Jump to content
Cruise Critic Community

Breakaway Baltic Review from June 25 - July 4

scotte44

By scotte44,
in Norwegian Cruise Line

 Share

Recommended Posts

scotte44

scotte44

Posted
Posted

We are a mid-50’scouple. We took our 18-year-old son with us. I am 6’6” 330lbs so the spaceavailable for me to be comfortable is a big deal. We have cruised on Royal, MSCand Celebrity.

 

Flights - we flew over on WoW Air. Iwas able to upgrade to extended legroom and paid about the same as a regularseat on a major airline. Had a layover in Iceland which made the trip longer.Wow is a low-cost carrier and you have to pay for everything including water.

 

Pre-cruise we stayed at the CrownePlaza in Copenhagen for two nights. The hotel was nice but if I had to do itagain I would stay someplace that is walking distance to the main downtownarea. The Crown Plaza is close to a large mall with lots of restaurants andeasy access to the metro. They had a shuttle from the airport for 15dkk (roughly$2.50) per person which is a deal. They also had a shuttle to the cruiseterminal for roughly $23 per person.

 

 

Embarkation – 5/5

 

No lines, wewere on the ship a few minutes after arriving at the terminal.

 

 

Service – 5/5

 

Service wasgreat. Every crew member was friendly and helpful.

 

 

Cabin – 4.5/5

 

We were inbalcony cabin 9858. We were able to store clothes for 3 people and put thesuitcases under the bed. The balcony was a little small and deck 8 has anoverhang which keeps you from looking down at the water. This cabin had a goodsize shower and bathroom.

 

NOTE: Ourcabin was on the Starboard side which always faced the pier when docked.

 

 

Entertainment – 3.5/5

 

The two mainshows were excellent. Burn the Floor was one of the best shows I have seen on acruise. Rock of Ages was for mature audiences only, I enjoyed it. You need tomake a reservation to see the main shows.

 

The otherentertainment was ok. Joe Enock is a comedian/magician who was pretty good.Howl at the Moon was ok, we have a similar show in our area so we had the beenthere done that feeling. Tenors of Rock didn’t appeal to me, I love Rock musicbut I like bass, they turned the bass all the way down which killed the musicfor me.

 

They did theusual cruise game shows. The best one was Dance Battle. They had 6 crew membersteam up and dance with passengers. It was funny.

 

On othercruises we have been on there always seemed to be a show we looked forward toseeing each night. I didn’t feel that way on this cruise. There were multiplenights we didn't see a show.

 

 

Food – 3.5/5

 

Buffet

Typicalbuffet. Many of the items are there every meal. They switched up items with adifferent theme each day, Italian day, American day, etc. Great paninis. Manyitems would be cold by the time we got them.

 

MDR's

We ate inthe Manhattan Room once for dinner and in Taste and Savor for many breakfasts.Food was good. Service was normally good, we had one morning that took a longtime to get our food.

 

I had neverbeen on Norwegian before. I just knew it was freestyle, no dress up nights andeat when you want. The first night we went to the Manhattan Room and I was toldI couldn't wear shorts. So much for freestyle. The first night was crazy, wecouldn’t get into any of the MDR restaurants without a very long wait. Peopleeverywhere. Make sure you get a reservation ahead of time for the first nightof the cruise. We ended up in the buffet. (Tank tops, hoodies and t-shirts areok in the Manhattan Room, I guess seeing knees was too much to handle. You canwear shorts to the other restaurants.)

 

SpecialtyRestaurants

 

Teppanyaki:We have a Sakura Japanese steakhouse near us that we love so we were lookingforward to this restaurant. We were disappointed. The food was just ok. Thewhite sauce doesn’t have any flavor. The fried rice is flavored with garlicbutter. The steak was good, the seafood not as good. The chef was great, he wasentertaining.

 

BrazilianSteakhouse: This was my favorite meal. We were all stuffed. Different types ofmeat brought around to your table until you can barely walk.

