Europe - Northern Europe Cruise Reviews

We had a lovely time cruising the Baltic Sea. Seeing Berlin, Stockholm, St. Petersberg, Gottenburg, Helsinki, Travemunde, Copenhagen--amazing places. It was wonderful to hear the languages and see the cultures of each country. Exhausting, but in the best possible way.

The destinations on this cruise were fantastic. Berlin and St. Petersburg were our favorites. We were supposed to go to Helsingborg, Sweden, for our last port, but there were very strong wind gusts and the captain thought it would be dangerous for us to tender in and out, so we went to Copenhagen early. We had a great time there as well, and preferred it to Helsingborg. The food on the cruise was great. The weather was great for us, with temps in the high 60s to low 70s every day, with short rain showers on several days. The ship didn't have a lot of bells and whistles, and was showing its age a bit, but we weren't there for the ship. The staff was great, very attentive and friendly. Overall, it was a great trip. 

In the exercise room very few bicycles are used because of charges. Also bikes are old. Suggest to make it available free. The balcony room need little bit more space.

3rd time with Holland America.  Was a fine cruise, with the usual HA services & amenities.  I especially liked the itinerary beginning & ending in Copenhagen.  Most Baltic touched Copenhagen for a day stop.

St. Petersburg is my favorite city to visit. There are so many great Palaces, museums and churches,. Two days are too rush. In 13 days we are able to visit 6 countries and their capitals, and cities. We were busy, tired but happy and joyful. This is a very impressive cruise with Zuiderdam.

The ship is a beautiful ship and the crew was awesome!  The crew was so helpful and fun.  The ports of call were excellent and the land tours we took were all very enjoyable.  This is the best cruise we have ever been on.  We have been on the Alaska and New Zealand cruise which were both excellent as well.  This one is a must do to experience this part of the world.

This is the 2nd time that we travel on Celebrity having been on a marvelous cruise on the Reflection 2 years ago. Its sister ship, the Shilouette did not disappoint. We are a group of 13 including edleries and young children and the majority of them did not speak much English therefore finding a "user friendly" ship is of prime importance (in addition to the destinations). The ship is well kept, the staff curteous, helpful and very friendly! The quality and choices of food on board remain (in our opinion) the best amongst similar cruise liners. The "added perks" for Suite Class passengers were great value for money and the services impeccable and made the passengers felt valued. The only slight draw back being that it was obviously a very popular route and at a very popular time and the ship seems to be at full capacity, which makes the public area very crowded(and makes it seem a lot smaller than the Reflection) and the only cafe offering premium tea, coffe and cakes was full to its brim on all sea days. The food in the speciality restaurant were of good quality except for the Tuscan Grille where more attention could be paid to the ingredients (especially the fishes which tasted rather stalled). 

We enjoyed some of the stops but the hours in port were too short and the stops in Estonia, Germany and Helsinki left much to be desired.  They should be avoided and were very disappointing.  The Russian experience was very good but the authorities intimidated too many passengers.  The spa areas were a means of buying products and the casino tables were the worse in terms of payouts we have ever seen.  Captive audience??? 

MAJOR PROBLEM

BOTH OF US GOT SICK ON THE NIGHT BEFORE WE LEFT AND WONDER IF THIS OCCURRED WITH OTHER PASSENGERS!!!!

This was a great itinerary that fit our family's timing. Life on board the ship for these 12 days was fantastic! And the shore excursions to the various ports of call were fascinating!

The cruise was very enjoyable. The wait staff and bartenders were excellent and worked hard to meet all of your needs. Housekeeping did a great job refreshing the rooms on a daily basis. The food was excellent and the ship was very clean. 

Roaming around the Baltic Sea is much more interesting than simply parking oneself in St. Petersburg and hitting the museums. It was a good opportunity to see how the countries interrelate. The shore excursions arranged by Royal Caribbean were excellent with very informative guides. If you want to see and do everything in St. Petersburg, however, you should arrange a private tour ahead of time that leaves the ship at 7 am each morning and returns at 11 pm. Royal Caribbean's excursions try to get back to the ship (a 20-minute drive from the city center) by 5:30 pm so that people can change and then go back out for an evening event if desired.

