This should have been the cruise of a life time - visiting Scandinavia, Russia and the Baltic states. Instead, it was an average cruise with reasonable on board comforts and good food BUT a shore excursion department probably controlled by faceless folk at head office that ruined the experience. It all went down hill before the cruise left port. Having unfortunately been robbed on the Paris subway two days before the cruise started, we needed a 'local' address for replacement credit cards to be sent. Two staff members at the USA call centre told us that the contact details of the ship's Port Agent could not be determined. An email asking again for the Port Agent remains unanswered. On arriving dockside, a staff member didn't bother following up, and the Guest Services folk were determined to type up an enormous report instead of looking up the information that is published on the ships daily newsletter. It took the intervention a senior manager (who we fortunately 'stubbled' across) only minutes to provide the information and his kindness to smooth our tensions by providing a telephone to recontact MasterCard International for an emergency card. BUT - whilst we worked on replacing our credit card, we found that Royal Caribbean had cancelled the second Shore Excursion from St Petersburg to Moscow without notification and certainly no time to organise an alternative provider. Initially, we could not even find out if the money ($2000 AUD) had been refunded. We evidently were not the only ones to suffer the cancellation - just the only ones to initally pay for it and not to know about the cancellation. Others were told to book the second excursion once on board - but Royal Caribbean had no intention of running a second tour. With enormous pressure from other guests and our insistence, a second tour was indeed arranged but at a premium price. Moscow is an amazing place - we loved it!

My wife and I try wherever possible to organise our own independent shore travel, but watch out for the supposed port of Riga. Riga is a beautiful city but the ship docked 15km from the city at a timber yard with no facilities (not exactly true - the port agent worked from the timber warehouse just down the road from the Liquid Petroleum Gas facility). Independent travellers had no alternative than pay for the overpriced charter buses (5km walk to the closest bus stop and there were no taxis hovering at security) Anyone returning in a taxi had to walk some distance from the security point. Of course, let's not forget the change in port at Rostock (Germany) that folk who booked direct with the cruise line had been duly notified, but if you booked via a travel agent - bad luck, no communication particularly if you had already departed from your home country (thanks a lot Cruisepilot in AU who just guessed we would find out - pity we had prebooked a rental car).

The saving grace for this cruise was the hard work of the senior guest services manager mentioned above who recognised the poor situation Royal Caribbean had created and reversed the charge for the shuttle bus in Riga, and charged us only one fare for the hastily organised Moscow excursion. Royal Caribbean ran a poor show - first cruise with them, last cruise with them. I suggest that if you are an independent traveller, you should think very carefully before cruising with this company.