 

Cagney'sSteakhouse: This was my wife’s favorite meal. Everything we had was good.

 

 

Pools – 2.5/5

 

We were on aBaltic cruise with 70-degree temperatures and cool wind. The pool was perfectfor this weather. If this had been a Caribbean cruise with 90-degree weatherthere is no way the pool area could handle the number of passengers on a shipthis size. It was crowded in the Baltic on the sea days. The Jacuzzis werepacked. The same people would sit in the jacuzzi forever, or they were packedwith kids. The two Jacuzzis in the adult area were less crowded.

 

 

Ports

 

I thinkNorwegian did a good job of getting people on/off the ship in ports. Thefollowing are the exceptions.

 

In StPetersburg Norwegian lets passengers that book excursions through NCL off theship first while holding the rest of us on the ship. We were assigned a letterand told to report to the theatre when our letter was called. We were assignedletter D. Our private excursion was scheduled to start at 8:30am. We got inline after B was called since we were already late. The line just to get intothe theatre went all the way out and around O'Sheehans. We were told theprivate companies knew the procedure and they would wait for us. When wefinally got off the ship and through immigration it was 10am. We had to take ataxi to catch up to our tour. We just made the hydrofoil to Peterhof as therest of the group waited for us. Norwegian will tell you that Russian immigrationrequires things to be this way. Not sure I believe them... (If you are bookinga private tour don’t put anything important on the morning of the first day inport.)

 

When Ibooked the cruise, we were scheduled to go into Stockholm. After making myfinal payment the port got changed to Nynashamn which is a 45-minute bus ridefrom Stockholm. So instead of watching us pull into Stockholm on my balcony my6'6" body was packed into a bus with every seat taken and assigned timesfor departure and return...

 

 

FinalNorwegian Comments

This was ourfirst time on Norwegian. This was our vacation of a lifetime and by far themost expensive vacation we have done. It was NCL's chance to shine. I came awaypreferring Celebrity or Royal. I would do NCL again on the right itinerary forthe right price. We liked it more than the MSC Seaside.

 

Overall NCL Rating - 3.5 Stars

 

 

Excursions Review

 

Rostock/Berlin – We arranged a privatetour to Berlin. It was one of the highlights of the trip. We went with Tom Williamson(yourberlintourguide dot com). Our driver Bernie picked us up in a van and wewere in Berlin 2 hours later. We toured for 6 hours and returned to the shipbefore most of the NCL tours had returned. The van can hold 6 people. The costper person is much less than the $350 NCL charges to put you on a train toBerlin. I highly recommend Tom!

 

Helsinki – We did the Hop On/Off Bus.It was packed every time we tried to get on it.

 

St Petersburg – We had a two-dayprivate tour with Best Guides. Inna was a great tour guide and Dimitri was ourdriver. Max group size is 12, but we only had 10 the first day and 8 thesecond. We missed the first 90 minutes of the tour on the first day but therewas a Best Guides representative in the cruise terminal waiting for us. She gotus a taxi and we were able to catch up to our tour group. Our tour price was$255 per person for two full days which included entry to every site and lunchboth days. I highly recommend Best Guides!

 

Tallinn – We walked to the Old Town. Itis a mile or two, we took a taxi back.

 

Stockholm – NCL put us on a bus into town.We did the Hop On/Off Boat which was ok. Stockholm was the most beautiful cityon the trip. I wish it had been at the beginning of the cruise when I had moreenergy.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
heliwoman

heliwoman

Posted
Posted

Thanks for the review. I have a question regarding getting off the ship in STP. Did you HAVE to go through the theater to exit the ship to immigration? And how strict were they in checking that you were entering during your assigned group time? Meaning, if you were assigned group D, did they check your id when entering or could you have gone in during group B? Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites
dogs4fun

dogs4fun

Posted
Posted
Thanks for such a thorough review. I am concerned about getting off ina timely fashion in ST. Petersburg. Many on our July 13 sailing are using Alla Tours so I hope there’s is strength in numbers!

