This is only my opinion cause I don't do excursions, but if I did, I would do the ship. If they are cancelled for any reason, you still have the payment!! Ships don't charge till the excursion is actually taken!! If private, and the ship doesn't get to that port the money is lost!!
Tom...I just responded to your PM...check it out!!!
Just and FYI for the board...we didn't do any ship excursions in the Baltics...we went on our own in every port except Russia, where we went with Red October tours. It was amazing to hear how much more we saw on our own than our dinner tablemates (who all went on ship excursions) as we compared stories and tales of the day...
Red October doesn't accept any money up front...you pay them on the 2nd day of the tour, so if the ship skips this port, no monies are lost!!
We cruised in the Baltic this last summer, using Red October for our St. Petersburg days. Like Jodi, we had a wonderful full 2 days of touring and I highly recommend them!!
In Copenhagen and Tallinn we walked through the cities ourselves with a guide book and didn't take excursions. In Helsinki, Stockholm, Warnemunde, and Oslo we took ship sponsored tours, for at least a 1/2 day, and then explored the cities ourselves after the tours.
Many of your Baltic cities are quite walkable and it's nice to explore the cities on your own pace plus many times on a ship tour you never really meet any "locals". We love talking to folks we meet in the cities as we tour.
Happy to provide more specifics about the tours if you like!
Many of your Baltic cities are quite walkable and it's nice to explore the cities on your own pace plus many times on a ship tour you never really meet any "locals". We love talking to folks we meet in the cities as we tour.
We found the same to be true! Talking with the "locals" is what we enjoyed the most.
we are going on Celebrity-Constellation Baltic cruise this year. Any comments on port excursions. Independent or Ship sponsored?
Hi Tom
I just found this forum and probably will not post often, just read. But this is a subject I did a lot of research on before my Star Princess Baltic Cruise last summer. None of the ports except St Petersburg require visas, and all the ports except St Petersburg, Engish is the second language so going on an organized excursion is probably only needed in that one port. It is also needed because there is 100 times more things to see and do there that without help, a visitor would be disappointed in how little of their "must see" list they got to see. I found that there are 4 tour companies giving shore excursions; Arctur, Baltic Travel, DenRus and Red October. Acrtur, last year was Princess' contractor for the ship tours so they were not allowed to sell directly to the public. I contacted the other 3 and had lots of exchanges, questions and chit chat by email. We selected DenRus for a lot of reasons but we could have just as easily selected Baltic. We saved a lot of money and according to the chat around the dinner table at night, we also saw much more than those who did not use DenRus. Red October was rejected for not being honest and after talks with others found I was not singled out to be lied to. Everybody seems to like the company they used no doubt because they had nothing to compare with which is probably the reasoning behind R.O. telling us things that were not true just to maximize their income. They probably figured no one would ever return so it did not make any difference.
All the companies have full refund policies(except R.O. which uses a sales agent in the US who takes the non-refundable deposit as his commission) so there is no worry about cancellations. All accept credit cards(Denrus being the only American company uses their Florida bank for processing, the others use local Russian banks which was a concern for me after being warned by my CC company), and all give more for the money than the ship tours which are large 50 member bus excursions.
What ever you decide, you will probably love your excursion because of the destination being so unique and little known outside of Russia.
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