kitkat343

Yes, that's a very good point. We knew he had a short attention span and researched the highlights of each destination. He did spend an hour at Vasa, but only saw the open air lemur exhibit at Skansen and just the hands on viking exhibit at the history museum. The only thing he didn't like was the Royal Armory, so that wound up being a very short stop. He really liked walking around Galma Stan, and also the ferries around Stockholm.

It really depends on what kind of a tourist are you - do you like seeing the highlights of things and then are happy to move along or do you want to spend a lot of time at one activity? We did the Baltics with a. 3 year old in tow, so he really didn't want to stay long anywhere so we started our day at 830 at Vasa (you should do that first since its really lovely when it isn't crowded). Then we visited the open air lemur exhibit in Skansen, then the Viking experience at Historiska (the history museum) and ended our day at the Royal Armory and walking around Galma Stan.

Our cruise stopped in Germany on a Monday, so Schwerin was closed. Having a 3 year old in tow on a cruise that already included St, Petersburg, traveling all the way to Berlin would have been completely insane. We did the Molli steam train, and while it was cute I don't know that it's worth it unless you have a kid in tow. The surrounding towns to the port were quite charming, and we had a lovely dinner in Warmenude. You won't need an excursion if you aren't going to Berlin, and will have a lovely pleasant day.

When you leave from Boston or NYC, you need 2-3 days to sail to the Caribbean (as opposed to just doing a run to Bermuda/Florida), which is why the rare 12-14 day cruises from there are great. I wish they had more of them from NY too.

It is absolutely correct that there are limited tour providers in Alaska, primarily composed of temporary workers. I've never seen the lumberjack show, and when I sailed to Alaska I docked directly in Ketchikan, so I don't know exactly how many passengers attend this show. The descriptions other posters have included on the other thread seem to indicate that there are a lot of passengers who attend the lumberjack show, and that it is rather chaotic trying to catch transportation back to the ship. If this is the case, then perhaps NCL can send a crew member to the parking lot at the end of the show to help direct traffic and also to stay in contact with the port agent/ person coordinating transportation. If someone had been able to communicate the fact that this family missed their original bus to the people coordinating transportation quickly, then another bus would have been dispatched immediately and this would have been a minor inconvenience for the family and not a national news story. In a port in which there was more give in the schedule, this wouldn't be necessary - the ship could hopefully wait a bit for a late passenger without delaying its arrival.

glad it all worked out. I've seen similar postings in other cruise line forums, so this is a good conclusion to reach across other cruise ships too.

Since this turned into a national media story, most corporations would be highly motivated to avoid it happening again. Hopefully, the tour providers subcontracted by NCL will be proactive in the future about making sure all passengers have their stickers before allowing them to reboard the tour buses, and explain to the passengers at the beginning of the tour why it is important for them to keep the stickers on so they will be allowed to rebound their shuttle back to the ship. Please make sure that you have the phone number of the port agent, and that you leave your passports in your safe. Call the port agent immediately if your bus is full and leaves without you. Ensure that you have a few days supply of all necessary medication. When you arrive at the lumberjack show, I would also recommend locating where the port shuttle stop is. If your tour bus leaves without you it might be faster to take the port shuttle back to the port rather than waiting for NCL to send another bus to you. I'd recommend taking any possible mode of transportation back to the port available instead of waiting on NCL. Given the fact that this was a news story recently, if you are similarly stranded you can also consider using twitter/social media/ the mainstream media to make people aware of your plight immediately.

If you are docking at r Nynashamn, I assume you would miss the opening at Vassa if traveling from June - August since it opens at 8:30; if that's the case, people on this forum have reported it is also less crowded in the late afternoon (I cannot verify this from personal experience, but I do know the museums in NYC tend to empty out in the later afternoons). Good luck.

