Copenhagen and St. Petersburg!

[nycdisneygal]

Am taking family to northern europe cruise. Am paying for my parents and sister so this is expensive!

Looking for hotel recs for copenhagen (need room for 4 and room for 3) and recs for st petersburg if I dont book tour through disney. I heard Anastasia is good? any others?

 

[Marc D]

Rooms for 3 or 4 in CPH are rare. We stayed at Adina Apartment Hotel and at the Crowne Plaza CPH Towers. Both are off-center. The first is nice if you like to walk. You can go to the Little Mermaid and other sites by foot in 15-30 min. The second is a bit far from everything but is on the light rail train and you can get downtown in 20 minutes. Taxis are crazy expensive in CPH but mass transit is efficient.

In SPB, we’ve always booked through the cruise lines. If you choose to book on your own, you might get stuck in long lines since cruisers get ‘front of the line’ access. The city is overrun with tourists in the summer. Traffic is terribly problematic. This summer, we arrived to the ship 5 minutes before all aboard and we saw a ships’s tour going into the last church as we were leaving to head to the ship. They had to wait for them but would not have to wait if you are on your own. Considering that and the way the city is run, I would stick to a ship’s tour. That being said, our cruise provided tour was with Alla Tours and it was very good. Our small 10-person bus was perfect to navigate the crowded city.

 

[DCSWO]

I second the Adina. You’ll have to book a 2 BR to get room for 4 but it has a kitchen 2 bathrooms, a washer and dryer, etc. We also used Anastasia in Russia— they were great.

Here are a few pics of the Adina.

We stayed at the Marriott after the cruise. You can get a room for 4 there but you have to book a junior suite.

 

[Intr3pid]

Do you have an overnight stop in SPB? If so, I wouldn't book any excursion through DCL in SPB. None of those spans two days. Some of the private operators have exclusive access to an inside tour on a day a museum is closed - such as Mondays for the Hermitage.

Secondly, if you can, get a private tour. This is what we intend to do the next time. A group tour follows a strict itinerary, and you can't change any of it. Well, isn't that how it is elsewhere too - you might ask? Yes, but the problem is, unless you have your own independent Russian visa, the guide/operator must accompany you wherever you go. So, you won't have your own free time - or start late, or end early, etc.

Copenhagen's hotel situation is a bit like Reykjavik's (in Iceland). For international tourists, it's a seasonal destination. It means the big brands hesitate putting a lot of properties that they know will have miserable occupancy outside of the summer season. Expect to pay through your nose in the summer when tons of cruise ship passengers must stay a night or two before/after.

Book early as the rooms will sell out. We experienced it firsthand last summer.

My recommendations:

* Steelhouse Copenhagen: Luxury "hostel" that your kids will love! We stayed there the night before our Baltic cruise last summer.
https://www.steelhousecopenhagen.com/

* Marriott: Must get two rooms for a larger family (such as ours), and it sold out last summer.

* Radisson Royal and Radisson Blu: The "Royal" is right across from Tivoli Gardens, while the "Blu" has family rooms. The Royal also sold out last summer.

* AC Hotel Bella Sky: A new Marriott property. This is where we are booked for next summer (before DCL's Iceland cruise). Will let you know how it goes, but it looks good.

 

[o&smom]

We have stayed as a family of 4 in one room at the Tivoli Hotel on two different occasions. Rooms in Copenhagen tend to be small, but we had enough room with all of our luggage for a month in Europe. Their breakfast buffet is very nice, too. Highly recommend a day at Tivoli Gardens which is just around the corner and across from the main train station. Walt enjoyed Tivoli Gardens and used it for inspiration when designing Disneyland.

 

[aggiedog]

We stayed at the Scandic Palace in Copenhagen. The rooms were huge, though I can't remember if they were double or queen beds. The location is great. We could see Tivoli and were steps away from the Stroget - the main pedestrian zone that runs thru the heart of the tourist area/down town.

We used TJ Travel for SPB. They were amazing. A private tour for the 8 of us was significantly cheaper than anything DCL had to offer. I will have to disagree with "cruise ship tours get front of the line." Maybe, maybe with disembarking (as that is rumored, but from BTDT reports not always true) but everything else is easier with a small group and we walked up to the front of the line in everything we did - Hermitage, hydrofoil, Church of Spilled Blood (things that had controlled access/tickets.) We did an all day tour, then went to dinner. The driver and/or guide has to stay with you, but in the case of dinner, that meant the guide went home and our driver sat outside in the car. We picked a restaurant based on several recommendations TJ gave us. I've also heard good things about Anastasia.

 

[Jessicabr]

When we were last in the Baltic we booked all our tours with Anastasia Travel. It was just a great experience from them answering my many questions, customizing the tours to what we want, to the actual tours itself.
And because we booked tours in Copenhagen, Tallinn and St Petersburg, we got a nice discount. For me, it was just very easy to arrange all these different tours in different countries by contacting only one person. It saved me a lot of time looking for different agencies for the other cities.

 

[jiminyC_fan]

We didn't cruise with DCL but we did with Viking. We used https://alla-tour.com/ in St Petersburg. It was OUTSTANDING. Only had 6 people on our tour.