We used DFDS for a cruise from Oslo to Copenhagen during the week. It was a 17 hours cruise that left around 4pm and arrived the next morning. We booked via third party which price wise was great but a little bit more confusing. Leading up to the trip we were asked for booking information we were never given. After a couple emails back and forth I think we solved the problem. Once we arrived to the terminal it was easy to check in with the gate agent and then get onto the boat. Our bags were not search before getting on board and we were able to get on the boat a little early. Once on the boat there was a couple of dining options. We ate at the Italian restaurant first and little to no complains. For dinner we did the steak house and honestly it was a let down. Fairly expensive and mediocre food, I would not recommend it. I think next time we would do the buffet or the Italian restaurant again. The room was small, and slightly different than the photos but it did the job. For a quick trip we couldn't ask for much more. I think I enjoyed breakfast the most- highly recommend! If you are going to book you might as well book a nice room because it includes the breakfast. We paid about $160 for two people in a large room which felt like a good deal. There are a ton of cheaper options on the boat if you are looking for a cheaper option. read more

7/1/2024 - arrived here today from Copenhagen, Denmark. Just located in their downtown. It's about $40 US dollars to get you the center of the town. The Oslo Central Station is about a 1/4 mile walk or half mile at most. Could take a taxi there as there are no Metros to get there. Or you can walk but would be tough with luggage. read more

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If you're looking for peace and relaxation on your journey, Crown Seaways is not the place to find it. This ferry is a cacophony of noise, chaos, and overcrowding, making it feel more like a floating daycare than a travel experience. From the moment you step on board, you're greeted by screaming kids running wild in every corner of the ship. Want to sit down in a quiet spot to enjoy the view? Forget it--every inch of space is taken up by families, loud conversations, or the relentless noise of unsupervised children. The supposed "relaxation areas" are a joke--good luck finding tranquility amidst the pandemonium. Even in areas where you'd expect some level of peace, like the restaurants or lounges, the sound of kids yelling and the general buzz of overcrowding is impossible to escape. To make matters worse, the ship feels poorly designed to handle the sheer number of passengers. Lines for everything--food, drinks, even the restroom--are ridiculously long. It's as if the ferry was built to maximize stress rather than comfort. If you're someone who values a quiet, enjoyable journey, steer clear of Crown Seaways. Unless, of course, you enjoy being trapped in a noisy, overcrowded boat with zero escape. Two words: never again. read more

Trip Advisor have disallowed my review since it comments on policy rather than a specific trip but here goes: I have a VW Caddy Maxi people carrier which has been converted as a mini camper as there is a sink and a gas hob however the conversion doesn't qualify for re categorisation by the DVLA so my VC5 remains as Diesel Car, MPV, M1 category. I asked DFDS webchat what the criteria was and was told "VC5 category and dimensions". So my VC5 says diesel car and dimensions are well within "regul ar car" on their booking engine. So i mentioned my van converted and they changed their answer to "it's a motorhome" even though the dimensions are nowhere near even the "small motorhome" category. I asked why and was told it's a "hazard". So, it seems that DFDS regard the thousands of motorhomes/campervans it carries daily a "hazard" and in danger of exploding but they're fine with this because the owners of these vehicles have paid more. This is clearly absurd - fare paid has no bearing on how safe something is. Charging by dimension is totally rational but this is nonsense. N.B. I have travelled with my vehicle from Amsterdam - Newcastle (small motorhome paid) and it was standby and a fine experience but on looking at regular fares, my vehicle would be charged 3 times that of a car of the same size or larger. Ridiculous. read more

For a recent business trip I had to to go to both Oslo and Copenhagen and being a marine-kind-of-guy, I decided to take the overnight ferry. Both my Norwegian and Danish colleagues warned me about the "type" of people that would be on such cruise...I specifically remember them saying: "There's a reason why they call it booze cruise!" Well, I had no intentions of getting hammered, nor engage in some other reckless activity: I simply wanted to be offline for some time (literally and figuratively speaking). And that's what I got; plus I got to see some beautiful fjords passing by when coasting along Norway. The highlight of my trip was definitely my solitude. Don't get me wrong, I love socializing, but I'm equally happy spending time on my own. And that's what I did: I sat outside as long as I could bare, watching Oslo getting smaller and smaller by the minute. Then I went inside and sat by the windows in the grand bar; this is where I ordered a glass of champagne and watched the beautiful scenery passing by. Later in the evening, after the dinner, I returned to the bar, which had now transformed into a club with live band and people dancing like crazy! Let me tell you: it was so much better than watching American Idol on TV! Culinary-wise, I wasn't too impressed: both the dinner and the breakfast-buffets were quite unappealing. I would suggest to see if you could get into one of the more upscale restaurants on other floors. Another tip: don't book the cheapest cabin there is - like I did. While I didn't mind the simplicity of the cabin itself, I did find myself woken in the middle of the night by some drunken students who were happily chatting away in the hallway for over an hour. My guess: if you are willing to spend a bit more money, you might avoid this scenario ;-) Overall, I had a good time and I would really recommend this cruise to anyone who's interested in just chilling... read more

