Amsterdam Review
Nice Itinerary but HAL needs to step it up!
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We have cruised on several Holland, Princess, and Carnival ships. From our experience, Holland just doesn't deliver on their "upscale" image. We end up on HAL primarily because of their itineraries.
The Amsterdam is in good condition and clean. The public areas are plentiful and well kept. Our OV stateroom on the lower promenade was small but as expected. No complaints.
The ship had just come off the world voyage route, so a few glitches are understandable. But the first half of the trip was inexcusable. It just seemed as though they were very understaffed and the hotel management didn't have a clue what was going on. Keys didn't work, which meant waiting in long lines at customer service--numerous times since even replacement keys didn't work. No apologies--just "well a lot of keys don't work." (And that makes it okay?) Our cabin steward didn't make it to our rooms 'til late the first night, and didn't get the room cleaned at all the next day. Repeatedly we heard "We were supposed to have a ____ person onboard, but they didn't make it in FLL." Or, "We didn't get 'x' or 'y' like we were supposed to in FLL." Fill in the blanks--it was a common theme. People who ordered wine packages were brought the list, then told they only had one kind available but they might be getting more in a few days. The Lido seemed terribly understaffed (always difficult in HAL's 'code orange' time, but worse than usual). There was only one server for Happy Hour in the Crows Nest for the first few days, and he literally RAN around the room trying to serve everyone. The MDR was ridiculously slow, and 2 1/2 hours wasn't enough time to get to dessert. We were told a price for shirts on the deck merchandise sale, waited in the hour long line (not enough cashiers), only to be told the person working on the deck "was new" and had given us the wrong price. And no, they wouldn't honor it. The crew didn't know about one of the time changes on this itinerary, causing passengers to miss wake-up calls and the Lido to open late. About half way through things improved. The service was never terrific, but it definitely got better over time.
Cabin Review
3307 and 3309 are adjoining cabins. Both have windows that open to the Lower Promenade and have partial sea views that are blocked only by the waist-high solid railing. They are below the theater, but we didn't find that disturbing. We were happy with the location. (Note: on a previous cruise we had a similar cabin that was under the kitchen. That was a very noisy location at night!)