My family and I recently returned from the July 31st to August 10th Star Princess sailing to the Baltics. Our itinerary took us through Warnemunde (rather than Oslo) thus leaving us with one sea day. I gained a tremendous amount of insight from CruiseCritic.com, and I am most appreciative to those who responded to my many questions. I hope my review provides some insight and assistance for those on a future sailing to the Baltics on the Star. My review will focus on the logistics of how we handled each port.

Overall: We all had a great time. For managing the expectations of 2600 passengers, Princess did an excellent job. John Lawrence, the cruise director, holds a presentation of each port the day prior to arriving at each port. I found the first 10 minutes of each presentation valuable as he covers transportation options. If you purchased his CD, the rest of his talk is similar to what is found on his CD. His port talks are replayed on your cabin television.

Background: My family consisted of a party of 10 (age range 5 - 76). We had four inside aft cabins on Caribe deck. We toured all ports on our own except for St Petersburg. We used Rick Steves' guides for all ports except for St Petersburg and Warnemunde. His maps and self-guided walks were helpful. Read more