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DFDS Review: DFDS Oslo to Copenhagen review, with abuse. DFDS Review, by Earthyspirit.com https://earthyspirit.com/dfdsreview DFDS Seaways is a company that specializes in ferry boats with passengers for commercial purposes. On Wednesday the 28th of August 2019, yours truly set ashore with this company for a trip from Oslo to Copenhagen, and back. We boarded the boat and found our cabin, and it was "ok" standard wise. This DFDS review, however, is NOT about the boat and their services, per se. But more about the customer relationship that is downright shameful! On the boat, we enjoyed ourselves, me and my girlfriend up until bedtime... We had a few drinks to chill with and we went to bed quite early since we were going up early as well. What happened next was out of this world of comfort! My girlfriend and I had a discussion going in which we were upset with each other just before we were going to bed. We normally don't "argue" much but we were on opposite sides of a theme which we tried to discuss. And yes we may have been a bit loud on it... What happened next... All of a sudden, while we were sitting down quietly, the room lock "clicks" and the door goes open. There stand two people from the personnel on the boat, I IMMEDIATELY ask "What is it?" In a normal fashion just like if you were standing next to me, not screaming at all, but asking. We were both shocked by them just barging in. What happened next is taken out of a crappy horror movie: The gentlemen that opened the door, says nothing, but literally just grabs hold of me, drags me out in the hallway, with force, one of them takes a strong chokehold on me so I gargle, and cannot breathe. I did not resist anything! Still 6 days after, I cough pink, blood from broken vessels from the stranglehold from the crew. DFDS Review DFDS Oslo to Copenhagen review My knees get burned by the carpet as well, on the floor they handcuff me. I ask what is it, why are you doing this??? No response! They eventually say I need to go the holding cell on the boat for 2 hours. And they forcefully drag me away from the cabin with no further explanation. At this point, my woman is standing behind them and saying "you don't need to do this!" And I am wearing ONLY two socks and a boxershorts. Even though I had done nothing wrong, they dragged me OUT of my cabin in the middle of the night, no questions, and then puts me in a cell, which was freezing cold. And had only one rubber mattress and a hole in the floor. On your knees, they said. I sat down. No resistance since I want to get out as soon as possible! They push me in the back against the floor to take off my handcuffs, with brute force. Not even asking if I could lie down, they just punched me down in the back me, like goons. The airconditioning was on, ice cold. Now... at this point I am in shock but try to focus on keeping warm by standing and walking around. I am reasonable so I am at least thinking for myself, ok two hours should go quick, and when I get out I will talk to them and get to know the reason for this behavior and also accept an apology! While in the cell, I cannot help but think that we may have been disturbing someone with our discussion, but this could not possibly be the case because people don't usually get put in jail for nothing. Well, some people do. So the not so fun stuff... Like this was fun at all... What a DFDS Review you say? I agree. I sit there, and I hammer the door to get in contact with the guard. No response. Freezing! Time goes by, nobody comes to me to check-in, nobody comes with water, nobody talks or does anything... While in solitary confinement the time is kinda hard to tell, but they said two hours and those two hours went by... I knocked on the door again, tried to talk several times trough the door to get out as they said. After around 7 (!) hours or so, the door opens... At this time I was really, REALLY freezing! And it actually felt like I was being tortured. Ice cold, for what? Had no water! Nobody check-in! And nobody to talk to or explain to! The guy who opened the door was Joakim Rundqvist. Business Leader of Food and Beverage of PEARL SEAWAYS. He was the boss for the crew members that put me there he said. Joakim asked if I had gotten water, I replied no. He looked away for a couple of seconds. I told him about the incident from my end, how I experienced it. And I told him I have Epilepsy. Then he froze a bit. You see, I have epilepsy, my girlfriend has epilepsy and the reason for us discussing in the first place was because she had had a seizure. I found her on the toilet, topless. And her seizures makes her do that exact thing. That and pass out and be distorted in reality. On top of that, she has K PTSD. Which stands for Komplex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She gets trauma easily. Either way, the point of me sharing this is that we had a medical situation happen. SEE LINK read more

