Our travel agent in good faith helped us decide on the subject cruise. The decision was driven largely by the ports of call, and a generally good experience expressed by other clients regarding Princess.
We are not seasoned cruisers but we travel extensively with bookings we do on our own. We were on a cruise with Royal Caribbean many years ago and two years ago with Celebrity. It was the positive experience we had on the Celebrity cruise that encouraged us to book this cruise with your line.
It was a very disappointing experience.
The excursions were badly designed with lots of time wasted needlessly for the short time in each port. Some operators were good but one chose to make very inappropriate comments.
The food was fine but there was no attempt to serve any dishes from the region.
One of the entertainers chose to make jokes about people with mental health issues. This is not acceptable in any context.
Unlike some other ships there is no place to sit quietly beside a pool and read a book - the noise from the film was overpowering even at the "quiet pool" area.
Overall this was very bad value in comparison with Celebrity.
We had a smaller Deluxe Balcony on this ship than with Celebrity but it is better designed.
Chose a cruise that originates here so you can spend more time than just one day. It needs at least three days to do it justice.
Great port but we made the mistake of not booking it with a local operator.
Porvoo was nice but the time involved in going there, having an organized lunch etc. would have been better spent in Helsinki.
We booked with Princess and while it was a very early tour we were surprised to wait in line to watch others go ahead of us.
We really enjoyed Tallin, partially because we did not take a Princess excursion. We took a cab to the highest point in the old town and walked to the ship following an amalgam of guidebook walking tours. It was one of the few ports that our cumbersome ship could get into and that we could walk to the town.