Are the Port Lectures valuable or a waste of time?

[Sadie65]

We will be on the Regal Princess cruising the Baltics and Russia this July. I have seen some mention of "Port Lectures" on Cruise Critic.

Are these lectures worthwhile or a they simply telling you at which shops to do your shopping?

 

Sadie

[skynight]

We will be on the Regal Princess cruising the Baltics and Russia this July. I have seen some mention of "Port Lectures" on Cruise Critic.

Are these lectures worthwhile or a they simply telling you at which shops to do your shopping?

 

Sadie

We did the Baltic on the Royal. We never actually attended a port lecture live, but they were shown on the TV, on demand and we watched them on the TV. The woman we had on board gave very helpful information. They were not shopping talks.

[Colo Cruiser]

We will be on the Regal Princess cruising the Baltics and Russia this July. I have seen some mention of "Port Lectures" on Cruise Critic.

Are these lectures worthwhile or a they simply telling you at which shops to do your shopping?

 

Sadie

 

We dislike them, too much Princess shop hype. :(

Edited June 5, 2015 by Colo Cruiser

[Thrak]

It depends on the lecturer. Some can be quite informative.

 

Just be sure you don't end up in one of the "shopping" talks. I got in one of those once and it was a big waste of time. They just tried to get everybody to go to the specific stores in the port (Diamonds International for instance!!!) where they get a kickback.

 

If it's a lecture about the port itself it can be good. Just remember that you can always get up and walk out if you find you have stumbled into a shopping "lecture".

Edited June 5, 2015 by Thrak

[paul929207]

We find that the ones for the Caribbean, Mexico and Alaska tend to be shopping talks. In the rest of the world they are port talks.

[FawnRiver]

It depends on the lecturer. Some can be quite informative.

 

Just be sure you don't end up in one of the "shopping" talks. I got in one of those once and it was a big waste of time. They just tried to get everybody to go to the specific stores in the port (Diamonds International for instance!!!) where they get a kickback.

 

If it's a lecture about the port itself it can be good. Just remember that you can always get up and walk out if you find you have stumbled into a shopping "lecture".

 

 

Especially the gentleman lecturing us on the Titanic while on a TA ;)

[PescadoAmarillo]

We find that the ones for the Caribbean, Mexico and Alaska tend to be shopping talks. In the rest of the world they are port talks.

I agree with the Caribbean but find the naturalist talks in Alaska very interesting and was surprised to see a married couple actually giving port lectures on our 9-night Mexico cruise on the Grand.

 

On our French Polynesia cruises, we had a port lecturer (Douglas Pearson) who really made the cruises for us. Panama Canal lecturers can be very good too.

[Husky61]

We never attend them or watch them on TV.

[Colo Cruiser]

Our Med and British Isles cruise they were terrible. :(

[seamwoman]

On our Panama Canal cruise on the Coral in April the port lecturer was excellent. He had lived in Panama and brought many personal experiences to his comments through the canal. Karen

[capriccio]

We will be on the Regal Princess cruising the Baltics and Russia this July. I have seen some mention of "Port Lectures" on Cruise Critic.

Are these lectures worthwhile or a they simply telling you at which shops to do your shopping?

 

Sadie

 

John Lawrence - who, I think, is retired - was a wonderful port lecturer on the Baltic cruise. I have never met anyone who comes close but the naturalists - which is a different job - in Alaska are also (at least in our 2 Alaska cruises) very good. We were very disappointed (this was more than 5 years ago) with the lecturers on our Panama Canal transit and also found those on our Amazon cruise lacking. They weren't telling us where to shop but their presentations left lots to be desired.

[peterspca90732]

We had a terrific lecturer on the Island, last February full Panama Canal transit to Los Angeles. We had no shopping lectures on that one, just good info and insight into each port.

[bcnvcanada]

We miss Joe (red shirt) who was on so many of our South American, and

med cruises. He was wonderful, so many tips on DYT information and also

for Princess tours. We understand that he pass, a year ago. He was a gem.

[Posaune]

I must chime in and say that on two of our British cruises the port talks were excellent. On the third mediocre.

 

On our first Med cruise the lectures were very good. On the second Med cruise the lectures were horrible. The information was VERY out of date.

 

The shopping talks are not our cup of tea and we stay away.