Took this as means of going from Copenhagen to Oslo overnight. It's a mini cruise ship. Rooms: Quite tiny, but fine for an overnight trip. Claustrophobia could be an issue. One member of our group had a panic attack in one of the interior rooms. Entertainment Many options, but many (pool, casino) require a cover charge. Nightclub: Live band after 9pm. Wide variety of relatively recent world music. Good music - Spanish tunes, mainstream USA jams - and people dance. No cover charge. Lounge/piano bar: Live local piano/singer at night. Nice energy - crowd sits around piano and sings along. Hopped over when band took break at nightclub. Food Cafe: chicken avocado sandwich in the cafe is craveably delicious - good snack option. High Seas restaurant: Great value! Dinner buffet has fresh seafood - shrimp, crawfish, and mussels - hot entrees and extensive "salad" bar. Bottom Line: Entertaining transit option for Copenhagen-Oslo trips. Would recommend. read more

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Not knowing what to expect on an overnite ferry from Copenhagen to Oslo-imagine my surprise when this ferry turned out to be more like a small cruise ship than a ferry boat. This thing runs very efficiently. We boarded at the prescribed time- picked up our tickets to a pre assigned cabin and I was in my cabin within about 30 minutes. The basic cabins are actually pretty big- two twin beds, workspace and bathroom. There is no outside window but if you upgrade you can have a window, although the beds are then bunk bed style. I was surprised at the good water pressure in the shower and sink. . . . Quite good for a boat. People seem to arrive early and spend time at the outdoor Mermaid bar or sky bar before the ship sails. There is also live entertainment in the sky bar. The ship left right on time and arrived in Oslo right on schedule as well. There are plenty of restaurants on board as well as a duty free shop, disco, night club, pool area, money exchange and adventure land for the kids. I ate at the brassiere which was quite good and Klaus, our waiter, did a nice job in taking care of us. And the breakfast buffet at the Seven Seas restaurant was stellar- offering up most anything you can think of in breakfast foods. Here's a tip - eat breakfast by 8:15 and you can eat while you watch the fjord going by. My only gripe? The elevators take forever to come so you end up carrying your luggage up and down the stairs and for disembarkment you end up waiting endlessly with masses of humanity trying to get off the ship. Not my favorite thing to do!! But I had a great night's sleep and arrived in Oslo ready for adventure. And isn't that what it's all about?? read more

I'm so glad we chose DFDS Seaways as our method of travel between Oslo and Copenhagen. We originally booked airplane tickets for the short trip, but then my BF discovered there was this overnight "ferry," so we canceled our plane tickets. Sure, it would take us more time to get from point A to point B, however, we would not have to deal with transport to the airport, security, but more importantly, this also saved us one night of a hotel stay. To our surprise, like another review mentioned, this is not a "ferry," but an actual cruise ship. I've never been on a cruise before, so I was thrilled! Check-in is very easy, just make sure to get there on time when they indicate in the booking details. Make sure to be on an outside deck when they leave the port because it's really fun and they blast music as they sail away. We booked a Commodore Cabin. I'm SO happy we opted for that. My BF originally wanted us to save money and book the cheapest rooms, but seriously, I saw these when we were disembarking and they are terrible. They are the size of sardine cans and literally look like jail cells. I saw families of four spilling out of these cabins and they literally didn't look like they even had room for their suitcases. Don't do it unless you're traveling alone or really need to save the money. They have no windows and might be worse than jail. The Commodore Cabin is sort of mid-level but it had everything we needed. Small bathroom and window view. The window view was totally worth it, again, as I said I'd never been on a cruise before, so it was really fun to see everything going by. The Commodore Cabin also included breakfast for us the next morning and, to be honest, it was one of the best breakfasts I had during our Scandinavian trip. It had a little bit of everything. My only complaint is we got there way too late to have a relaxing meal (so make sure you wake up early). I was rushing around stuffing my face before the boat docked! Tips: + good duty free shop on the cruise boat. I saw some neat Scandinavian things there, but didn't think I would save any money, but turns out, later on I found that every store in Copenhagen was selling the same stuff for much, much more. So, if you see some stuff on the cruise, it's probably a pretty decent price and you may end up saving money buying it there. + I think they still offer a free bus transfer upon arrival in Copenhagen to the city center. However, our hotel was farther south by Tivoli, so we opted to use their bus transfer to Tivoli Station which was EUR 6 per person extra. It saved us a lot of trouble of trying to get to our hotel, so I'm glad we did it. Their customer service was exceptional whenever I contacted them via email with questions, they were always super prompt with their response. + there is luggage storage available at the terminal in Oslo (coin operated ranging from 40-90 NOK). We didn't end up using it, but I remember we were worried we would need it. Cons: --truly, the worst thing is disembarking. Takes FOREVER and you'll be scrunched in with everyone for a really long time. --the cruise will have all kinds of people from every walk of life. Nothing wrong with that, but there were some unruly kids that kept running everywhere, crashing into people, etc. I think it's sort of an American thing to tell your kids to behave and not run into strangers, etc, but I noticed it wasn't really like that with some of the mix of nationalities on the boat. You'll see what I mean. --limited wifi. I think there was only like one spot to get wifi and I think it was slow. read more