There are circumstances under which tourists might wander off and be responsible for missing their bus back to the cruise ship. If the passengers wandered off instead of meeting the bus at the instructed time, NCL should have made that very clear when they were contacted by the media. NCL hasn't said it was the passengers fault that they missed the bus, which makes me believe that their story is likely to be true - it seems quite possible that if the NCL tour guides know the sail to Victoria is very tight and the ship can't leave late without arriving late, they might have been in. a rush to load the buses and didn't check for stickers/ tour passes. And it also seems quite possible that passengers in a rush to get back to the ship could have easily seen the NCL signs and accidentally boarded a tour bus thinking it was a shuttle. And I can believe a driver needing to get back to the ship quickly thinking it would be faster to have another bus come to pick up 9 people than attempt to figure out who legitimately belonged on that bus (remember not all of the actual passengers on the cruise ship tour might have remembered to keep their sticker/tour ticket). And no one would be too eager to leave the bus so removing passengers who have already boarded a bus could become very difficult if they absolutely refuse to leave, as we have seen in some airline removals where passengers were restrained and dragged off the bus. If the passengers wandered off looking for souvenirs and were at fault, then NCL should tell the media because it isn't their fault if passengers wander away at the end of the tours. But if these passengers have a record of their attempts to contact NCL to try to explain how they were stranded immediately, then I would be inclined to believe them. And since no one at NCL has come forward to state that it was the passengers' own fault that they missed the ship (which it can be if passengers ignore instruction to return by a certain time) then I am inclined to believe the passengers. When the passengers in Africa were stranded, NCL correctly stated that the passengers were on independent tours and therefore it was their fault if they did not return to the ship in time. If NCL wasn't at fault here, they should have explained that. The passengers who were stranded in Africa were entirely responsible for their initial stranding but in Alaska it seems likely the passengers were not at fault.

We haven't done the Med with our kids (we did it right before we got married). The Baltic cruise had a similar port intensive itinerary with lots of cities to explore. We travelled with a 3 year old, and that included 2 days in St. Petersburg so I'd have to say we were too tired to then supervise a 3 year old taking advantage of family activities on the ship - we just put him in the kids club when we were back on the ship. A 9 year old is much more independent, so that would be a whole lot more manageable. If your child has energy and you don't, an option would be for you to walk her to the activity and tell her you'll be back to pick her up and meet her at the end. 9 year olds are allowed to travel to activities by themselves, but you'll need to decide if you are comfortable with that. You'd want to post on the RC or Med forum to ask about the amount of activities that are usually offered on these cruises- these are very intensive port cruises even for people without children but I would imagine there would be options in addition to the kids club, especially on sea days. People usually fly into Rome a day early prior to the cruise, so depending on the timing of your flights that might be when you tour the city if you are flying out the day your cruise ends. You can certainly add days on before or after. If there's another city you'd like to explore, you can also take a train there and fly out of a different city. Or you can do a land tour prior to embarking - there are lots of options. You'd want to investigate Santorini - if you google cruise timetables, you can see how many ships will be in port the day you arrive (hopefully in October its less, but they'll have the number.). If it's a lot then you'd need to investigate the current options in Santorini - some people sign up for a cruise tour to get priority embarkation. You'd need to discuss the logistics of that tour with the cruise line directly - some tours have reported being bussed to Oia, so you avoid the donkey/cable car lines or being tendered off at a different spot than the main tender location. In the past there are sometimes water taxis that can help passengers avoid the donkey/cable car. They will know more about the current situation on the Med board or you can contact private tour operators to see what they recommend.

I wonder if it could also be an attempt to deal with the future limits on ships that aren't zero emissions visiting the heritage fjords. I'm assuming the cruise lines would rather redirect those ships to new ports than cut back on Norway. It's too bad for the OP if there isn't enough infrastructure yet to support tourism. I just can't understand why two ships would be deployed to a port with limited infrastructure. I experienced that once in St. Lucia, and it resulted in gridlock in the entire downtown.

What is the cruise line offering?

Northern Europe and Norway are really wonderful cruises to take with young children, and we've done those with a 2 and 3 year old. My family personally needs daycare, so we have never taken a river cruise but if you can handle your child completely by yourself with no amenities for kids (like a splash pad or daycare) I hope you have a wonderful time!

do you know exactly where you dock? We were able to very easily traverse the city using its amazing public transportation system with a 3 year old in tow. There are several docking spaces, so if you don't know exactly where you dock let us know your ship name and arrival date and I'm sure someone on this forum will be able to tell you if you are close to public transport. Please note that if you want to go to Vassa, it is quite empty at opening time and filled up as the day went on so you might want to go there first. Stockholm is a really good city to travel independently since the public transportation is so strong, and there are so many different amazing places to visit you need to choose what you are most interested in and only visit those attractions. I researched all of the museums but not transport. For the first museum, the HOHO boats ran directly to Vassa first thing, so we started there. After that, I went to the information desk of the museum I was currently at, and asked them how to get to the next museum we wanted to visit and wrote that down and followed it. We went on subways, buses, trams and ferries. Actually, I probably should have researched transportation because there might have been a better way to organize our day more logistically, but the priority was our 3 year old not melting down so we saw what we really wanted to see first and then moved on.