Royal Caribbean apparently leads the industry in Internet service. I measured 3 Mbits down and 2 Mbits up consistently for their Voom service (about $15/day depending on the number of devices connected). This makes it practical to work from the ship using Google Docs, Dropbox, etc. I uploaded about 30 GB of photos and videos using Voom. Streaming from Netflix worked well.

We didn't take any children but the ones that we saw were having a great time exploring the ship and looked only slightly bored on the cultural shore excursions.

Food? If you're trying to kick the bread habit, this is the place to do it. They bake everything from scratch every morning and yet somehow the donuts and croissants didn't work out at all. We stopped eating bread after a few days and consequently didn't gain any weight. Food safety is the #1 priority and we didn't get sick nor hear of anyone who got sick. The price that you pay for perfect safety is that you're not going to get spectacular and unexpected tastes.

Alcohol? I didn't see anyone staggering around drunkenly. People did seem to be enjoying the bars. I refrained from buying the unlimited drinks package and limited myself to one or two glasses of wine per day ($8-14 for regular wine; only about $6 for a Graham's port with dessert, plus 18% gratuity). For any given wine, the prices were comparable to what we would pay at a hotel here in Boston.

I'm not a coffee snob, but the regular drip coffee was pretty week. I guess it is comparable to what would happen if you bought Maxwell House at the supermarket and ran it through a Mr. Coffee. There were some on-board espresso bars (prices similar to a Starbucks) but there didn't seem to be a Dunkin' Donuts equivalent with slightly stronger drip coffee.

Staff are friendly and obviously competent. We never waited in a line for more than about 5 minutes. I.e., they manage to get 2400 passengers plus some crew back on the ship before sailing, putting everyone through a metal detector and all bags through an X-ray, without making people wait. The gym is fantastic with a great view towards the bow from Deck 12. It was never crowded. I got a great haircut for about the same price as I would pay in downtown Boston ($25; thanks, Annie!).

The ship was 13 years old at the time of our sailing and was in perfect condition. I wish these guys would come over and maintain our house.

The on-board entertainers were great. The band, mostly Eastern Europeans, could have played in any Broadway theater. I wished that they had done some longer performances, e.g., a full Broadway show or play instead of one hour of excerpts. The theater itself is an impressive facility that, again, rivals anything you'd find in a big American city. The cinema is kind of weak. It doesn't look like a 4K projector and the lenticular screen impairs resolution.

The itinerary is well-designed. Three days in St. Petersburg is kind of the minimum. Fredericia, Denmark is not a place a typical tourist would go and Royal Caribbean uses it mostly as a launching point for shore excursions, e.g., to LEGOLAND. However, I enjoyed the fact that the folks in this small town were delighted by our visit and turned out as volunteers, to park their classic cars, to dance and play in bands, etc. It was a good reminder of what it would be like to visit on a ship in the 18th century. I would have liked to stop in Poland at least briefly instead of having the "at sea" day from Lithuania to northern Germany. Alternatively I would have preferred to stop in Hamburg instead of a port that is a 3.5-hour bus ride away from Berlin (we did a local shore excursion instead; Warnemunde would be a great town if the weather had been sunny, which it wasn't). Stopping at all three of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania was wonderful and educational.

Our basic oceanview cabin was larger and much more usefully organized and equipped than our hotel room in Paris. That said, given that my mom could do only one activity per day and there aren't a lot of quiet indoor spaces on the ship (no library or reading room, for example), it would have made more sense to get a suite. We spent more time in the room than originally planned.

My mom suffered a minor medical issue at one point and visited the on-board clinic and was favorable impressed.

It was a great experience overall and Royal Caribbean puts together a pretty amazing floating city at a reasonable price.

As mentioned above, overall cruise was good. We did not always liked the lunch food choices - most of them tasted bland and did not look appetizing.  The dinners, on the other hand, were much better.  Almost every day we had very good food and some of the days the taste was excellent.  We also would like to recognize some people that served us.  To begin with, our dining room server Petrovic, Marko and his assistand Ferreira Dias, Ademerson.. the service we received from both was top notch - prompt, accurate, cordial, attentive and just pleasant to deal with.  We also would like to recognize our cabin steward.  Unfortunately we don't remember his name.  We would like to pint point that were were in Cabin 1102 on Deck 10 and maybe this way you will be able to figure out the name of the person.  In addition, we thought the the Entertainment Director were SUPERB - funny, witty , talented, articulate, and overall very pleasant person.  He was a star.  The rest of the crew were very good in making our life on the ship pleasant, organized and easy.  Thank you very much for well run ship. 

