Calfan
DIS Veteran
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- Aug 31, 2009
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My family of 4 (me, DH, DD 12 and DS 10) recently returned from the July 10, 2015 12-night Baltics cruise with the ABD cruise add-on. For context, I should note that the Baltics cruise was the second half of a B2B that included the June 29, 2015 11-night Norway/Iceland/Scotland cruise. We traveled with another family that has been our frequent travel companions (DCL Med in 2011, DCL Alaska in 2012, ABD Scotland in 2013). CaliforniaGirl09 has posted a comprehensive trip report covering both cruises (with feedback on the ABD add-on) on the cruise board. For this post, I’m just going to focus on the ABD add-on and provide less of a trip report than my overall impressions of the add-on.
This was our third ABD, but our first cruise add-on. We did Scotland in 2013 and Austria, Germany & The Czech Republic in 2014. I had been wanting to try a cruise add-on for a while, so we jumped at the chance to book the Magic of the Baltics add-on when it was released. We were really happy to have gotten a spot when we found out that the add-on sold out in something like 2 hours! Kudos to our travel agent for getting us in.
I was a little disappointed with the published description of the add-on on the ABD website when it was released, as it seemed pretty bland and “bare bones” in comparison to the descriptions of the regular land-based ABDs. But I took it on faith that ABD was still building out the itinerary and would find a way to incorporate the typical ABD special touches and surprises into the add-on. (Over time, a few more details were added to the website description, but it still fell far short of the regular trip descriptions.) As we really got into the planning for our B2B, I was so glad to have booked the ABD add-on for the Baltics cruise after the stress of booking port adventures and private tours for the Norway/Iceland/Scotland cruise. And while I don’t have serious regrets for sticking with the Baltics ABD add-on, it definitely did not live up to my expectations (and certainly didn’t surpass them).
I made the decision to stick with the ABD add-on based on the belief that we would be traveling with a relatively small group of fellow travelers that we could bond with and that the ABD group would be the first off the ship and last to get back on it on port days, thus maximizing the time in port and accomplishing far more than could be achieved through DCL port adventures. I was also hoping that ABD would enhance the trip with some unpublished surprises or itinerary adds (for example, it was widely believed on these boards that the ABD would visit the ABBA museum in Stockholm, but was prevented from referencing the ABBA museum in the printed literature due to some copyright or other issue), but in general I was ok with the content of the add-on as published (even if it read kind of blah). While I love the non-sightseeing activities that come with a regular ABD (like making scones in Scotland or pretzels in Central Europe, canoeing on Loch Ness or doing archery on the grounds of Glamis Castle), my expectations for a cruise add-on were a bit different. If I am only in a city for one (or two in the case of St. Petersburg) days, I want to make sure that I see the “must see” sights. And while I would also love, ideally, to pair seeing the major sights with some other, less traditional sightseeing activities, I realize that most often there just isn’t sufficient time in a port day to accomplish both, and seeing the sights is actually a higher priority for me. So my disappointment in the ABD add-on was not related so such to the substantive content of the ABD as to the failure of my two main beliefs (relatively small group and maximizing the time in port) and how they negatively impacted the ABD experience.
I was pretty shocked to find out from our guides at our first meeting that there were 49 people in our Baltics add-on. 49!! We never did get a satisfying answer as to why there were so many people in our group. The guides said that ABD wanted to accommodate as many people as possible because there was a waiting list of over 200 people for this add-on, but, honestly, I don’t find that rationale compelling. While I sympathize with those who were on the waiting list and who did not get a spot, increasing the group size beyond the normal ABD limit (which on the TV promo in the cruise staterooms, was stated as 40, by the way, instead of the current 44) adversely impacted the experience for those of us who were able to book (and paid many thousands of dollars to ABD for the privilege). This might sound callous, but if there were 200 on the waiting list, then why couldn’t there be 210 (or better, yet, 220) left on the waiting list so those who were actually able to book could have a reasonable size group and a better experience? Apparently ABD is now telling folks who call and ask that the maximum group size for cruise add-ons is 50, but that feels like a total bait and switch for those of us who booked before this “policy change.” And 50 is just way too many. It feels like ABD is trying to pocket more cash at the expense of the guest experience. At 49, rather than a special ABD experience, a lot of what we did felt like a bloated DCL port adventure.