 

In other words, the quality varies cruise to cruise.

[Matcodixon]

There is only one way to be sure.. Watch them and let us know..:D

[5waldos]

Shopping lectures are useful in letting you know what shops to avoid[emoji33]

Real lecturers can be wonderful although obviously there is a range of them. Good ones are great-some not so much.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[joybook]

Our experience is that we have never had a bad one. Yes they can be different and each has a different emphasis. Some give you a very historic based lecture of the port/city while some may give you a shopping guide. However we have never experienced one which we felt was giving us a 'hard-sell'. The ones we find most informative are those that give you an idea of directions to take from the dock, bus or train numbers to catch for various places etc. In otherwords helpful to visitors. They are usually held in the Princess Theatre and so there is an opportunity for you to get up and leave if you wish to. I can honestly say we have never walked out on one. We have always found them helpful or interesting or both.:)

[rpcv77]

On my first Princess cruise, NZ/AUS, I attended a few port lectures and found most to be very informative. But, the port lecturer who spoke about Hobart was very wrong when we asked her a question about the Taste of Tasmania food festival. It was December 31 and she insisted that the festival would not be open that day due to New Year's Eve. We had researched it before we left and according to their website,mother were open (we were trying to confirm with the lecturer). Fortunately, the festival was within shouting distance of the pier and was one of the highlights of our trip :)

[J-D]

We miss Joe (red shirt) who was on so many of our South American, and med cruises. He was wonderful, so many tips on DYT information and also for Princess tours. We understand that he pass, a year ago. He was a gem.

 

Concur that Joe May was one of the best. He was also very helpful to us in previewing stops in South America during our cruises there. For a thread on Joe, see

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2090474&page=1

 

John

[eandj]

If busy, DH watches them in our room while relaxing or getting ready for dinner. I usually do enough precruise research that I leave the lectures to him.;) He's a born student.

[pompeii]

I catch them if there isn't anything else going on at the time they scheduled. I generally learn at least a few helpful things, sometimes I learn quite a bit. DH doesn't think they're worth sitting through, but when we get off the ship and I know where things are located or some other info, he'll ask "how'd you know that?" and I'll say "cause I went to the port lecture!";)

[Putterdude]

Generally we don't attend them, we do a great amount of research on each port before we embark the ship and are usually pretty much up to speed. However, occasionally we will watch the lecture on tv and of course read the port information that is stuffed in the Patters the night before.

[caribill]

We will be on the Regal Princess cruising the Baltics and Russia this July. I have seen some mention of "Port Lectures" on Cruise Critic.

Are these lectures worthwhile or a they simply telling you at which shops to do your shopping?

 

Sadie

 

For the Baltics and Russia cruise they are worthwhile. Not a shopping talk.

 

Of course the quality of the lecturer determines how valuable the information is. The previously mentioned John Lawrence was one of the best and his DVD on the subject was fantastic. Unfortunately, the DVD no longer appears to be available.

[cityguy300]

We will be on the Regal Princess cruising the Baltics and Russia this July. I have seen some mention of "Port Lectures" on Cruise Critic.

Are these lectures worthwhile or a they simply telling you at which shops to do your shopping?

 

Sadie

 

Assuming you have the same guy we had on the May 13 sailing on Regal, the port lectures are fine. However, as mentioned already, there's no need to attend them in person unless a) you have questions or b) you can't wait until the ship departs the last port to catch them on TV.

 

When we boarded, the one for Oslo (presumably recorded on the previous sailing) was available, but not the others. The video for the next port would get replaced each day, although there didn't seem to be a consistent system for this (just as they would change and move the movie and TV lineup sporadically throughout the trip). Eventually they just put the last 2-3 videos up at once.

 

The lectures run about 15-20 minutes each, and they are not shopping talks like the cheesy ones on the Caribbean voyages (I've attended a few of the latter and they're all the same, down to the jokes and "personal" anecdotes! :p). There is a bias towards the Princess tours versus DIY, but to his credit the guy did usually talk a bit (under a minute) about public transit options in each port.

Edited June 6, 2015 by cityguy300

[Cruiserkenn]

The port talks on Hawaii cruises have been great! On the Sapphire, Star, and Grand.

 

The presenters have been different each time. They all gave great info about how to get around and do things.

 

Again... aloha:)