St. Petersburg 2020 Cruise

[Boardwalk Family]

We booked a placeholder on our last cruise for the summer 2020 St. Petersburg Cruise that starts in Copenhagen. We were on a 7 night western carib cruise and the price for the same room on the 8 day Copenhagen cruise was just about double! Two questions. Anyone know why sooo much more for the European Cruises? Second, has anyone done the 8 day Copenhagen with 2 days in St. Petersburg?
Thanks.

 

[dclpluto]

We booked a placeholder on our last cruise for the summer 2020 St. Petersburg Cruise that starts in Copenhagen. We were on a 7 night western carib cruise and the price for the same room on the 8 day Copenhagen cruise was just about double! Two questions. Anyone know why sooo much more for the European Cruises? Second, has anyone done the 8 day Copenhagen with 2 days in St. Petersburg?
Thanks.

Supply and demand is a big reason. Disney probably does around 40 a year with the western Caribbean cruise. St. Petersburg’s your talking what one or two cruises a year. Northern Europe is going to cost you as you see.

 

[Intr3pid]

Northern Europe and Alaska have a very short season, and pretty much all global cruisers have to be squeezed into the few months of it. Supply and demand makes for those high prices. For Disney, the double whammy is that it coincides with the school holidays for families, and you have a smaller ship (Magic) plying the route.

We are doing the 10-N this year, and, yes, you need either the two days in SPB or one long day if you want to hit (A) both the Hermitage/Nevsky area and the Peterhof Palace with proper tours plus (B) catch the ballet in the evening.

Although Disney doesn't offer them, there are also excursions that will fly you out to Moscow (and back) instead.

 

[Geomom]

Was your 7 nt western Caribbean cruise on the Fantasy in a verandah? Looking at a verandah on the Magic will be pricier. On the Dream class ships there is only a few hundred dollars between inside/oceanview/verandah. On the Magic class ships, it's more like $3,000 difference between an oceanview and a verandah. There are fewer verandahs available on the Magic/Wonder, and the Magic/Wonder do some more unique itineraries. We've stayed in deck 2 oceanviews on both the Wonder and Magic, and saved thousands of dollars over the verandah rooms. Money that we used for excursions, etc.

Also, that 8 nt cruise is a lot more than the 7 nt Baltic cruise the following week. I'm not sure it's worth that much more to overnight in St Petersburg/get 2 days of excursions.

We LOVED our 7 nt Baltic cruise last year, it was a great way to sample 5 countries!

 

[jdb in AZ]

We loved our 14-day Baltic cruise with 2 days in St. Petersburg, but we did it on Celebrity. The $$$$ we saved covered our amazing shore excursions. The disadvantage of cruising with the "Mouse" is that you have to pay his salary.

 

[mmmears]

We did the 10nt Norway, Iceland & Scotland cruise on DCL in 2018, and plan to take the Baltic one in 2020. Yes, it's more expensive on DCL, especially if you are comparing a verandah room on the Magic to one on the Dream or Fantasy, where there are many more of them. We liked the one we took in 2018 so much that we decided to return - I like the size of the Magic, too, since there are fewer people on the ship. I don't think DCL has done an 8nt before. They did a 7nt last year, and @Geomom has written a great trip report from that one. That might help you with some planning.

 

[angie7911922]

Basic supply and demand. Disney only does 1 or 2 Baltic cruises each year.

Yes, we loved our Baltic cruise and would do it again in a heartbeat. If you go, consider using a private tour guide in St. Petersburg. It will get you so much further than the ship's excursions will. We used Anastasia's Travel, and our guide was fantastic. We skipped the lines (which are really, really long) because of our smaller group and our guide shared so much extra knowledge that was not in the guidebooks. St. Petersburg is an amazing city. If you get the chance to go, I would definitely consider taking it!!

 

[rwhistler92]

What excursions would you recommend through Anastasia’s Travel?
Thanks

Basic supply and demand. Disney only does 1 or 2 Baltic cruises each year.

Yes, we loved our Baltic cruise and would do it again in a heartbeat. If you go, consider using a private tour guide in St. Petersburg. It will get you so much further than the ship's excursions will. We used Anastasia's Travel, and our guide was fantastic. We skipped the lines (which are really, really long) because of our smaller group and our guide shared so much extra knowledge that was not in the guidebooks. St. Petersburg is an amazing city. If you get the chance to go, I would definitely consider taking it!!

 

[angie7911922]

What excursions would you recommend through Anastasia’s Travel?
Thanks

Here's a list of their tours. You can look to see what you like.
https://anastasia.travel/tour-activity/2-days-st-petersburg-shore-excursion/

We did the 2 days in St. Petersburg for children, because we have kids, but we really mixed and matched. There were some other things that we wanted to see that were not in this tour, and Anastasia's team switched up the tour and tailored to it what we wanted. I'd find the one that's closest to what you are looking for, and then if you need to tailor it a bit, just let them know. They were fantastic about it!

 

[jrabbit]

we did a Baltic cruise with DCL with 2 nights in St. Pete's. We did our excursions through the ship ... and yes spendy. But we also thought that it was worth it as well.

I would highly recommend a cruise with 2 days here!! And they can (should) be LOOOONG days!!!

We did a Hermitage + city tour, and the main disappointment was that we did not get to go inside the Church of the Spilled Blood.

The next day we did the tour to Catherine's Palace and Peterhof. Peterhof was the highlight for us in St. Petersburg!! We had plenty of times to walk the grounds and look at many of the fountains. Pretty spectacular!! And the "bullet / hydrofoil" boat ride back to near the Hermitage was pretty cool (but I fell asleep part way there).

Lunch was provided each day and was enjoyable.