While all 49 of us did fit onto one tour bus, it was a tight squeeze. And everything took more time with 49 people. I had to laugh when one of our guides (who were both fantastic, by the way) would tell everyone that we were going to make a 5-minute stop to jump out of the bus and grab family pictures in front of something like the Reichstag in Berlin. There is no 5-minute anything with a group of 49. You can’t even get that many people off of a bus in 5 minutes, let alone take pictures of that many families and get them back on the bus. So every “5-minute” photo stop became a 15 or 20 minute stop that involved a lot of waiting and milling around before and after your family photo was taken, which definitely became frustrating. The issue was even worse with restroom stops, often in places where there were only 2 or 3 stalls for the entire group. I feel like all of the time that was necessary to allow 49 people to take family photos or use the restroom ended up being time wasted that could either have been used to add additional sights or activities to the itinerary or to allow for additional time at places where we felt rushed. For example, rather than just a photo stop at a pretty good distance away from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, I would have liked the opportunity to walk up close to the gate and spend a bit of time actually looking at it. Or when we were at the Peterhof Palace in St. Petersburg, I was disappointed that we did not have more time to stroll around the gardens and just take in the grandeur and splendor of everything. As another example, the printed itinerary indicated we would visit the holocaust memorial in Berlin. This ended up being just a drive by on the bus. We had no opportunity to walk through the memorial and really experience its scale and dimension, which is a real shame and definitely a cause for disappointment. If our group had been smaller and there was less time wasted in logistics to accommodate such a large group, I think we might have had a chance to do some of these things. In St. Petersburg, due to a rule about how many guests can be paired with one tour guide, we were forced to split up into two groups on two separate buses. We ended up touring separately at the same places and then coming together for our lunches and for the canal cruise. This helped a bit with the logistics but took away the benefit of having two ABD guides (since we essentially only had one for the days we were in St. Petersburg) and also exacerbated the problem (see below) of not having enough opportunity to get to know our fellow adventurers.
The other thing that was disappointing was how often we returned to the ship before all-aboard time. We often returned 30 minutes before all-aboard and in some cases 45 minutes early. When you compound this with the time lost waiting for 49 people to use the restroom, etc., it feels like either more substance could have been added to the itinerary or we could have had more time at places where we felt rushed. A prime example of this is the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. This is an amazing museum. In fact, both of our guides say it is their favorite museum in the world. I know that I and others felt like we did not have enough time on our own at the Vasa after the guided tour (which covered only the first of 3+ floors) to explore the rest of the museum and visit the gift shop. And that day we ended up getting back to the ship a good 45 minutes before all-aboard time. That just makes no sense. We could have spent another 30 minutes at the Vasa and easily made it back to the ship on time. And don’t get me started on why we returned to the ship for dinner on our first night in St. Petersburg! I see no reason for it other than ABD was too cheap to pay for a dinner that evening. Having to come back to the ship for 2-3 hours in between the day’s activities and the evening canal cruise meant that we had to go through Russian immigration 4 times instead of 2 (which was not insignificant) and also meant more time in port that was not maximized. (And we weren’t even going back for our normal dining room rotation, but just to grab something at Cabanas or a slice of pizza!) The evening canal cruise in St. Petersburg was a real highlight, with fantastic entertainment by a trio of Russian folk singers/dancers. But it seems like the canal cruise could have been combined with dinner so we wouldn’t have had such a late evening (getting back on the ship after midnight after at least half an hour getting through Russian immigration, all before a pretty early morning the next day) or, if it was best to do the canal cruise later to maximize the effects of the St. Petersburg “white nights,” we could have used the extra time to experience another Russian meal together and/or to squeeze in another sight. Going back to the ship was a real head scratcher.
