Rotterdam Baltic Cruise Copenhagen-Rotterdam 7/6/09-7/16/09 Part 1: review of cruise

[chcats]

My husband and I just recently got back from our Baltic cruise on the Rotterdam and had a fantastic cruise. This review will be in two parts, one for the cruise itself (part #1) and the other for the different ports (part#2) which is on the board for the Baltic ports. First, I want to thank everyone on this forum for all of the useful information which helped tremendously in our cruise planning. Also a special thanks to Deezee2 for organizing the cruise critic get togethers where we met a lot of great people that we enjoyed spending time with throughout the cruise.

 

General Comments on the Rotterdam: The Rotterdam is a midsize ship which holds approximately 1200 passengers. This is a nice size, since it is easy to get around the ship and hook up with people. Also it has a very elegant style with a lot of artwork. Ipods can be obtained in the library which give a walking tour of the ship describing all of the artwork. The ship will be in dry dock in November and I was told that the major renovations would be in the bathrooms and the aft pool area.

 

Embarkation and Disembarkation: Embarkation was very smooth with no problems and we had done the online check in, We disembarked the ship early in Oslo which was the last port in order to visit the Norwegian fjords. For anyone who wants to do this, it was quite easy. I called HAL a number of weeks before the cruise to request early disembarkation, and they sent me a letter saying that my request was approved. When we were on the ship, we went to the front desk and were told to simply give them our passports the day before disembarkation so we could be cleared for immigration. They returned our passports that night, and the next day we simply got off the ship.

 

Service: We found the service to be excellent. We particularly liked our wine steward, Rodel, who was very friendly and efficient and always came up to us during the cruise like he was an old friend.

 

Food: We mainly ate dinner in the main dining room and the food was excellent. The food was typically American style, however I think it would be nice if they could have at least one dish each night that was typical for the country that had been visited that day. The night the ship docked in Warnemunde, they did have German food and music at the Lido pool. We had originally requested late dining for a table of 8 and were wait listed for open dining. On the first night we found out that we were given a table for 2 at 8pm which is not what we wanted so we requested to be moved to a table for 8. The headwaiter was very helpful and moved us the next night. The problem was that we were moved to a table where only one of the people spoke English. Although they seemed to be very nice we couldn’t really communicate with them very well. I think in the future we will go for open dining which will allow us to have more flexibility and be able to have dinner with people we have met on the cruise. One night we ate in the Pinnacle grill with a couple we had met at the Mariner’s luncheon and I would strongly suggest eating there at least one night.. The service is like a 5 star restaurant and the steaks are fantastic. We brought our own wine aboard which we drank before dinner either in our cabin or took a glass to the different lounges. We generally ordered a glass of wine with our meal in the dining room.

 

Cabin: We had an outside cabin on the lower promenade deck (deck 3) which is the level where the deck goes completely around the ship. Although this partially impeded our view, it was very convenient to get out on the deck for walks and sunsets.

 

Shore Excursions: For the most part we did not take any ship excursions. My biggest problem on the cruise is how the cruise line handled people who had booked private tours in St. Petersburg. Although the vast majority of people booked ship excursions, those of us who had private tours were told we had to wait until all of the people on ship excursions had gotten off the ship before we could get off and that this was required by Russian immigration. Only in St. Petersburg does everyone have to individually go through immigration. Fortunately, the private tour companies had warned us of this and we simply went down to the gangplank before the ship docked, and were one of the first ones off the ship. Russian immigration could have cared less whether we were on a ship tour. I strongly advise anyone with a private tour to simply ignore what they tell you and go down to the gangplank early and just get off the ship.

 

Entertainment: This is the one area where I think Hal has cut back on at least as far as the shows go. We didn’t go to many of the shows, but they seemed to mostly be variety shows with singing and dancing which we are really not into that much. Two of the nights they had the comedian, Marty Brill, who was a writer for a number of TV comedy shows and was quite funny. Some nights they were simply showing a movie.

 

I would highly recommend this cruise and will be happy to answer any questions about the Rotterdam and our cruise.

 

CHCATS

[hylasgirl]

I can't wait for your port review. Will you let me know about Rotterdam (the city) in general? Did you stay there pre-cruise? Or was the ship returning there and you did not travel all the way there?

[chcats]

We did not go to Rotterdam since we got off the ship in Oslo.

[WhansaMi]

We were on this cruise last year, and it went exactly the opposite way, with regard to debarking in St. Pete's. The private tours were let off as early as the boat docked, but we were told there was some delay in letting off the ships' tour passengers.

 

We actually spoke to Alla a bit about the conflicting stories that are told to passengers, and she basically said that the outfits that provide services to the cruise lines want priority, but the ship/big bus companies weren't coming through with the money to make that happen.

 

I'm now wondering if the ship/operators have finally started greasing the palms they needed to grease to get themselves priority.

[mancunian]

I find the St Petersburg bit of this confusing. We were on Rotterdam in June and were told by the ship that the people not on the ships tours could go off either first or last on the first day, they did not say that we had to get off after the tours. Alla had prepared us for this and told us to get off early which we did and also the Denrus people. There were over 1,000 going on ships excursions and going through immigration the first day is relatively slow, though I have to say quicker than when we went 15 years' ago. I don't see a problem with this. With those large numbers involved of course the ships operators want to keep the official tours together, but I think that also Alla and Denrus do too. If you went onshore in a crowd mixed up with the ships tours it would take ages for the private tours to assemble. On day two immigration is much faster and we were able to get off a bit later for Alla. The bonus to getting off early was that the small private tours got to places earlier and indeed this certainly paid off at the Hermitage. We certainly had no complaints.