Club Class Priority Disembarkation - does it apply to ports of call?

Wondering if passengers staying in Club Class mini-suites get any benefit at ports of call to allow for faster disembarkation (similar to priority tender tickets issued to suite and Elite passengers)?Club class brochure only refers to the beginning and end of the cruise.

 

I'm specifically interested in disembarkation in St. Petersburg where the lines can be very long and make it challenging to get off the ship on time for shore excursions. My tour operator just advised: Please be aware that on your first day in St. Petersburg disembarkation and passport control could take one hour or more due to very long queues. Please make yourself ready for disembarkation in advance and try to be at ahead of the queues.

 

Wondering if travelling in Club Class will help out at all???

The priority tendering for Full Suite (and Elite) passengers was not also added to the Club Class benefits.

 

There has never been any priority disembarkation at non-tender ports. The line moves the same speed for everyone. And Russia is a very special case; hopefully someone who has sailed to St Petersburg this season will post how disembarkation has been working so far.

 

(And I hate to be a bubble-burster, but there really is no such thing as "Priority Disembarkation" at the end of the cruise. If you prefer to be in a different tag group than the one you were assigned based on your cabin number and the travel plans you listed in your personalizer, just ask and you will be reassigned. But the same is true for a first timer in an inside cabin as well. The only further benefit to being in Club Class is the use of the Platinum/Elite disembarkation lounge on board while waiting for your group to be called, though being in that lounge you do get a brief head start over the others in the same group).

We were in a full suite and there was no priority disembark at ports. For some reason they kept changing the location of the gangplank & it was holding this up both ways. (Coral Princess 5-20-17)

 

 

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First question: No for Club Class and no for everyone except in ST. Pete those on Princess Tours which have assigned times. No also for tender service if you have any.

St. Pete. The lines are long and the immigration process is slow. Princess tours go in groups. Being in a private tour you have to disembark as early as you are allowed. The roll call can give further guidance. There is also an immigration check when you return to the ship on day 1. On day 2 things go quicker.

Thank you for your responses. Come to think of it, when I have had priority tender tickets in the past it has been due to e.g. booking a bungalow on Princess Cays and priority tendering was advertised as a benefit.

 

It would be very interesting to hear about the St. Petersburg disembarkation process in the recent weeks. I have not seen much posted on that. This is what I'm trying to solution for: I will be travelling with a young child and her grandmother (mid-70s) on the Regal. Both will struggle to stand in a long queue for a very long time, unless there is some way for them to take a seat while I keep our place in line. For this reason I booked a very short private morning excursion starting at 9 am, in the hopes the Princess tours would have mostly left and the immigration formalities would go faster. Wondering what to expect??? Tour operator is asking for us to allow over an hour but this assumes that Princess will let us go say at 7:45 am and that we can clear the immigration line by 9 am...and that energy levels hold up. :) Feeling a tad nervous now about the plan.

Thank you for your responses. Come to think of it, when I have had priority tender tickets in the past it has been due to e.g. booking a bungalow on Princess Cays and priority tendering was advertised as a benefit.

 

 

 

It would be very interesting to hear about the St. Petersburg disembarkation process in the recent weeks. I have not seen much posted on that. This is what I'm trying to solution for: I will be travelling with a young child and her grandmother (mid-70s) on the Regal. Both will struggle to stand in a long queue for a very long time, unless there is some way for them to take a seat while I keep our place in line. For this reason I booked a very short private morning excursion starting at 9 am, in the hopes the Princess tours would have mostly left and the immigration formalities would go faster. Wondering what to expect??? Tour operator is asking for us to allow over an hour but this assumes that Princess will let us go say at 7:45 am and that we can clear the immigration line by 9 am...and that energy levels hold up. :) Feeling a tad nervous now about the plan.

Unfortunately, my experience is four years old on the Emerald Princess. I had heard of terrible long lines. We had fifteen people on an SPb tour. Not everyone made it to the restaurant in time and some of us were in self disembark group one and others in self disembark group two. We waited until they called group one but before everyone had left the DR they were already calling group two. When we got to Russian immigration there were less than four people waiting in any line. In less than 15 minutes after we left the Emerald we were waiting for the SPb vans to arrive. For us the process was well organized and painless. I hope things haven't changed. Disembark tickets were handed out first come, first served and you had to be there in person to get your ticket as you couldn't pick up a ticket for someone else.

 

 

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First of all the gang way position moves with the tide otherwise there would be problems.

 

As far as getting off the ship: we did this cruise last year on the Regal. We did have a Princess tour but some friends did not. We went to our specific meeting place and had to wait to be called. Our friends went to the lounge to get a number to get off and they also had to wait to get off.

Once we were released we went down to the terminal and got in one of at least 8 immigration lines. It did take all of us about 1/2 an hour or so to go thru. Friends did the same thing. I do not remember there being any seats to sit in.

 

Immigration will hand you a piece of paper with your photo on it and some Russian to keep with your passport. DO NOT THROW THIS AWAY. You must have this with your passport when you go back to the ship where they then take it. The second day they did not give us a piece of paper. Immigration officers are very stern and take their time. You just have to go with the flow.

 

It was a great trip and worth the hassle. Would do it again.

Forgot to say we were in a suite. No special disembarkation for any of our stops.

Once we were released we went down to the terminal and got in one of at least 8 immigration lines. It did take all of us about 1/2 an hour or so to go thru .