I don’t want it to sound like the ABD was all negative. There were some standout moments, like the canal cruise in St. Petersburg, the graffiti activity in Berlin and lunch on the working farm outside of Helsinki, combined with some amazing sights like the Vasa in Stockholm, the palaces, Hermitage and Church on Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg, the remaining portion of the Berlin Wall, etc. But the standout moments were unfortunately few and far between, and the general fabulousness of what we were seeing got overshadowed in an overall way by the negatives of the large group size and what felt like some poor time management choices.
The large group size was made worse by the lack of opportunities to get to know our fellow adventurers in comparison to a regular ABD. There were far fewer meals together (where you can visit and get to know people) on the add-on than on a regular ABD. The ABD included 5 lunches, and that was the sum total of the group meals. This is just the reality of a cruise add-on ABD. I would have liked to have seen a dinner added in St. Petersburg and some kind of meal on the short Tallinn port day (instead of the visit to the Kadriorg palace which paled in comparison to the palaces we saw in St. Petersburg), but at most we could have had 7 ABD-provided meals. However, ABD could have alleviated this problem by including more ship-board opportunities to mix and mingle with our group. I have to laugh at ABD’s recommendation that guests tip as if this add-on were a 12-day adventure. It’s not. It’s a 7-day adventure (7 port days), with 4 additional hours total combined on the 4 sea days (one hour per each sea day). Unless there is some underlying issue between DCL and ABD preventing it, it would have been so nice if the ABD had incorporated things like a cocktail party between dinner seatings, maybe a Vodka tasting for the adults, a group character breakfast, private trivia events, etc. Adding these types of events would make the experience feel more like a “real” ABD and would really help such a large group get to know each other. As it was, I never did learn the names of all 49 people in our group. Far from it. And it wasn’t because I am anti-social. The format and large group size just didn’t provide enough opportunities for the bonding part of a regular ABD. Poor Dusty. He is such a great guide. And he hates the word “group.” He prefers for his adventurers to refer to themselves as a “family.” That is a really nice sentiment. But the reality is that 49 people is a group; it’s not a family. And that is really too bad. We also had less opportunity to spend time with our guides than on our regular ABDs due to the large group size. The guides had very few interactions with my kids, which I know was disappointing to my son.
Dusty and James were awesome and made the most of the difficult situation they were handed. Their energy and enthusiasm were terrific, and they tried so hard to “sell” the add-on as a special ABD experience, but it just wasn’t. James even went beyond to help my friends and I figure out how to get to the ABBA museum in Stockholm, since the ABBA museum was not, in fact, included in the ABD. We ended up missing the food market and city hall in Stockholm, but it was totally worth it. We had a blast at the ABBA museum, and while my husband and kids enjoyed the scheduled activities that we missed, my husband said I definitely made the right call. But it is sad that one of our favorite experiences on the Baltics cruise was not one provided by the ABD add-on.
So I guess to sum it up, I don’t have serious regrets that we tried the ABD add-on, but unless ABD seriously changes its approach (much smaller groups, maximizing the time in port, adding more shipboard activities, etc.), I can’t see us doing another. The value just isn’t there to justify the steep cost. Rather than feeling like a special experience, too often the ABD felt like a bloated port adventure. In hindsight, we probably would have been better off doing private tours in the Baltics ports rather than the ABD add-on. We definitely would have seen more at a lower cost (like maybe including the Gold Room at the Hermitage and the Faberge Museum in St. Petersburg), and we would have had the flexibility to linger in some places, spend less time at others, stop for a cup of coffee, etc. We did private tours in Reykjavik, Akureyri and Kirkwall (Orkney Islands) on the first of our B2B cruises and had really positive experiences with all three. Lesson learned.
