Baltic - St. Petersburg disembarkation

[Bob333]

Dear Princess,

 

I have been reading and hearing some disturbing information about your disembarkation information and practices in St. Petersburg Russia. You seem to be mis-informing passengers that Russian immigration requires all passengers with Princess tours be disembarked prior to passengers with private tours. This is simply not true. I will be traveling soon with you on a Baltic cruise. As a loyal customer with 10+ cruises with you, I hope you will have this rectified in short order. I truly believe you are the best in the industry and do not want an experience that would change my mind. I have booked a cruise with you and appreciate that you offer tours, but I have the option to make my own arrangements, and know I have the right to exit the ship once we have been cleared. You are in the industry of managing crowds, I am certain you can accomodate ALL and trust you will do so. I am sure you monitor Cruise Critic and Trip Advisor, and am certain you are aware of the information I am writing about. Please treat ALL passengers equally with dignity and respect. Please email me back and confirm I will not have an unpleasant experience.

Signed,

Loyal Princess Passenger

[couchking]

Dear Princess,

 

I have been reading and hearing some disturbing information about your disembarkation information and practices in St. Petersburg Russia. You seem to be mis-informing passengers that Russian immigration requires all passengers with Princess tours be disembarked prior to passengers with private tours. This is simply not true. I will be traveling soon with you on a Baltic cruise. As a loyal customer with 10+ cruises with you, I hope you will have this rectified in short order. I truly believe you are the best in the industry and do not want an experience that would change my mind. I have booked a cruise with you and appreciate that you offer tours, but I have the option to make my own arrangements, and know I have the right to exit the ship once we have been cleared. You are in the industry of managing crowds, I am certain you can accomodate ALL and trust you will do so. I am sure you monitor Cruise Critic and Trip Advisor, and am certain you are aware of the information I am writing about. Please treat ALL passengers equally with dignity and respect. Please email me back and confirm I will not have an unpleasant experience.

Signed,

Loyal Princess Passenger

 

Bob,

When is your cruise?

Larry

[CruiserGreg]

Best of luck......but I wouldn't hold my breath.:rolleyes:

[Pia1913]

Dear Princess,

 

I have been reading and hearing some disturbing information about your disembarkation information and practices in St. Petersburg Russia. You seem to be mis-informing passengers that Russian immigration requires all passengers with Princess tours be disembarked prior to passengers with private tours. This is simply not true. I will be traveling soon with you on a Baltic cruise. As a loyal customer with 10+ cruises with you, I hope you will have this rectified in short order. I truly believe you are the best in the industry and do not want an experience that would change my mind. I have booked a cruise with you and appreciate that you offer tours, but I have the option to make my own arrangements, and know I have the right to exit the ship once we have been cleared. You are in the industry of managing crowds, I am certain you can accomodate ALL and trust you will do so. I am sure you monitor Cruise Critic and Trip Advisor, and am certain you are aware of the information I am writing about. Please treat ALL passengers equally with dignity and respect. Please email me back and confirm I will not have an unpleasant experience.

Signed,

Loyal Princess Passenger

 

I must assume that you sent this directly to Princess too, right? You may or may not get an acknowledgement and it could be in a form letter format. But at least you do know that you can disembark when clearance is given and meet your own private tour at their designated time.

[mk0520]

I also sent an e-mail to princess last week. It sounded very similar to your e-mail. I received a form letter from them the next day to inform me that I shouldn't expect a response from them for 2-4 weeks. I also contacted our Tour company(Anastastia) and asked them if they had heard of any problems in St Petersburg. She said that she has heard that there has been problems and assured me that she will have her guide waiting for us at 8:00 a.m. So, the guide will be there. I just hope we will.:rolleyes:

[Pam in CA]

One thing I'm curious about is where you saw that Princess states only their tours can disembark first? We did the Baltic cruise last year and never saw anything that resembled that. What they do say is that you must have a visa in order to disembark so they encourge passengers to take ship's tours as the visa is taken care of. There are a surprising number of people who are clueless, i.e., they think they can disembark in St. Petersburg as they would in the Caribbean and try to do so without a visa. With so many tour companies and variables, I don't blame Princess for trying to keep communication simple. Heck, on my recent British Isles cruise, I shared a table with an older couple who said it was a complete surprise to them that there was an Ireland and Northern Ireland. You can tell how much research they did before their cruise.

 

Last year, there was never any attempt or question about us disembarking for our private tour. When we disembarked, there were Russian Immigration stations specifically marked "Princess Tours" and "Others" so they are already set up for passengers to disembark when they want.

