Veendam Review

4.0 / 5.0
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Great Ship, Above Average Staff, Slow Dining & Limited Activities

Review for Canada & New England Cruise on Veendam
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ktctnc
2-5 Cruises • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Oct 2016

We chose this cruise because of its itinerary that arrived in Quebec City and Montreal during a time when the fall leaves were at their peak colors. We wisely chose port excursions in advance from groups not associated with Holland's overpriced port trips. The ship was well maintained and the staff was helpful and attentive everywhere except in the Rotterdam dining room. I initially thought that a new plan was needed for seating and reservations, but now I think the main problem is the extremely slow service once you are seated in the Rotterdam. We had chosen the open seating option (instead of the 5:15 and 7:45 standing options), and were told that would mean an average wait of 10-15 min. However we found ourselves waiting 20-30 min. to be seated the first two visits plus an hour and half to experience the dinner service.

The third time we made reservations for 5:00 and were immediately seated but found the service extremely slow- there seemed to be a lot of confusion among our wait staff for our table of 6. It was 6:00 before we received our first course and one lady at the table never received hers after reporting it to two different servers. Plates were never removed until the excruciatingly long time before another course arrived. Finally, we almost ran from the table when we finished our desserts at 7:20- this was ridiculous considering we were seated promptly at 5:00. After that, we stuck to dinner in the Lido Market, which although not the same quality of food, dinner did not require 2 hours or more. Other couples we talked to had experienced similar experiences in the Rotterdam. We also found room service very good options for two breakfasts and one dinner.

We were quite pleased with our oceanview stateroom and the steward's professionalism and prompt, clean standards. We thoroughly enjoyed the piano player, Jeremy, who was without a doubt everyone's favorite entertainment on the ship. We were excited to see Team Trivia on the daily agenda, but disappointed that it was not arranged in a more competitive format. It was enjoyable to answer the 16 questions on the the papers given, but then everyone simply raised their hands to report their final scores and the session was over- kind of anti-climatic. We were excited that Waltz lessons were offered the first day and assumed that different ballroom dance lessons might be available daily, but there were no others except for Salsa on the last day. More activities should have been offered on the day we were not in port, but there were very few and we found ourselves ordering a movie by noon that day. We didn't know whether to laugh or be upset when activity choices included making tissue paper flowers or yarn pompoms for your luggage.

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