Long post over! If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and I’m happy to answer any specific questions. It felt good to vent a little and articulate my thoughts about the add-on. I do plan to send this feedback directly to ABD as well. I’d so like to see ABD improve the add-ons. It is a great concept, but just not up to ABD standards, at least in my experience.
This was our third ABD, but our first cruise add-on. We did Scotland in 2013 and Austria, Germany & The Czech Republic in 2014. I had been wanting to try a cruise add-on for a while, so we jumped at the chance to book the Magic of the Baltics add-on when it was released. We were really happy to have gotten a spot when we found out that the add-on sold out in something like 2 hours! Kudos to our travel agent for getting us in.
I was a little disappointed with the published description of the add-on on the ABD website when it was released, as it seemed pretty bland and “bare bones” in comparison to the descriptions of the regular land-based ABDs. But I took it on faith that ABD was still building out the itinerary and would find a way to incorporate the typical ABD special touches and surprises into the add-on. (Over time, a few more details were added to the website description, but it still fell far short of the regular trip descriptions.) As we really got into the planning for our B2B, I was so glad to have booked the ABD add-on for the Baltics cruise after the stress of booking port adventures and private tours for the Norway/Iceland/Scotland cruise. And while I don’t have serious regrets for sticking with the Baltics ABD add-on, it definitely did not live up to my expectations (and certainly didn’t surpass them).
I made the decision to stick with the ABD add-on based on the belief that we would be traveling with a relatively small group of fellow travelers that we could bond with and that the ABD group would be the first off the ship and last to get back on it on port days, thus maximizing the time in port and accomplishing far more than could be achieved through DCL port adventures. I was also hoping that ABD would enhance the trip with some unpublished surprises or itinerary adds (for example, it was widely believed on these boards that the ABD would visit the ABBA museum in Stockholm, but was prevented from referencing the ABBA museum in the printed literature due to some copyright or other issue), but in general I was ok with the content of the add-on as published (even if it read kind of blah). While I love the non-sightseeing activities that come with a regular ABD (like making scones in Scotland or pretzels in Central Europe, canoeing on Loch Ness or doing archery on the grounds of Glamis Castle), my expectations for a cruise add-on were a bit different. If I am only in a city for one (or two in the case of St. Petersburg) days, I want to make sure that I see the “must see” sights. And while I would also love, ideally, to pair seeing the major sights with some other, less traditional sightseeing activities, I realize that most often there just isn’t sufficient time in a port day to accomplish both, and seeing the sights is actually a higher priority for me. So my disappointment in the ABD add-on was not related so such to the substantive content of the ABD as to the failure of my two main beliefs (relatively small group and maximizing the time in port) and how they negatively impacted the ABD experience.
I was pretty shocked to find out from our guides at our first meeting that there were 49 people in our Baltics add-on. 49!! We never did get a satisfying answer as to why there were so many people in our group. The guides said that ABD wanted to accommodate as many people as possible because there was a waiting list of over 200 people for this add-on, but, honestly, I don’t find that rationale compelling. While I sympathize with those who were on the waiting list and who did not get a spot, increasing the group size beyond the normal ABD limit (which on the TV promo in the cruise staterooms, was stated as 40, by the way, instead of the current 44) adversely impacted the experience for those of us who were able to book (and paid many thousands of dollars to ABD for the privilege). This might sound callous, but if there were 200 on the waiting list, then why couldn’t there be 210 (or better, yet, 220) left on the waiting list so those who were actually able to book could have a reasonable size group and a better experience? Apparently ABD is now telling folks who call and ask that the maximum group size for cruise add-ons is 50, but that feels like a total bait and switch for those of us who booked before this “policy change.” And 50 is just way too many. It feels like ABD is trying to pocket more cash at the expense of the guest experience. At 49, rather than a special ABD experience, a lot of what we did felt like a bloated DCL port adventure.