 

[bcwife76]

Supply and demand as others have stated. When booking opened up for the 2020 cruises to Europe we were debating between the 8 night or the 7 night right after it and we booked the 7 night (same ports, but one full day in St P vs 2). DCL wanted another $1928US for the exact same room for one more night. That is nearly $2600CDN plus of course extra $$ for more excursions. Eventhough we booked with a placeholder we just couldn't justify the 8 night cruise for another $3000CDN+.

 

[Hubie]

We did the 7-night two years in a row in 2017 & 2018 (see my trip reports) and loved every minute. But, in regards to the above I don't think we'd pay another almost three grand just for another night in St. Petersburg.

 

[DL1957]

We booked a placeholder on our last cruise for the summer 2020 St. Petersburg Cruise that starts in Copenhagen. We were on a 7 night western carib cruise and the price for the same room on the 8 day Copenhagen cruise was just about double! Two questions. Anyone know why sooo much more for the European Cruises? Second, has anyone done the 8 day Copenhagen with 2 days in St. Petersburg?
Thanks.

We have sailed the Baltic on DCL in 2010. As others have said the sailing season is short. There is an increased fees in St Petersburg. The cruise lines are required to stay over night inthis port. This is great but it is two days of high fees. Also there is a flat fee per person on the ship including crew and infants.

 

[KashasMom]

Our 13 nights RC Baltic cruise was amazing. It was the best cruise we've ever been on. We had 3 days in St. Petersburg and saw everything. We got a group together from our cruise and went with TJ Travel for the 3 day tour (https://st-petersburg-tours.ru/) - small group, great guide - all around fantastic. Loved every place we went (and the lunches!). Too many highlights to single out anything but I was very happy that we went to the Faberge Museum.

One of the best things we did was have a home made dinner with a Russian family. About 7 of us from our day tour group went together. The family was wonderful, the food was delicious, and the homemade vodka flowed (for those who wanted it). The family even had a teen aged daughter who hung out with my younger daughter watching movies. We learned quite a bit about life in St. Petersburg/Russia. Highly recommend doing a dinner!

Out of 13 nights we had one sea day. The days were SO long (not a complaint) that we could barely stay awake for dinner. There's no way I'd have paid DCL prices for a cruise like that! Our itinerary was so much better than anything DCL offered, we had a great balcony room - all for about 1/3 the price of similar on DCL.

 

[FairestOfThemAll37]

Northern Europe and Alaska have a very short season, and pretty much all global cruisers have to be squeezed into the few months of it. Supply and demand makes for those high prices. For Disney, the double whammy is that it coincides with the school holidays for families, and you have a smaller ship (Magic) plying the route.

We are doing the 10-N this year, and, yes, you need either the two days in SPB or one long day if you want to hit (A) both the Hermitage/Nevsky area and the Peterhof Palace with proper tours plus (B) catch the ballet in the evening.

Although Disney doesn't offer them, there are also excursions that will fly you out to Moscow (and back) instead.

We went with Celebrity, I think, and did the fly out to Moscow one day. It was a must do for us but also in my top 3 most terrifying plane experiences haha.

 

[CruiseTraveler7]

Ship's tours are really overpriced sometimes and the other trouble is they are in big groups. For St.Petersburg I recommend booking a tour with a private guide, and maybe arrange a group of 6-8. It is more personalized and makes you feel like a superstar! We used Anastasia Travel too for few of the Baltic ports, and we got a good deal because of that. We had around 7 hours in Stockholm and we decided to book the Stockholm tour with Vasa museum. In Berlin we did the Berlin city tour and Jewish history, and for St.Petersburg we went on the 1-day tour which we had customized. We were a group of 8 for St.Petersburg and the guide and our driver were very professional and knowledgeable. We love Baltic cruises! Our favorite port were Tallinn and St.Petersburg, and will definitely go back when we get the chance!

 

[jiminyC_fan]

While we didn't go with DCL but chose Viking. St Petersburg is an unbelievable experience. I didn't know it until we docked how wonderful it was. We went with Alla Tours https://alla-tour.com/ for the two days and could not have been happier that we didn't go with the ships tour. We had 6 in our group so it was very manageable with the tours. We could avoid the crowds that had larger tours. Potty breaks were faster. Rounding up people was easy. And it was MUCH cheaper!!

 

[mmmears]

While we didn't go with DCL but chose Viking. St Petersburg is an unbelievable experience. I didn't know it until we docked how wonderful it was. We went with Alla Tours https://alla-tour.com/ for the two days and could not have been happier that we didn't go with the ships tour. We had 6 in our group so it was very manageable with the tours. We could avoid the crowds that had larger tours. Potty breaks were faster. Rounding up people was easy. And it was MUCH cheaper!!

Was this a private tour? Or a small group tour? And thanks for the recommendation.

 

[jiminyC_fan]

It was a small group tour. They cap it at like 14 or 16. If I remember correctly, they will still run it even if no one else signs up for it and the price remains the same. That was a huge plus for us. We did the 2 day Grand tour. They always had us in front of the crowds. Their headsets were a plus for us. The guide spoke excellent English. Communication between Alla before arrival was fast and efficient. I highly recommend them. I would not hesitate to us them again.

 

[aggiedog]

We did a 7 day Baltic with DCL several years ago. It was our first cruise as a family, and I was hesitant to book too many non-DCL tours, so we did half/half. The family unanimously decided the non-DCL tours were much better. Not on cost, though they were significantly cheaper or the same for a much longer/better tour, but smaller groups, more nimble, able to stop and go much easier, we saw and did more things. I love DCL, but we sailed on MSC for the Med since it was so much cheaper. We saved enough money to do a week in France prior.