A good cruise for those looking to experience the Baltic, detailed visits with enough time in each port to experience the town and people.  We had children ranging from 7-17 and there was rarely a wait for any of the boats amenities.

I would recommend this to friends and family.  I'm glad it was a 3 day stop in St. Petersburg, so we were able to go to Moscow on day 2 In St. Petersburg.

Ports of call were wonderful. Did not do any of the ship excursions. Dinning Room Service was great. I do object to the asking of an additional tip on all signed receipts. We paid daily gratuities, 18.5% and than you make the servicers ask for more. 

We were underwhelmed with the ship and the service. The boarding was inefficient, slower than on a Celebrity cruise my wife took last year, were there roughly four times as many passengers. Our suitcases were taken from our hotel at 8am, but not delivered to our cabin until the late afternoon.

The ship needs a good refurbishing. The shower and sink did not drain properly in our cabin, and the curtains were of poor quality, letting a lot of light into the cabin in the mornings. The food was OK, but the service was below par for a luxury line - you had to attract a waiter's attention to get a drink refill. 

The gym was often crowded, and the weights area was small, making difficult for more than  1 or 2 people to use it at the same time.

On the positive side, our butler was excellent, and the excursions were generally good, although we, having little interest in shopping, found being left at shopping areas for an hour or more a little annoying.  

Favorite part of the cruise was the food and the excursions.

Food was delicious; service impeccable

The excursions were handled very professionally and expeditiously

The  elevators were permitted to go to the egress floor; thus eliminating the herd mentality that usually occurs

The staff at Norwegian Cruise Line was excellent in their service. They were very professional, friendly, courteous and helpful. The ports of calls and shore excursions were amazing. I learned a lot about countries that so far I had only dreamed of to visit.

VERY DISAPPOINTED IN THE NUMBER OF BROKEN WASHING AND DRYING MACHINES WHICH WERE SUPPOSEDLY FREE.   BIGGEST DISAPPOINTMENT IS THE SHRUGGED SHOULDERS OF THE FRONT DESK STAFF ABOUT GETTING THEM REPAIRED.  SEVERAL PEOPLE WENT THERE AND CAME BACK SWEARING.   PEOPLE ARE JUST NOT RESPONSIVE.

FOOD WAS FAIR, NOT EXCELLENT OR EXCEPTIONAL.   MAIN COURSES LACKED FLAVOR, BLAND MIGHT BE A GOOD WORD.  DESSERTS AND APPETIZERS WERE MUCH BETTER

CABIN STAFF EXCELLENT.   THE BEST.

ENTERTAINMENT OVERALL WAS GOOD.   THE SHIP CAST WAS EXCELLENT.   SOME OF THE ONE NIGHTERS WERE,  EHH?  HANGERS ON EXTENDING THEIR CAREERS.

Our recent Nordic cruise on Oceania's Insignia will be remembered as one of our favorite cruises among the many that we have taken.  The itinerary was a perfect introduction to this part of the world -- taking us to places we hadn't been before.  It was a nice blend of ports that featured stunning natural wonders (geysers, waterfalls, mountains and fjords) as well as cosmopolitan cities and historic neighborhoods worth exploring on foot.  We enjoyed a variety of experiences on the ship's shore excursions and on our own.  The ship won our hearts with its tasteful and refined decor, outstanding cuisine, and excellent service.  We found it to be the perfect size for us:  not too big and not too small.  We appreciated its quiet, relaxing atmosphere, smoke-free venues, and the fact that there were very few children on board.  I overheard one passenger complaining about the lack of activities onboard, but we rejoiced that there was no rock-climbing wall, no non-stop disco, bingo, karaoke, art auctions, and all the other noise and nonsense of big cruise ships.  We cruise for the sheer pleasure of cruising and to visit interesting ports of call.  We don't need a floating amusement park.  We look forward to sailing on Oceania's Insignia again someday.