Amsterdam Review
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In the summer of 2006 my wife and I attended a reception for Holland America Line (HAL) hosted by our local travel agent. We were so impressed with the HAL presentation that we decided we would give them a try. One point that attracted me particularly was the smaller capacity of most of their ships. In the late fall of 2006 we and another couple booked on MS Amsterdam for their seven-day Alaska Inside Passage cruise round trip from Seattle for May 2007. We chose the seven-day as opposed to a longer cruise because of time constraints on some of our party. The trip was planned as a birthday cruise for one of our number.
We (my wife and I) booked through our regular agent. The other couple, who live outside the US, booked online. We two chose an ocean view cabin. I wanted a veranda cabin but all were already booked and I did not want a penthouse suite. The fare was only slightly higher than what we have paid on previous cruises, possibly due to increased fuel costs. Our agent was able to get restricted air tickets Atlanta-Seattle RT for several hundreds of dollars less per passenger than HAL wanted for their air package. Guess which we took. We chose our shore excursions before leaving home and booked them on line, having them billed immediately to our credit card by HAL, a procedure we had not encountered before.
We flew from ATL early the morning of the cruise. With the time zone change, it was still morning when we got to Seattle. Baggage pickup and handling was smooth on arrival, with assistance from HAL/Princess reps. The prepaid bus ride to the pier was non-eventful. Embarkation was more chaotic and inefficient than I expected. Despite our having prepared at home the online HAL "express" boarding passes, boarding was anything but express. There was a long line of passengers filling out forms that mostly asked for information that we had already submitted, including credit card billing details. In fact, another line of passengers who did not have the express passes, was shorter and moved much more quickly. However, all the HAL personnel were friendly, cheerful and good-humored.