 

Good luck getting an answer from Princess.

[cruisemom42]

One thing I'm curious about is where you saw that Princess states only their tours can disembark first? We did the Baltic cruise last year and never saw anything that resembled that. What they do say is that you must have a visa in order to disembark so they encourge passengers to take ship's tours as the visa is taken care of. There are a surprising number of people who are clueless, i.e., they think they can disembark in St. Petersburg as they would in the Caribbean and try to do so without a visa. With so many tour companies and variables, I don't blame Princess for trying to keep communication simple. Heck, on my recent British Isles cruise, I shared a table with an older couple who said it was a complete surprise to them that there was an Ireland and Northern Ireland. You can tell how much research they did before their cruise.

 

Last year, there was never any attempt or question about us disembarking for our private tour. When we disembarked, there were Russian Immigration stations specifically marked "Princess Tours" and "Others" so they are already set up for passengers to disembark when they want.

 

Good luck getting an answer from Princess.

 

 

It has been reported numerous times this year....Princess is not alone in doing it, apparently, but they are definitely doing it.

 

Read here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1025529&highlight=petersburg

 

and here:

 

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=1025608

[TracieABD]

Dear Princess,

 

I have been reading and hearing some disturbing information about your disembarkation information and practices in St. Petersburg Russia. You seem to be mis-informing passengers that Russian immigration requires all passengers with Princess tours be disembarked prior to passengers with private tours. This is simply not true. I will be traveling soon with you on a Baltic cruise. As a loyal customer with 10+ cruises with you, I hope you will have this rectified in short order. I truly believe you are the best in the industry and do not want an experience that would change my mind. I have booked a cruise with you and appreciate that you offer tours, but I have the option to make my own arrangements, and know I have the right to exit the ship once we have been cleared. You are in the industry of managing crowds, I am certain you can accomodate ALL and trust you will do so. I am sure you monitor Cruise Critic and Trip Advisor, and am certain you are aware of the information I am writing about. Please treat ALL passengers equally with dignity and respect. Please email me back and confirm I will not have an unpleasant experience.

Signed,

Loyal Princess Passenger

 

I hope this helps to address this problem. And I really hope that you can disembark when YOU choose.:)

[taxatty]

It's varied from cruise to cruise. On our Emerald Baltic cruise at the end of June, other than a health-related delay, everyone, regardless of whether you were taking a private or Princess tour, disembarked at the same time in an orderly manner, and anyone could use any of the several Russian immigration lines at the new cruise terminal. Other cruises have been different---I guess it's the luck of the draw .

 

Les

[TracieABD]

It's varied from cruise to cruise. On our Emerald Baltic cruise at the end of June, other than a health-related delay, everyone, regardless of whether you were taking a private or Princess tour, disembarked at the same time in an orderly manner, and anyone could use any of the several Russian immigration lines at the new cruise terminal. Other cruises have been different---I guess it's the luck of the draw .

 

Les

This was my experience when I was on the Crown last summer. That is after I received the warning about needing a Schengen Visa...

[Twaincruisers]

I am on the Emerald Sept 13 and have been looking at this itinerary for years. This problem has been described all those years--it just seems much more extreme than other years as people have described being yelled at and threatened. The misleading letters have also been around for years.

[caribill]

One thing I'm curious about is where you saw that Princess states only their tours can disembark first? We did the Baltic cruise last year and never saw anything that resembled that. What they do say is that you must have a visa in order to disembark so they encourge passengers to take ship's tours as the visa is taken care of.

 

Some quotes from the Patter this May:

 

"Please be advised that we will be requiring all passengers not booked on Princess tours to meet in the Michelangelo Dining Room to collect a gangway pass. Once in the dining room, members of the Cruise Director's Team will then direct you to the gangway once we are ready for your pass number to be called."

 

"Local Immigration advise only passengers with Ruissian visas will be permitted to go ashore independently, or alternately, if you are booked on an indepedent tour.......All other passengers who have not purchased a Russian Visa are advised to purchase a tour during our call, as your tour ticket will also act as your visa to disembark."

 

The above wording can be interpreted several ways and caused much confusion and bad feelings. Think how much better it would be if the wording was: "Only passengers who have booked a tour with Princess or a recognized independent tour company can go ashore without a Russian Visa. Your Princess or independent tour ticket will act as your visa when you go through Russian Immigration."

[capriccio]

What is really unfathomable is why has the procedure differed from cruise to cruise this summer? In May independent tour passengers were directed to the a dining room; in mid-June it was everyone for themselves; in July it seems to have gotten more stringent and antagonistic.

