Best time to contact RO or DenRus?

[evoni]

For those of you working with Red October and DenRus, in your opinion what is the best time for me to contact them to work out a tour for next June 2006? I figure at the moment they are too busy with 2005 tours to want to work with me, so would around November or December of this year be good, or do you think it would be best if I wait until the beginning of next year to start working with them for my group?

 

Thanks,

Diana

[JodiBB]

If I remember correctly, we started contacting RO around February for our August 2005 trip...It gave us the chance to set our itinerary they way we wanted and find others to meet up with to help reduce our cost. Hope this helps!

[Princess Di]

The Season ends in September; therefore, I would start early and contact them in October, before they start taking Holidays. They vacation longer in Europe than we do in the U.S. :eek:

I contacted them just before Christmas last year for my September sailing and had to wait a few days for a return e-mail as the office was actually closed down for Christmas Holidays. (I booked my cruise on 22 Dec.). :cool:

The private tours will pretty much follow the same as the previous years' and with plenty of lead time, you will get special attention. They are extremely nice to work with. :D

[evoni]

JodiBB and Princess Di,

 

Thanks for the information and tips, I appreciate it! I've marked my calendar to contact them in October..:).

 

Diana

[saw17752]

I agree with Donna about starting in October. I add a word of caution. It seems most people worry only about St. Petersburg. It seems that both DenRus and Red October have plenty of guides and vans to handle all the passengers that may call on St. Petersburg on any given day, so being sold out was not a problem. If, however, you are thinking of private tours in other ports, I would almost begin with them and then get to St. Petersburg. We are a group of four traveling on the same sailing as Donna (Princess Di) and booked a little later than her, and thus were about six weeks behind her in planning. We (our group of four) have elected to have private tours in all ports. It's not that easy. For example, in Tallinn, there were only two (it may have been three) companies that did private tours. We decided we wanted to use Ahti. Well, although we started to work with him in February, it was not until April that he could commit to taking our group. He does land tours and tours for cruise ship passengers. Someone had already given him a preliminary booking for the day we were in Tallinn. Because of that he would not take our booking. Finally, according to him, when he could not get the other group to give him a firm commitment he accepted us. This also happened in Sweden. We were talking to a person at Stockholm Stories and she could not commit based on another potential booking. She is a first come first served guide (her words not mine). Again, the other group would not committ so she offered us the booking. As it turned our we used another company that more closely matched our style (it had been recommended, but again there were booking problems at first) so we didn't use her. Bottom line, if you are looking for private tours in other ports, I'd handle them at least as early as Russia. For all the negative posts about St. Petersburg in other threads, St. Petersburg is certainly better able to handle the thousands of passengers who visit from cruise ships, than most other ports.

[JodiBB]

saw17752...You make some good points, but I think the reason people focus on St. Petersburg is because in order to get off the boat, it MUST be with an organized tour of some sort unless you get a personal VISA. The other countries, you have more flexibility. You're entirely right that if private tours are your thing for all countries, then St. Petersburg is the least of your concerns.

 

We have decided to go it ourselves for the remainder of the countries and purchased Passes to the countries where we're going to go it alone to provide us with transportation and admission to most attractions. Again...there are more options with other European countries...

[evoni]

Hi Saw17752,

 

We would like to take private tours in most of the ports, Stockholm, Berlin <we dock in Rostock>,Helsinki and Helsingborg. Do you think it's worth taking a private tour in Oslo considering time there is short and starts so early in the morning before most things are open?

 

Thanks for letting me know that so many of the tour guides get booked so quickly. I already have the information on Ahti and have saved his website. I would be interested in any information (prices, websites, etc) you have on other tour operators for the above ports, and also would like your opinions of them after you have used them too. All of us are healthy and can walk, so if it's best if the tour is done by walking that's fine. If the information can't be posted here, please email it to me at g2dianalynn@yahoo.com.

 

Thanks,

Diana

[evoni]

Oops, forgot to add Copenhagen to our list of ports. We are also a group of 4.

 

Diana

[saw17752]

Hi Saw17752,

 

We would like to take private tours in most of the ports, Stockholm, Berlin <we dock in Rostock>,Helsinki and Helsingborg. Do you think it's worth taking a private tour in Oslo considering time there is short and starts so early in the morning before most things are open?

 

Thanks,

Diana

 

Based on your Ports I gather you are not sailing on Princess as for example we dock in Warnemunde rather than Rostock. Our sailing does Berlin (Warnemunde) instead of Oslo. Princess alternates, one cruise stops in Oslo and passes on Warnemunde and the next cruise calls on Warnemunde rather than Oslo. Passengers may only tender into Helsingborg if you are booked on a ships tour on Princess, if not you continue to Copenhagen where you overnight and disembark the following morning. My long winded point is that our tour prices will be much different than what you might pay -- I think. We sail on September 2, 2005. We are arriving in Copenhagen 2 days before so we can adjust our clocks and tour the city. At the end of the cruise we are going to London for four days. (London is one of our favorite cities in the world -- we can't cross the pond without spending some time in London.) We arrive home on the 16th of September. Once we return I'll know if the various companies we are using were worth the money. If you would like I'll be happy to provide the names and our opinion of the companies we used when we get home. The reason I hesitate to do it now is that they are quite expensive -- at least by our standards and we live in San Diego so if it's expensive to us it's expensive -- and I hate to give a name of a company that turns out to be a bust. But if you want to take the chance, I certainly will provide them now. On the other hand if you can wait I could save you from making a costly mistake, based on our experience.

[evoni]

saw17752,

 

We can wait until you do most of the tours, since ours doesn't leave until June 17th, of 2006. You are correct, we aren't doing Princess but Celebrity's Constellation. I've already found Stockholm Stories on the web and that tour guide sounds interesting. I would be interested in knowing the guide you decided to use instead of Stockholm Stories.

 

If you find a good tour company that picks you up in Warnemunde for Berlin that you ended up liking, I would be interested in hearing about them as I imagine they might also pick up in Rostock. We live in the San Francisco Bay area so we're used to everything being expensive and it's worth the extra expense to us to avoid the larger bus tours.

 

Thanks,

Diana

[saw17752]

Hi Diana:

 

In case you have spam filters, check your inbox as I just e-mailed you the information on Stockholm and Berlin.

 

Shelly

[evoni]

Hi Shelly,

 

I received your email, thanks so much. You're correct, it's expensive regardless of what we are used to paying in our home areas, but hopefully well worth the expense. I'm especially interested in reading about your experience with the driver/tour for Berlin when you return from your trip.

 

Diana

[Queenk2]

Does anyone have information on the ort of Klaipeda,Lithuania? We are going to dock there in July and i have heard NOTHING about it. Let alone a guide for this city.

Karen

[tiggrrr]

Try this to begin with http://www.inyourpocket.com/lithuania/klaipeda/en/

[tiggrrr]

........and this http://www.balticsww.com/tourist/lithuania/klaipeda.htm

[Queenk2]

Thnak you so much... I had some old stuff in a guide book. Now I know that Palang etc are easily reached from Klaipeda!

Karen