Magnificent experience! Volga Dream provides the most magnificent cruise imaginable! The cruise boat is beautiful, staff are very friendly and engaging, food is fantastic 5 star dining and the tours are all worthwhile and informative. Yulia as cruise director is professional, knowledgable, and understands everyone's needs easily. The cabins are comfortable, lounges and sitting areas well decked out. Everything about the cruise is exceptional

Terrific experience/ the Volga Dream. My wife and I and four friends wanted to do a boat trip between Moscow and St Petersburg and didn’t want one of the fleets of ships with 200 passengers. And in addition to size we found a number of negative TripAdvisor reviews on many of those larger ships. We found the Volga Dream which takes only 100 passengers and which is privately owned by a Russian family. It could not have been better. The crew was exceptional in their friendliness and professionalism, and the boat itself was in wonderful shape and exceptionally well maintained. Despite having 100 passengers, we never found anyplace too crowded to do exactly as we wanted. The shore excursions were very well planned and executed. And the food was excellent. We would warmly recommend the Volga Dream to anyone wanting to do either Moscow to St Petersburg or the opposite direction. We made arrangements through Travel All Russia which included also some days in both Moscow and St Petersburg, and in every aspect those arrangements were superb. Rather than staying on the boat for those periods, we enjoyed wonderful center-city hotels and restaurants and superlative guides. That we would also warmly recommend.

Pros & Cons Pros – For the 1 night prior and the 1 night following the cruise, instead of staying on the ship, which is docked one hour plus outside the city, you will stay at a hotel within Moscow and St. Petersburg. The hotels may not have the best or even in the best location, but it will be a lot closer than if you stayed at the dock. The capacity of the ship is under 100 people, which was a positive for us For the most part, the guides were very good, with one or 2 exceptions Programs on the ship such as: speakers, cooking class, etc. were plentiful and excellent The service in the dining room is excellent and the rest of the service is good Cons – The ship is not luxurious in any way The cabins are minuscule and poorly appointed. The furnishings are bare bones and right out of IKEA. The ship is much more 2 stars than 5 The cabins are dark, depressing and poorly lit. We had to use our own flashlight to even find our clothes in the wardrobe The curtains are so thin that they offer no privacy or any means of blocking out the daylight The shower is so tiny, you can barely wash yourself There are a few meals which are very good, but for the most part, they are mediocre at best. They were more quantity than quality and certainly not fine dining in any way Except for the “Russian Night,” there are no Russian specialties on the menu or at the buffets. It is over cooked and dried out paella, bbq ribs and lasagna. Since lunch is a buffet, why couldn’t one of the choices be Russian? In the evening there is No local or folk entertainment, except for games played by the staff The hotels the utilize in Moscow and St. Petersburg are far down on the scale of 5 star hotels and the one in Moscow is 2 miles from Red Square Of course no one can control the weather, but the following issues must be considered prior to booking - You may think that taking a river cruise, it would be smooth sailing all the way, which was not the case. When crossing one of the large lakes, we were caught in a terrible storm and the ship was rocking and rolling. In fact, the water poured out of our shower and drenched the carpeting in the bedroom. Because of this we had to be temporarily relocated to another cabin. Also because of the weather, we had to totally skip one of our ports and on the final morning, the ship could not reach St. Petersburg. We had to dock 4 hours outside the city, get up at 4:30 in the morning, in order to board buses for the 4 hour bus ride into the city. This was certainly not what we expected If we had been on a larger ship would the situation have been different, I don’t know.

The way to see Russia! We had three days in Moscow, five days on the Volga River, and three days in St. Petersburg. I thought I'd be living on beets and vodka but the food on the boat was excellent (continental) and the service was first-rate. I loved all of our local guides (made me fall in love with the Russian people) and our on-boat lecturers. Both Ludmilla and Olga were extra special. Would unreservedly recommend this trip!

A five star plus holiday We enjoyed every single minute of the holiday the hotels were situated centrally we could walk around easily being able to walk into the square where the Hermitage was just around the corner from hotel was amazing the boat was a lovely experience the staff were very attentive food was excellent trips from the boat very interesting good guides The Kremlin was so interesting Thank you for a wonderfull experience