Have no fear - I have used Alla Tours on several trips (both cruise and land) and her tours are fantastic.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
scotte44

scotte44

Posted
  • Author
Posted
Did you HAVE to go through the theater to exit the ship to immigration? And how strict were they in checking that you were entering during your assigned group time? Meaning, if you were assigned group D, did they check your id when entering or could you have gone in during group B? Thanks!

Yes we had to go through the theater. They did not check for your letter. They could see that everyone was getting in line and made multiple announcements asking passengers not to come until their letter was called.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
heliwoman

heliwoman

Posted
Posted

Thanks for responding so quickly. Another question for you regarding STP: from other posts it looks like they "tell" you about the group sign up via the dailies on day 3 or 4. Do you think that you could have signed up for this on day 1 if you had known about it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
karoo

karoo

Posted
Posted
Thanks for such a thorough review. I am concerned about getting off ina timely fashion in ST. Petersburg. Many on our July 13 sailing are using Alla Tours so I hope there’s is strength in numbers!

 

 

 

Alla tours will wait. I was with SPB tours and they waited until all passengers were off before leaving. They had a large amount of groups/small buses booked. So they just filled the buses and left. No one got left behind. Alla waited too. I was on the May 20th Cruise.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

Link to comment
Share on other sites
scotte44

scotte44

Posted
  • Author
Posted

I'm not sure about signing up early, try it and see if you can get in group A.

 

I saw many tours waiting when we got off the ship. Most were larger group tours, they had their own van but it was larger and packed. We only had 10 in our tour group.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
pe4all

pe4all

Posted
Posted

We are also using Best Guides in SPB. (Best of the Best mini-group tour) Our tour tickets say 8 am meeting time. Do you think I should contact them and see if they can push it to 9 am?

Link to comment
Share on other sites
LADinCT

LADinCT

Posted
Posted
Have no fear - I have used Alla Tours on several trips (both cruise and land) and her tours are fantastic.

Yes, I second that Alla is amazing. We also used them for Estonia as we got a big discount after the 2-day SPB. SPB is a nightmare, we had A and we were still in the terminal for hours, luckily they waited.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
nycfa

nycfa

Posted
Posted
During the cruise, were you offered a discount on bag of laundry?

 

 

Yes they did! $19.95 stuff a bag on the day we were in Tallin.

 

For us it was a Monday and i got the clothes back on Thursday evening.

 

I’m on board the ship now.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
ollienbertsmum Great Review Rare

ollienbertsmum

Posted
Posted
Have no fear - I have used Alla Tours on several trips (both cruise and land) and her tours are fantastic.

 

 

I agree, Alla tours really looked after us on our trip to St Petersburg.

 

We were on RCI Jewel of the Seas, being a smaller ship with fewer passengers was probably an advantage in terms of getting off and needing to have all of that paperwork checked. You will all get there in the end though.

Link to comment
Share on other sites
gasolina

gasolina

Posted
Posted
Yes, I second that Alla is amazing. We also used them for Estonia as we got a big discount after the 2-day SPB. SPB is a nightmare, we had A and we were still in the terminal for hours, luckily they waited.

 

 

 

Did you think it was worth going on the tour? or could you have just done it on your own?

Our cruise is on September 5. We have Alla for SPB and Berlin.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Please sign in to comment

You will be able to leave a comment after signing in



Sign In Now
 Share
Go to topic listing
  • Forum Jump
    • Categories
      • Welcome to Cruise Critic
      • New Cruisers
      • Cruise Lines “A – O”
      • Cruise Lines “P – Z”
      • River Cruising
      • ROLL CALLS
      • Cruise Critic News & Features
      • Digital Photography & Cruise Technology
      • Special Interest Cruising
      • Cruise Discussion Topics
      • UK Cruising
      • Australia & New Zealand Cruisers
      • Canadian Cruisers
      • North American Homeports
      • Ports of Call
      • Cruise Conversations
×
×
  • Create New...