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Took ferry from Oslo with high expectations based on reviews here. Booked commodore room with dinner buffet and breakfast. Best summary of experience is like a low to mid class Las Vegas casino but with kids allowed every where. Food. OK. Think busy casino buffet. Included drink was either a beer, water, or a soda but a glass of their cheapest wine required extra payment. You can get a better table by booking ahead for a fee. Duty free shop. Over priced brand names designed for Asian customers. Wine was a good deal. Lots of smokers. Avoiding was hard. Looks of heavy drinkers. Generally smooth ride. Easy to board in Oslo, long delays getting off in Copenhagen. Staff works hard but can get snappy. They work two weeks on and two weeks off. Terrible website hides key info. Would not do again, but if so would book Commodore Delux for lounge access. read more

My partner cajoled me into the overnight ferry, mini cruise, from Oslo to Copenhagen. Let's start with the positives- it's a very pretty ride, especially leaving Oslo. You get great views of the city and then the little islands along the way down. We watched the sunset over the water. I slept better than expected. There was the constant roll of the waves, which was sort of nice. There was also quite a number of sounds throughout the night, but I was always lulled back to sleep by the waves. And the pizza, salad, and beer we ordered for dinner wasn't bad! We spent a lot of time on the outside deck (there is just one level with outside access) looking out over the water. The not so great parts include the mobs of people hoarding the elevators both when getting on and off the boats. For a couple of hours, it really slows down the elevators. As a wheelchair user, this was very annoying since I can't opt for the stairs. The room and bathroom reminded me of a cheap Red Roof Inn. The linoleum on the bathroom floor had a large hole in it. We avoided showering on the boat. The window did afford a nice view of the water, definitely get a room with a window! The boat felt a bit like a floating mall with LOTS of people moving about. The pool was a small indoor "bubbles" room with a small pool and hot tub. You pay to use it. There were so many people using it, and it smelled so much like chlorine, we decided not to go in. I kept thinking if I were six years old, that this trip would be amazing! We avoided both the dinner and breakfast buffet, opting for the a la carte pizza restaurant and skipping breakfast all together (and eating in Copenhagen when we arrived). Getting on in Oslo was easy, we were able to walk from our hotel near City Hall to the boat. Arrival in Copenhagen was not as easy as the docks are farther away from the downtown area so we walked for quite awhile with all of our bags. I'm glad I did it once, it was certainly better than flying from Oslo to Copenhagen, but I am not sure I'd look forward to doing it again. read more

Nice large cruise ship sized boat. Very stable but still felt the boat move during the sail from Denmark to Norway. There is a duty-free shop on boat with a pretty large selection of Kay Bojesen's animals. I was very disappointed to see that only because I already bought his monkey on Denmark with full tax. You can never get all your tax money back with global blue!! So if you're going on the boat and considering buying something from him, go to the boat's tax-free shop. The buffet dinner was quite good but really expensive. I would look into the other dining options to see if it was equally priced. Getting on the boat was pain free. Getting off the boat was a bit of a mad house. Instead of announcing one level at a time to get off, everyone got off at the same time. Chaotic. read more

We took the DFDS ship Pearl Seaways from Copenhagen to Oslo. You leave Copenhagen at 16:30 and arrive in Oslo the next morning at 9:45. This is a nice way to make the trip, though it's not cheap--our modest cabin for four cost about 325 euros. For that you get a very small room with a window view of the ocean (note that some have no outside windows which I would find a bit claustrophobic!) and two bunk beds on each side, and not much room for luggage. There is also a small bathroom and shower. Our family for four managed, though, and it's no worse than being in a typical American camper trailer. The bunks are small but reasonably comfortable. Be aware that the people in the top bunks have to climb up with a small ladder, or if you're tall enough, just climb up. Once in bed, an adult can't easily sit up straight, but there's enough room to move about a bit. We ate at the buffet, which was decent and had something for everyone. Staff was very nice and helpful at all junctures. All in all, a good experience, but do keep in mind that the typical cabins are quite cramped! If you want something nicer, you have to pay a lot more. read more