While all 49 of us did fit onto one tour bus, it was a tight squeeze. And everything took more time with 49 people. I had to laugh when one of our guides (who were both fantastic, by the way) would tell everyone that we were going to make a 5-minute stop to jump out of the bus and grab family pictures in front of something like the Reichstag in Berlin. There is no 5-minute anything with a group of 49. You can’t even get that many people off of a bus in 5 minutes, let alone take pictures of that many families and get them back on the bus. So every “5-minute” photo stop became a 15 or 20 minute stop that involved a lot of waiting and milling around before and after your family photo was taken, which definitely became frustrating. The issue was even worse with restroom stops, often in places where there were only 2 or 3 stalls for the entire group. I feel like all of the time that was necessary to allow 49 people to take family photos or use the restroom ended up being time wasted that could either have been used to add additional sights or activities to the itinerary or to allow for additional time at places where we felt rushed. For example, rather than just a photo stop at a pretty good distance away from the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, I would have liked the opportunity to walk up close to the gate and spend a bit of time actually looking at it. Or when we were at the Peterhof Palace in St. Petersburg, I was disappointed that we did not have more time to stroll around the gardens and just take in the grandeur and splendor of everything. As another example, the printed itinerary indicated we would visit the holocaust memorial in Berlin. This ended up being just a drive by on the bus. We had no opportunity to walk through the memorial and really experience its scale and dimension, which is a real shame and definitely a cause for disappointment. If our group had been smaller and there was less time wasted in logistics to accommodate such a large group, I think we might have had a chance to do some of these things. In St. Petersburg, due to a rule about how many guests can be paired with one tour guide, we were forced to split up into two groups on two separate buses. We ended up touring separately at the same places and then coming together for our lunches and for the canal cruise. This helped a bit with the logistics but took away the benefit of having two ABD guides (since we essentially only had one for the days we were in St. Petersburg) and also exacerbated the problem (see below) of not having enough opportunity to get to know our fellow adventurers.
The other thing that was disappointing was how often we returned to the ship before all-aboard time. We often returned 30 minutes before all-aboard and in some cases 45 minutes early. When you compound this with the time lost waiting for 49 people to use the restroom, etc., it feels like either more substance could have been added to the itinerary or we could have had more time at places where we felt rushed. A prime example of this is the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. This is an amazing museum. In fact, both of our guides say it is their favorite museum in the world. I know that I and others felt like we did not have enough time on our own at the Vasa after the guided tour (which covered only the first of 3+ floors) to explore the rest of the museum and visit the gift shop. And that day we ended up getting back to the ship a good 45 minutes before all-aboard time. That just makes no sense. We could have spent another 30 minutes at the Vasa and easily made it back to the ship on time. And don’t get me started on why we returned to the ship for dinner on our first night in St. Petersburg! I see no reason for it other than ABD was too cheap to pay for a dinner that evening. Having to come back to the ship for 2-3 hours in between the day’s activities and the evening canal cruise meant that we had to go through Russian immigration 4 times instead of 2 (which was not insignificant) and also meant more time in port that was not maximized. (And we weren’t even going back for our normal dining room rotation, but just to grab something at Cabanas or a slice of pizza!) The evening canal cruise in St. Petersburg was a real highlight, with fantastic entertainment by a trio of Russian folk singers/dancers. But it seems like the canal cruise could have been combined with dinner so we wouldn’t have had such a late evening (getting back on the ship after midnight after at least half an hour getting through Russian immigration, all before a pretty early morning the next day) or, if it was best to do the canal cruise later to maximize the effects of the St. Petersburg “white nights,” we could have used the extra time to experience another Russian meal together and/or to squeeze in another sight. Going back to the ship was a real head scratcher.
