Between my wife and I we have done 19 cruises on 5 different cruise lines, we are both full time travel agents so we have, through our training, developed a set of standards we look for. This was the second time on Holland American for us, with our first being on the Oosterdam last year. In many ways I like what Holland does but The Amsterdam has a few glitches.

Before we get into the cruise a few pre cruise and post cruise comments as a traveler. We opted to go to Seattle a day early and made our own air reservations with Alaska Air, interestingly enough overall their fare was over $250.00 less than Southwest even after figuring the cost of baggage. We arrived at SEA-TAC and had made reservations with the Quality In Downtown Seattle for the overnight and transportation, for a fee, from the airport. The driver from Quality WAS NOT helpful in directing us to the proper pick up location and we spent what was probably two frustrating hours trying to find the pick up location. SEA-TAC, in my opinion is not well marked. When we FINALLY got to the hotel, I filed a complaint with the duty manager and she did discount the transfer fee. The hotel was in general pretty nice, but the desk clerk marked the wrong room number on our key holder and that caused additional frustration and delay in getting settled. We had thoughts of possibly doing some sightseeing, BUT that was now long gone. The next morning transportation was available to the pier and no problems.

Now to the cruise: Check in went smoothly and I was informed about an alternate door to avoid the embarkation picture, mainly because I do have some mobility issues and the alternate route was shorter. Our stateroom, ocean view, was neat, of course as usual we had to ask to have the bed separated even though we had specified separate in the reservation. Read more