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Veendam Review

4.0 / 5.0
0 reviews

Bermuda 05/13-20/2012

Review for Bermuda Cruise on Veendam
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Simca
10+ Cruises • Age 70s

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Cabin

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Sail Date: May 2012
Cabin: Large Outside Stateroom (fully obstructed views)

First of all, my wife and I are experienced cruisers and the last to ever make any complaints. We do not have high expectations and appreciate every amenity and kindness offered to us.

We had originally booked a guaranteed inside cabin. With less then 48 hours before embarkation, we were assigned cabin 314. This was a cabin on the starboard side of the ship with, what they called, "a fully obstructed view". I was perfectly content to have natural light for our cabin and in fact, the view was not "totally obstructed". When we arrived at the dock, we had a different cabin number, 419, which was a downgrade as it was an inside cabin. Upon pointing this out to the woman at the counter, she spoke to her supervisor. About 15 to 20 minutes later, the counter woman & supervisor returned and apologized for the error and gave us cabin 409 which was the same as cabin 314. We had to be escorted onto the ship to get our cabin keys. My cabin key was totally wrong, with someone else's name. Of course, it did not work. I went to the Front Desk to have it corrected. Upon returning to the cabin, it still did not function. The third cabin key did work properly. My wife's cabin key, which worked the first time, failed to work after my cabin key had been corrected. Several trips back to the Front Desk and both our cabin keys were functional.

I had arranged a "Meet & Mingle". The fine folks at Cruise Critic even went so far as to arrange some prizes for a raffle which they had suggested. I had informed HAL that Cruise Critic & Facebook were to have a combined "Meet & Mingle". I had received an e-mail from HAL indicating that we could have the "Crow's Nest" from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. on our sea day with signage, water, tea, coffee & cookies and, if time permitted, a visit from an Officer or two. We did get the "Crow's Nest", which is available to anyone at any time, but nothing else that was promised. HAL had completely dropped the ball. I was put into a somewhat humiliating position, since I had announced on Cruise Critic & Facebook what HAL was offering us. We did have a surprisingly exceptional turn out. I did go to the Front Desk to find out why we were not given what was promised. A fine woman representative from HAL's customer relations told me that the woman who had signed my e-mail from HAL did not follow through or there was a mix up in communication, as the ship had received no notification of our planned event. We were offered some "apology" compensations. We settled on some offers. One offer was a lunch in the "Specialty" restaurant. Now that food was excellent. This was the type of food and service I was hoping for on a more "upscale" cruise line. It is a shame that if one wants good food and service, he has to pay extra. Customer relations did make every effort to correct their errors through compensations. They did have to make quite a bit of apologies. We have never had any occasions on other cruise lines for apologies.

Cabin Review

Large Outside Stateroom (fully obstructed views)

Cabin HH
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