bite in the buffet. The ballet start time allows for this & your day clothes may not be too suitable.

We chose the Think Yourself Russian folk show. Much lighter, more varied, more laid-back, plenty of humour & a little audience participation thrown in. That show very much for tourists, but very professional. That show is earlier, but dress is informal-to-scruffy, so if like us you choose that show you'll probably have up to an hour to yourselves in town rather than going back to the ship between day-tour & show.

I just wonder with your mixed group whether you might want to split your forces for the evening ?

JB :)

Leaving aside SPB, at all other ports where the ship is berthed you should have no difficulty getting off the ship as soon as an announcement that the local authority has cleared it for disembarkation. There may be a bit of a line for the first ten minutes, then it should run like clockwork. Other than SPB I don't know of any Baltic port where you're required to take ashore more than your cruise card (plus possibly photo-ID).

In this respect it's all very similar to your Polynesian cruise.

I don't know of any Baltic tender ports (ship moors off-shore & passengers are ferried ashore by boats) but these could take longer, and priority for first tenders goes to those on ship-sponsored tours.

List your ports for confirmation.

In practice it works like this, but by law you are required to carry a valid travel document to enter a country. However these are checked. The key here is the Schengen agreement which allows for border control free travel within the Schengen zone. It does not remove the requirement to carry valid travel documents (Passport or the EU National Identity Card). There will not normally be border controls when passing from a Schengen country to another. When exiting or entering the zone there should by default be border controls, but these may be omitted for cruise ships if they are evaluated to be low risk. These checks are currently typically omitted. On a Baltic cruise you could face these in the ports before and after St. Petersburg and for cruises originating in the UK in the first Schengen port after and the first before. In addition to border controls, there are customs controls that can also happen inside the Schengen zone to fight the movement of illegal goods. These are pretty common on Baltic cruise ferry and ferry traffic. These do not typically affect all passengers, but if you happen to fit the general age and gender of someone who they have profiled to be targeted by a customs check, you may be asked for ID, and failing to produce a valid travel document would delay your travel and could result in a fine.

As for tendering, Stockholm has one downtown tender location called “BOJ1 FÖRTÖJNING PÅ STRÖMMEN”. Also all the Nynäshamn calls are tenders.

Cruise lines generally (I don't know about Disney) are quite ingenuous about the need for a visa - they'll stress that you don't need a visa if you take a ship's tour, they'll stress that you do need a visa if you go off independently, they forget to mention that you don't need a visa if you've booked with a local operator.

True that! The kind folks here informed me of my local tour options!

Thanks for your thoughtful input. We currently have a tour penciled in with Best Guides. I figured that would be better to tailor the day to our multigenerational group. I do have two pretty serious ballerinas in the group so they are jumping at the chance to see it in the Motherland, so to speak. Even my dad, who is not at all into ballet, did admit he'd probably never have another chance to see a Russian ballet. Now, my 9 yo ds, maybe not so much, but I think my dh would sacrifice his ballet evening to hang on the ship. :)

Good to know we don't have to pre-pay. And good to know they'll work it so we can get back to the ship to rest and change. We're all seasoned travelers, but we also know the power a bit of down time can pack.

Jonza, good to know. FWIW, we start in Copenhagen, then do Tallin, SPB, Helskini, and Stockholm all in a row, then back to Copenhagen.

A shame you'll only have the one day in SPB, but it sounds like your group may be big enough to take a private tour rather than pick from the seat-in-bus options. You should be able to get somewhere around the seat-in-bus price if you're about 8 to 9 in the group. The vans usually seat up to 16.

I'm guessing that the ballerinas in your party aren't the grandparents. ;)

So forget my suggestion of splitting your forces in the evening.

Nynashamn, mentioned by Jonza as a tender port, is on the coast & over an hour from Stockholm. It's used mainly by ships too large to sail through the archipelago to Stockholm.

Magic's comparatively modest size means that she's well able to sail through the archipelago (excluding atrocious weather). And Disney's website uses the word Stockholm & doesn't mention the port being by tender. So be on your balcony or up on deck for the sail-in through islands that you'll feel you can reach out & touch. :)

Jonza's reminded me of the ID requirements in "Schengen" Europe. I didn't believe it when first mentioned by Jonza a couple of years ago, so I checked it out.

Jonza's quite right.

But in theory only.;)

And different requirements even within different Schengen countries. :rolleyes:

I need my passport to exit/enter the UK (not a Schengen country), but on many European road trips - both private & business - and on many European cruises I've never been asked for passport or ID outside the UK ***. Not even in/out of Switzerland. Had my driving papers routinely checked when driving coaches in Europe, but the focus was always driving hours, etc, rather than ID.

And I've never carried my passport ashore in a Schengen port from a cruise, not even before/after a non-Schengen country like Russia - avoiding the risk of accidental loss or theft..

So I'll concede the theory to Jonza, but not the practice ;)

JB :)

*** I tell a lie. We had to carry passports ashore in Venice. Not other Italian ports, just Venice. Don't-ya-just-love bureaucracy.

Regarding the IDs: In all daily patterns etc. I have seen posted here, passport is always listed as a required document for going ashore in the Baltic ports. I have seen a couple of cruisers here wondering that when they were in addition reminded to take their passports ashore in Tallinn that they were checked coming back to the ship and not going ashore. That in fact was the standard Schengen exit check as the ship was leaving for St. Petersburg.

I do not agree that the requirements would be just theoretical, but the likelihood of such check is very low and in case of a full border control the ship will most likely be able to remind you to take your passport ashore in case of a risk profiling based customs check, such advance notification would be sort of against the point of such checks.

In the recent years I have flown several times inside the Schengen zone without having show any kind of ID at the airports and occasionally have had to show ID to security control. And traveled several times on Baltic ferries and cruise ferries and have been asked for ID once by Swedish customs as I must have been around the same age and gender as one of their targets.

To sum it up I would say that the likelihood of you having to show your passport without your ship having separately reminded you to take it ashore is extremely low. On the other hand you are not going to be going to the beach and you are in pretty safe cities so storing your passport safely on your person would not be hard at all.

As for tendering: Disney Magic is scheduled in Stockholm at either Frihamnen or Stadsgården (http://www.portsofstockholm.com/vessel-calls/) depending on the cruise so no tendering there.

Thank you both. Great information! We usually keep our passports handy when we're out and about, so that won't be a burden for us. I've got a travel purse that is harder to cut/steal, and am a pretty aware tourist.

No, the grandparents are not ballerinas! There's only one original knee between then two of them. :)