Sometimes I get off a cruise and then read the reviews and wonder if I was on the same ship as some of the reviewers. I was a little worried about our planned trip on the Zaandam from Vancouver to Seward when I read some reviews that were so negative. The food was awful, the beds were terrible, the ship was old and the cabins and bathrooms smelled, the wait staff were surly, ETC, ETC. I don't know what ship these folks were really on, but it sure wasn't the Zaandam that I was on. We took the cruise tour and left Vancouver August 18th and cruised to Seward arriving on August 25th. From there we transferred to a train to Anchorage, spent the night there and took the next day train to Denali. We spent a day in Denali and then went on to Fairbanks and flew home from there. The ground portion of the trip was spectacular. We took the ground tour (Tundra Wilderness tour) and saw Grizzly Bears, Moose, Caribou, and Mountain Sheep, as well as eagles and maybe a wolf but couldn't positively identify that one. But since this is a review of the Zaandam, I will write mostly about our ship experience.

Boarding was easy. We took a bus up from Seattle that deposited us at the pier. It took all of about 15 minutes to check in. I would give HAL an A+ for the ease of check-in.

We were on board around 2 PM and our cabin was ready. Luggage was delivered in about an hour. We quickly met our cabin attendant who was always smiling and trying to please. We were on the Dolphin deck which was deck 1. We had an ocean view cabin with the beds together . The cabin itself was quite spacious and had much more storage than the Celebrity Solstice which was the last ship we sailed on. We had lots of drawer space as well as plenty of room to hang up all our clothes. The bathroom was clean and didn't smell. The cabin attendants kept it clean for our entire trip. It was old with tile that was dated but everything worked. One note is the shower was "different" to turn on. We had to call the cabin attendant to show me how to make the shower work. I wasn't the only one as we talked to others at dinner who had the same problem. Some people up on deck 6 had a sign in their room explaining how but those of us down in the basement were left to fend for ourselves. The secret is you pull down on the faucet spout but if you aren't familiar with the system you don't see where to pull down. It really isn't obvious. Other than that everything about the bathroom was functional. We even had a full bathtub although we just used it as a shower. My only complaint about the room is it did not have a refrigerator. Cabins on upper decks did but not on deck 1. Our cabin attendant did keep us supplied with a steady supply of ice in a large champaign style bucket so we could keep stuff cold. Still I would have appreciated a refrigerator. Read more