Visiting St. Petersburg Russia has been high on my bucket list so my wife and I were really looking forward to the 12-night Baltic cruise on Navigator of the Seas. Four of our previous 14 cruises were on Royal Caribbean (RC) and we enjoyed them. Although there were some positive experiences on the ship during this cruise, the many serious negatives outweighed the positives.

We thoroughly enjoyed the stop in St. Petersburg - two wonderful full days of sightseeing using ALLA tours! - but it rained every day of the cruise, diminishing our enjoyment there as well as in Copenhagen, Oslo, Tallinn, and Helsinki. Due to high winds and rough seas the ship had to remain in port in St. Petersburg an extra 24 hours which caused cancellation of the stop in Brugges (the stop in Brugges was the main reason we booked this particular cruise!), reduction of port time in Helsinki by half, and arrival 5 hours late in Southampton, the disembarkation port. Passengers having flights departing before 3:00 PM were told to re-book their flights.

Since our flight back to the U.S. was at 3:25 we were concerned that we might miss it. After being assured by several of the ship's personnel that there would be "no problem" for our RC airport transfer to reach the airport in plenty of time, the actual disembarkation process not only totally ignored the need of passengers with flights shortly after 3:00 to be first off the ship, but RC's process actually delayed us unnecessarily. (Passengers with later connections were let off the ship first; we couldn't take our suitcases from the ship until a supervisor came to release them; there was no one directing us to the first bus to Heathrow airport; the bus driver was required to wait an extra 30 minutes while passengers with later flights filled the bus; everyone on the bus with flights before 3:30 were departing from Terminal 4 but the bus was scheduled to stop first at Terminal 3, etc.) Read more