 

The entire 'Important Notice' in the Patter on the June 15th sailing (wich docked at the old container port that has a smaller immigration area and fewer lines than at the new port) reads:

 

Passengers going ashore independently: Local Immigration advises that only passengers with Russian visas will be permitted to go ashore independently, or alternately, if you are booked on an independent tour. Please note that the Immigration processing time varies by nationality and you should be prepared for delays. Due to the local Immigration inspection it is common to experience long lines when leaving the ship and agin due to Security Control screening, long wines will develop dock side for re-boarding the ship. In both cases you should be prepared in case of inclement weather. We operate as efficiently as possible, therefore if you are not in any particular rush to go ashore, maybe take advantage of a slightly later breakfast and enjoy the comfort and facilities of Emerald Princess. All other passengers who have not purchased a Russian Visa are advised to purchase a tour during our call, as your tour ticket will also act as your visa to disembark.

 

We followed the instructions from Alla Tours and were ready to disembark as soon as the ship was cleared with our tour tickets (visas) in hand. Other than waiting for the ship to receive clearance for about 1/2 hour we had no problems. We also disembarked WAY BEFORE any Princess tours - I know that because they were just starting to come out when we left at 8 am - and we left 1/2 hour late because one of our passengers couldn't get off the ship due to a defective ship's pass that had to be replaced at customer service desk. The logistics of getting hundreds if not thousands of folks together of the Princess tours is much more complicated than the 14 passengers in our van on the Alla Complete Tour.

[bgelb]

Thank you to all of you that have traveled this summer. It is interesting to hear the comments. I have also read about some of the other ships that have docked in SP and can't believe all the nonsense.

I have traveled all over the world and haven't heard of anything so ridiculous as all of this. It gives you stress before you even leave home. Who needs the aggravation of hoping to get off in time to meet the tour.

 

All of our tour is going to meet together, and we are going off, together. And it will be early and I will probably be asleep standing up, but this is crazy.....

[tequilatamm]

Hi everyone.

 

We're back from the last Emerald Baltic Cruise of the season, so I thought I'd add my two cents.

 

I'd like to note for the record that for ALL the days prior to arriving in St Petersburg, there was a warning message on the front page of the Princess Patter. I have attached a photo of it to this post.

 

It states very clearly that all passengers on ships' tours MUST disembark first, and independent tours after that, etc. In BOLD it states that failure to do this may result in passengers being refused entry into Russia.

 

While I believe what they are saying is not technically illegal for them to state, because otherwise they would not be doing it, it is a flat out lie, and is intended to frighten and intimidate passengers into buying their tours from the cruise ship rather than independently, at approximately 3 times the price.

 

It is a dirty, dirty trick, and would certainly make me think twice about booking another cruise with Princess.

 

Having said all that, since we were armed with the info from CruiseCritic, we were prepared for their tactics, and were at the gangplank at 6:30am ready to line up to get off.

 

Every day prior to St Petersburg, disembarkation was from forward and midships of deck 4, so it was pretty obvious what was going on when they had an area roped off on deck 5 on the first St Petersburg day, which made it look like they would be disembarking from this level too. Oddly, there was a sign about dismebarking for Tallinn, not St Petersburg, just to further confuse people.

 

We didn't fall for this, but went directly to deck 4 midships, figuring that perhaps they were opening an extra exit on deck 5, but that they would definitely be disembarking from deck 4 as they had all previous days.

 

After waiting around for 10 minutes or so on deck 4, a female officer came out of the medical center area and told us that for independent tours they would be disembarking on deck 5 and that we should go there. We took that to mean that for ships' tours, they would be disembarking from deck 4 FIRST, and that she was trying to get us out of the way, so we politely told her we'd be staying on deck 4 to disembark from there. She gave us a dirty look, but there was no further discussion.

 

One member of our party had to go back up to the room to get something, and when he came back down to deck 5 was told to wait there to disembark. I had to go and find him, and tell him to come down to deck 4 regardless of what they had told him.

 

Several minutes later, another Princess staff member came down and basically said the same thing, that we were welcome to stay on deck 4, but that they would be opening deck 5 to independent passengers.

 

There were 4 or 5 small groups of CruiseCritic people waiting on deck 4 at this point, and we all had a quiet discussion about how the staff must think we're stupid or something, and we were all in agreement that we should stay put, and would be disembarked first.

 

Several minutes after this, Princess Tour Groups started to appear in the foyer of deck 4 with us, you could spot them from their little coloured, oblong labels on their shirts. About this time, they opened up the Medical Center in the middle of the foyer and had us start disembarking through this area... which was weird, because every other day they disembarked from either a right or left door on this deck.

