My family is taking a cruise with stops in Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Russia and Germany. The cruise ship website (MSC)says you must take their excursions in St. Petersburg unless you have a Russian visa. Optima Ltd. a tour company advertises you can use a licensed tour company (without a visa) as long as you are staying on ship at night. Who is right ? Optima Ltd.'s web address is www.travelinrussa.com and on their web page they give their version of the Russian visa law as it applies to cruise ship passengers. Has anyone used Optima or know anything about them ? Any one used a tour guide other than the cruise lines' in St. Petersburg ?
Posted by
Sacramento, California, United States
253 posts
You are taking the very cruise, and itinerary, that we did in May of this year.
The cruise line is making it sound like you HAVE to use their tour company while there. The truth is, you just HAVE to use a tour company. You are required to have a Russian Visa as a tourist, but if you are with a licensed tour group, they take care of it and you are covered.
Since Russian visas are very costly items - good for a whole month, but not worth paying the $200 for only two days off a cruise ship - you really do not want to get one.
That said, we did not like the itinerary of the MSC offered tours for the two days in St. Petersburg, so made arrangements with another tour company. This was tricky, however, and is hard to arrange, but this tour company was going to be picking up passengers from another cruise ship the same days we were in harbor, and we managed to hook up with them.
They are called Denrus, they were terrific, and Lana is the best tour guide we possibly have ever had.
I have a bit more info on that cruise line and the itinerary and ports of call, if you are interested.
Posted by
Sacramento, Ca, US
144 posts
I agree with John. Denrus was fantastic and very accomodating. They don't even offer their two day "Value Tour" which costs only $295.00 per person and is an amazing tour to MSC cruise line passengers. However, they felt so sorry for me because I complained about the excessive cost of other private tour operators that they allowed us to join their tour arranged for the Celebrity ship which docked next to us. They even left a driver to greet us when we were late & missed the bus! It took 1 1/2 hours to get through the idiotic customs lines so we missed the bus. Our driver was very intertaining and informative and drove like a maniac so we could catch up with the group at Catherine's Palace in Pushkin, which we did. I highly recommend Denrus. We would have taken one of the ships shore excursions only this one time except that the places I wanted to visit were only being toured at the same exact time on the same day so it was impossible. Denrus even included two lunches and plenty of restroom stops. Check them out.