Over the past 12 years we have cruised with NCL 13 different cruises. We had always wanted to visit some of the Baltic countries, especially Russia. This particular cruise covered most of our wish list. Two / three months after we booked this cruise and made our airline reservations, we were sent an email stating that do to a port scheduling conflict we would not be making the port stop in Stockholm, Sweden but would stop at a small port on the western coast of Sweden called Gothenburg...there's virtually nothing their to do or see. But since we had made our airline reservations we were stuck with this cruise.

Since the ship was going to be in St. Petersburg, Russia for 2 full days, we decided to take a "Private non-NCL tour to Moscow. The tour company we used did a great job. In their communications to us they warned us about NCL may not allow us to disembark the ship just as soon as it has been cleared by the Russian officials. However, we could leave the ship once the passengers going on NCL bought tours had disembarked. Our flight out of St. Petersburg going to Moscow was to leave at 09:40AM. The first thing I did when I boarded the ship for departure was to go to the Customer Service Desk, stood in line for 45 minutes and finally spoke to a very non-helpful individual. He said " go stand in the other line to get a number assigned for disembarking AFTER NCL TOUR PEOPLE were off the ship. I told his this would not work and I wanted to speak whith his manager. He disappeared for 15 minutes and finally returned with his manager. I explained the situation to the manager and he said he would handle it and would leave me a voicemail on my cabin phone. I waited till the next day and NO VOICEMAIL message. So, I went back down to customer service desk stood in line again, spoke to a different desk person...same answer "NO CAN DO"...asked to speak to the manager again. A different person came out...explained the situation again...he said he would send me a voicemail with instructions...next day...no message. The late afternoon prior to arrival in St. Petersburg I finally spoke to a person who said he would take care of it and again ...send me a voicemail. Lo and behold 1 hour later I received the voicemail with these instruction. Please go to the Port side door of the Getaway Theater arounf 7 - 7:15AM. Show the gentlemen my tour ticket to Moscow and they would let disembark as soon as the ship cleared. That morning, we went to the port side door of Getaway Theater showed personnel our tour ticket and they said we needed to go to the service desk. We went to the desk and had a manager escort back to the theater. We were then able to leave the ship, clear port security and finally meet with our tour guide for Moscow. We made it on the plane with 15 minutes to spare.

Enough of my of that. How about a general over all. If the Getaway was cruising in a warm climate many of the guests would be outside by the pool, walking / jogging waterslides, basketball and all the other outdoor activities. BUT with cool windy weather all 4,000 passengers and 1,600 crew were inside. That said, it was the most over crowed uncomfortable ship I've ever been on. Read more