I don’t want it to sound like the ABD was all negative. There were some standout moments, like the canal cruise in St. Petersburg, the graffiti activity in Berlin and lunch on the working farm outside of Helsinki, combined with some amazing sights like the Vasa in Stockholm, the palaces, Hermitage and Church on Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg, the remaining portion of the Berlin Wall, etc. But the standout moments were unfortunately few and far between, and the general fabulousness of what we were seeing got overshadowed in an overall way by the negatives of the large group size and what felt like some poor time management choices.
The large group size was made worse by the lack of opportunities to get to know our fellow adventurers in comparison to a regular ABD. There were far fewer meals together (where you can visit and get to know people) on the add-on than on a regular ABD. The ABD included 5 lunches, and that was the sum total of the group meals. This is just the reality of a cruise add-on ABD. I would have liked to have seen a dinner added in St. Petersburg and some kind of meal on the short Tallinn port day (instead of the visit to the Kadriorg palace which paled in comparison to the palaces we saw in St. Petersburg), but at most we could have had 7 ABD-provided meals. However, ABD could have alleviated this problem by including more ship-board opportunities to mix and mingle with our group. I have to laugh at ABD’s recommendation that guests tip as if this add-on were a 12-day adventure. It’s not. It’s a 7-day adventure (7 port days), with 4 additional hours total combined on the 4 sea days (one hour per each sea day). Unless there is some underlying issue between DCL and ABD preventing it, it would have been so nice if the ABD had incorporated things like a cocktail party between dinner seatings, maybe a Vodka tasting for the adults, a group character breakfast, private trivia events, etc. Adding these types of events would make the experience feel more like a “real” ABD and would really help such a large group get to know each other. As it was, I never did learn the names of all 49 people in our group. Far from it. And it wasn’t because I am anti-social. The format and large group size just didn’t provide enough opportunities for the bonding part of a regular ABD. Poor Dusty. He is such a great guide. And he hates the word “group.” He prefers for his adventurers to refer to themselves as a “family.” That is a really nice sentiment. But the reality is that 49 people is a group; it’s not a family. And that is really too bad. We also had less opportunity to spend time with our guides than on our regular ABDs due to the large group size. The guides had very few interactions with my kids, which I know was disappointing to my son.
Dusty and James were awesome and made the most of the difficult situation they were handed. Their energy and enthusiasm were terrific, and they tried so hard to “sell” the add-on as a special ABD experience, but it just wasn’t. James even went beyond to help my friends and I figure out how to get to the ABBA museum in Stockholm, since the ABBA museum was not, in fact, included in the ABD. We ended up missing the food market and city hall in Stockholm, but it was totally worth it. We had a blast at the ABBA museum, and while my husband and kids enjoyed the scheduled activities that we missed, my husband said I definitely made the right call. But it is sad that one of our favorite experiences on the Baltics cruise was not one provided by the ABD add-on.
So I guess to sum it up, I don’t have serious regrets that we tried the ABD add-on, but unless ABD seriously changes its approach (much smaller groups, maximizing the time in port, adding more shipboard activities, etc.), I can’t see us doing another. The value just isn’t there to justify the steep cost. Rather than feeling like a special experience, too often the ABD felt like a bloated port adventure. In hindsight, we probably would have been better off doing private tours in the Baltics ports rather than the ABD add-on. We definitely would have seen more at a lower cost (like maybe including the Gold Room at the Hermitage and the Faberge Museum in St. Petersburg), and we would have had the flexibility to linger in some places, spend less time at others, stop for a cup of coffee, etc. We did private tours in Reykjavik, Akureyri and Kirkwall (Orkney Islands) on the first of our B2B cruises and had really positive experiences with all three. Lesson learned.
Long post over! If you made it this far, thanks for reading, and I’m happy to answer any specific questions. It felt good to vent a little and articulate my thoughts about the add-on. I do plan to send this feedback directly to ABD as well. I’d so like to see ABD improve the add-ons. It is a great concept, but just not up to ABD standards, at least in my experience.
Too funny.