I'm so sorry. I hope you can find an independent tour provider on tripavisor who can create a custom tour that meets your needs. Please book directly with the provider - not through tripadvisor, since information sometimes gets lost when making a 3rd party booking. You can search for vendor's contact information on tripadvisor and book with them directly.

In all fairness,BirdTravels may be correct in that the two areas aren't next to each other - I don't know exactly where the smoking area was on the Getaway, but I do know that when the wind blew in a certain direction I could smell the smoke by the kids splash pad. The cruise lines need to keep these two areas separate enough that nothing blows over the kids. The getaway had a ton of smoke in the center of the ship near the casino, but I didn't care about that because I could just cross the ship on other levels. But when your kid wants to use the splash pad you are stuck there so the cruise lines need to keep these areas far enough away that you can't smell the smoke by the splash pad.

can you dispute the charge with your credit card? I understand Cunard should refund you but this might. be a backup option.

On a clear day it is spectacular. We were lucky and had a really clear day. Even seeing the Norwegian snow clearing equipment would have been worth the tour (we travelled in May so they still needed it). It is less impressive if the day isn't clear. We missed the highest viewpoints due to the annual avalanche being late that year, but I've read that view can be blocked by clouds.

I'd recommend the Med either in the fall or spring, because it will be brutally hot in the summer. If you need to go in the summer, would the Baltics or Norway possibly be something that interests your child? Norway is closing some of the heritage fjords to all ships that aren't zero emissions, so some of the more spectacular ports such as Geiranger and Flam will be harder to access. I took my kids on a Baltic cruise, and it was much easier logistically than the Med because the weather is better and you are usually really close to the ports in the Baltic so you can hop off the ship and start touring immediately. That was before St. Petersburg was dropped though, so I don't know how accessible the newer replacement ports are. Berlin is really far from the port, but there are lovely towns in Germany near the port to explore. For the Med, you need to be careful because some of the ports are difficult to access - Rome is a pretty significant distance from the port, Venice has limited cruise ships from entering so its now a significant tender or you dock at a nearby city, and Santorini is absolutely spectacular but a really difficult tender and possibly long lines for the cable car/donkey to reach the tourist parts (you'd need to research either a ship tour or private tour operators to try to make this more manageable). For NCL, check the ship reviews on cruises you are considering since passengers on some itineraries have reported issues with port stops being canceled and disorganized disembarkment which cut into time in port. If you check the reviews, you'll see if that ship/itinerary has experienced issues.

can you recommend a good hotel for a day pass with kids? Ideally with water slides.

Hi We are traveling with 3 kids, and will be visiting de palm island and Phillips animal gardens. Is there anything close/on the way you'd recommend we stop at with our kids? We'll need a cab to get us to those destinations (the animal gardens and dock for de palm island) so I was wondering if there was anything else we should see briefly while we are there. Thanks so much

Yes, the parents would also appreciate more distance between the smoking area and the kids splash pad. You could smell the smoke on the getaway at the splash pad. I didn't mind the casino smoke that filtered through the center of the ship because I just walked across the ship on different floors than the smoking one, but I couldn't avoid the smoke near the splash pad because my kids wanted to play there.

In Olden, the many passengers will have excursions that visit either (or possibly both) the Loen Skylift and/or Briskdal Glacier. The Loen Skylift will take you to the top of a glacier, and the Briskdal glacier you hike or take a troll car to look a small glacier that's been hit hard by global warming (hike and drive there are beautiful though). You won't see the fjord sail in unless you choose a boat excursion. There are RIB boats available in Geiranger, and might also be available in Olden - I'm not sure. But the sail in/sail out is spectacular from your cruise ship.

2 big trips is an excellent plan! Have a great time!

A bus to the three scenic points would take 3 hours. https://www.geirangerfjord.no/panorama-exclusive-bus