Scandinavia Tour: What happended to overnight ferry trip?

I'd say that only the tour organizer knows that so you probably want to contact them directly. They generally don't respond on here.

There was a recent thread that discussed this:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/tours/2023-tour-differences

I think I have seen other complaints about the overnight ferry on that tour, maybe on the individual tour review page?

I'm signed up for that tour next year, and would probably have enjoyed that part, but I'm sure it will be fine.

I have done that ferry ride (the reverse from Oslo to Copenhagen) and it is really nothing special, certainly not as fun with far fewer things to do or eat onboard vs the overnight ferry cruises between Stockholm and Helsinki. But it served our purposes to get back to Copenhagen to fly back to the US, beat the hassle of flying and also paying for expensive hotels in either Oslo or Copenhagen for that final night.

I did this tour about 8 years ago and enjoyed the overnight ferry trip.

I just returned from the Scandinavia tour and found the overnight ferry from Copenhagen to Oslo to be boring. I wrote in my evaluation that RS needs to find a better way to transport us to Oslo. Our guide told me the RSE organization was trying to find another route for this tour. Among some of the reasons she told me was, the DFDS ferry officials did not respond to emails from RS and generally were not cooperative in meeting RS tour needs. For example, if someone signed up for this tour at the last minute, RS could not guarantee a spot on the ferry for that individual because DFDS requires a passport number for every passenger in advance. This ferry is huge, transporting several buses, lots of cars and thousands of passengers, not just RS tour participants.

I think the new itinerary will be a better experience because staying one night in a Swedish seaside town is preferable to the generic ferry. Swimming to Oslo would be more interesting!

Thanks, Judy B.
It sounds like there were solid reasons for changing that part of the tour.

Just got back and asked our guide about the change. She said the company that runs the ferry didn't like them only using it one way, and made it too expensive for RS. Although I agree that the ferry ride was not my favorite part of the tour (the cabins are in dire need of an update and were not cleaned well - they had ashtrays in the bathroom and we found a dirty diaper under one of our beds) our guide pointed out that this means even more bus time and backtracking. She said that the guides were going to suggest maybe the tour start in Copenhagen and then go to Sweden before driving to Norway.