 

We looked back as we disembarked, in probably the first 10 or 11 people to get off the ship, and the deck 5 gangway had not yet been opened, confirming our suspicions.

 

It really was dirty tactics, but at least Princess seemed to be reading CruiseCritic and had learned that they were going to get in trouble if they continued to try and physically strongarm passengers into not getting off when they wanted to.

 

So, in short, for future cruisers on this route, assuming Princess and other lines continue to use these dirty tactics, I advise you to go to the gangway being used on the previous days, and ignore any comments from ships' staff telling you where to go.

 

This seemed to work out fine, and we were on our way by about 7:15am on our tour.

 

We did a 6-person Denrus tour in a very comfortable van. Our guide was Maria, and she took us to some great, small places for lunch, and was very informative at all our stops. It was money well-spent, being about the same price as a 50-person tour bus tour would have been with Princess, and about a third of the cost of a private princess tour. Well worth the money.

[jagsfan]

We also stood at the double doors for the Med Center, and the staff was polite to me.

I was closest to the door. They even told us it would be just a few more minutes. One

person did say we should go up to Deck 5 since we were not on a Princess shorex. I

smiled and said we're going to disembark here. They opened the door and waved me through. I wound up being the first person off, and we met our Denrus guide, Nellie,

at 645a, right on time.

We were a group of 10, in a very comfortable small bus with large windows, plenty

of room to spread out. I don't think we missed anything......even rode the Metro to

see the wonderful stations, and the hydrofoil from Peterhof.

We worried about getting off on time, but it turned out fine. Since Princess has a vested

interest in the people who book shore excursions, they want them to get top priority. I

understand that, but the intimidation that was evidently used over the summer is

unacceptable. We were very happy with the way we were treated.

Actually, as regards the entire cruise, the people who served us, including our steward,

Ricardo, couldn't have been better. Our dining room servers were friendly and professional,

not always easy to do. Princess is still my favorite cruise line, and I've sailed on most

lines past and present in the same category.

[WeBeGone]

We were on the June 10th cruise. There were no such warnings printed in the Patter. Indeed, the cruise director, Eric, came to our CC get together and said that the policy of having ship tours get off first had been discarded. Don't know what happened the rest of the summer, but in early June, our group of 10, meeting SVB, were the first people off and no one said a word to us.

[Twaincruisers]

We were on the Sept 13th cruise and were booked with Red October. Our group gathered at the piano and headed enforce for the exit as soon as it was possible. I believe I heard a security person directing a couple to another deck as we all swished by him without even acknowledging his presence! So apparently they were still trying to interfere. It was two long days but a great experience.

[kennetro]

It's not just Princess. Celebrity forced us to wait (by outright LYING to our faces) over 1 1/2 hours to disembark in St. Pete a few months ago. All Celebrity Tour pax were sneaked off and on their merry way by the time we were told it was okay to leave. I will never forgive Celebrity for this, and if Princess ever does this to me, it will also be my last cruise with them. Just a heads up, Princess!!!!!

[ljones]

So I see all the cruise lines are following this pattern. Since checking through immigration takes a bit of time, I certainly understand why the cruise lines would not want their own participants complaining about long waits. I was also on Celebrity & they had various meeting locations assigned, independent tours were in one of the lounges. It was natural that the Celebrity excursions to Moscow would get off first for their flight, but after a few minutes in the lounge we realized we would be called after all the Celebrity excursions. We simply left as a group & had no issues getting off at the same time Celebrity excursions were leaving & w/ no negative comments or looks. In many ways it is like taking a cruiseline tour, not everyone leaves @ the same time in order to keep the numbers managable. The cruiselines would have a lot less negative views tho' by eleminating the misleading letters.

[couchking]

We were a group of 12. I spent several day before St. Petersburg upset about the situation. I did not sleep the night before. We went to deck 5 and were about the 20th in line. We were let off the ship at about 7 a.m. with no problems. I guess they have that in the patter to intimidate people, but when it came down to getting off-everyone was pleasant and we were with our tour guide by 7:15.

Larry

[Wandering Writer]

We sailed with Celebrity in July to Norway and the Baltic. After reading on CC of the problems that seemed to be encountered in St. Petersburg disembarking for independent tours, we were concerned too. We got our group of 8 together and did as others have suggested--camped out at the gangway to be sure we got off at a reasonable time. It went well and we thoroughly enjoyed our two days on a very comfortable but busy tour.