 

So it sounds like most of the waiting is on Princess in the comfort of a dining room and half an hour in line at immigration sounds a lot better than 1+ hour! Thank you for sharing your experience. Hopefully it will be ok.

As with most places, lines nearer to the gangway have more people. Princess folks were advising people to go around a wall and there were several more immigration desks with nobody there. So look around.

I'm back from the Regal July 5-16 sailing and thought I'd update this thread on the actual disembarkation experience in St. Petersburg. I can only describe it as awful. None of my research prepared me for the reality awaiting passengers in that port!

 

As stated before, no special disembarkation privileges for Club Class etc. in this port. Passengers on independent tours were asked to go to the Concerto dining room to pick a number once the entire party was available to get off the ship. Our party of 5 went to Concerto at 7:30 am as our private tour was booked at 9 am. We figured we needed to allow for at least 1 hour for disembarkation and that 90 minutes should be adequate even if things were slow.

 

The waiting time in Concerto was not too long and we were comfortably seated, able to use restrooms, drink water etc. At 8:15 am our numbers were called and we were able to get off the ship. There was already a huge line on the pier and the Regal shared the terminal with the Serenade of the Seas also in port that day along with other cruise ships (a total of 8 ships that day out of which 2 were in the city center). As we waited in the first time alongside the ship there were some benches in shade that the elderly or young children could use. We had our 5-year-old and 74-year-old grandmother sit on those benches as the rest of us held our spot in line. About half an hour later we reached the lines outside of the terminal where you wait to go in to have your passport stamped. There were several lines to choose from but they were barely moving! Princess staff said they had no control over it and could not do a thing. Nowhere to sit, no water etc. It was extremely tough on the grandmother and we considered giving up many times but she pushed through. Long story short, we finally got through immigration at 10:40 am, which was 3 hrs 10 minutes after we started the process in the Concerto dining room! We were wondering if the tour guide had given up on us, but as we entered the arrivals hall in the terminal it was full of guides waiting and we were able to still take the tour (tour operator flexed the end time at no additional charge). Our guide told us many of her colleagues had been standing there since 7:30 am and were still waiting.

 

After 3 hours of waiting in lines we were already exhausted and had missed the early admission to the Hermitage Museum. We still managed to see some sights and had a nice time in St. Petersburg overall but I would not try to take anyone with mobility restrictions through that line on day 1 anymore. Apparently on day 2 the lines were shorter but we just stayed on the ship and also learned from some of our fellow passengers they just cancelled their day 2 tours after the horrible experience standing in lines on day 1.

 

I wish Princess had prepared us better for this very long wait - that it was not a matter of about an hour but 3-4 hours! :(

 

I understood from our tour guide that a part of the problem was that July is a very busy time in the port so the lines would have been more manageable e.g. in May.

 

We also took the ballet excursion in the evening and I'm glad to report there were no lines then to enter St. Petersburg but there was a huge line of people coming back from day 1 tours trying to get back on the ship. The line wrapped around the terminal building, not sure how long it must have taken to get in but at midnight after the ballet again there was no line!

A note for future cruisers. Check other ships in port and book a cruise with the fewest ships on port. Also get down early enough to get in the first or second disembarkation group. We were the only ship in port on our cruise in mid June a few years ago and were in the second disembarkation group for private tours. It was probably 20-25 minutes from the time we started to disembark until we were waiting for our tour bus to arrive. The only line we had was 3-4 people ahead we of us in our immigration line.

Since you were sent outside in a reasonable amount of time, all the additional wait was due to the very slow speed of Russia immigration agents. These normally very unhappy people make no effort to speed things along. They get paid the same if they work quickly or slowly.

Since you were sent outside in a reasonable amount of time, all the additional wait was due to the very slow speed of Russia immigration agents. These normally very unhappy people make no effort to speed things along. They get paid the same if they work quickly or slowly.

Just like under the old Communist system.

How was the cruise? :confused:

How was the cruise? :confused:

 

The cruise itself was good! Relatively good weather for the region - we had packed rain coats and umbrellas but never needed to use them as we only experienced light drizzle in Helsinki and Berlin (+ day 2 in St. Petersburg but we did not get off the ship). It was great to have the swimming pool to ourselves (except for Stockholm where the weather really warmed up and the pool got busy) - most passengers seemed to find the weather too chilly for swimming but the pool water was warm!

 

The most memorable mishaps were St. Petersburg disembarkation mess on day 1 and Princess chartered train from Berlin having to be diverted further West on the return due to another train blocking the tracks, which added about an hour of travel time and delayed the ship as well. On the upside we got to see more of Germany that way :).

 

Our favorite stops on the itinerary were Helsinki and Stockholm, could have used a few more hours in those lovely cities. First time trying out Club Class dining and the flexibility to go in without a wait was a big plus. We also ate at Crown Grill once but the steaks we ordered well-done were presented very pink and had to be sent back - not impressed, they seemed to rush there too much and our reservation was at 5:30 pm! Our daughter enjoyed the new Camp Discovery tremendously and could not wait to go back. The itinerary was port-intensive so we retired early in the evenings to watch movies on the on-demand TV and skipped all the shows - we did make it to the Captain Circle party, outlet at sea shopping events and Family Fun Fair.

 

First time on the Baltics itinerary and learned a lot, next time will be even more enjoyable as we can better optimize the time in ports.