We booked the cruise through a travel agent. The dates fitted with our trip of a lifetime to Canada and Alaska. We saw photos of the ship before we travelled, but the ship didn’t look how we expected at all! I saw the ship in Vancouver next to the Seven Seas Explorer. It looks like a car ferry outside and inside! I was so disappointed! The ship is very tired and dated and nothing like the ...
We chose this cruise for the itinerary, especially Iceland and Greenland and because we have had 3 very good cruises with HAL in the past. There were many good features. Most of the ship has been beautifully refurbished, the food was good, staff very helpful and it seems a happy ship. Great itinerary, Iceland was brilliant, sunny and fantastic scenery. The sun really does shine at midnight in the ...
We were on this boat and the main reasons were to visit greenland and island. At first the good: the food we compare with celebrity and princess, hal is a little bit better. The speciality restaurants are not much better. The service in the pinnacle grill is arrogant and the maitre too and not friendly. The food was OK , there is the murano celebrity much better. Very good was the fitness trainer ...
This was our first Holland America experience after sailing on Royal Caribbean and Carnival. We picked this cruise because it was one of the few lines that visit Istanbul. Athens, Mykonos, Istanbul, Crete, and Olympia we’re all great ports. Things that were a disappointment on the ship: entertainment was sparse, food/drink service was not available at all times and ended at 11:30pm, and ...
First the good:
I am an avid cruiser, but I had never cruised Holland America before. I had some trepidation because I had heard that it skewed older. Not that I am a spring chicken, but I’m also not 70. At any rate, the cabins were of familiar size and the crew was excellent, although there was some inconsistencies in the bar, especially with the featured drinks, which you would think all ...
This was our first Holland America cruise.
REASONS TO PICK THIS CRUISE:
* We picked this specific cruise because the itinerary was midweek to midweek rather than weekend to weekend like most Alaska cruises. This meant the ports were less packed.
* We also wanted a smaller ship with fewer people. The passenger capacity for the Volendam is only about 1400 people.
* This cruise also went ...
We chose to go on this cruise (our very first cruise) because it was advertised as an Irish music cruise to Alaska promoted by Gertrude Byrne. We expected, from the title of the cruise, to be treated to true Irish music, along the lines of We Banjo Three and other types of traditional Irish sounds. What we got was primarily American country music sung by Irish bands. We are not fans of most ...
So Alaska was beautiful. It was amazing. Our original trip was supposed to happen in June of 2022. Our family members had just gotten off of the same cruise on the same ship. They had a great time. Days before our trip was supposed to happen, we received an email that the entire trip (land and sea) was cancelled due to crew shortages. We were a little confused since our family members had just ...
Meh. This was my eleventh cruise, (4th on HAL) first in 6 years. It didn't rank highly, in fact it has somewhat put us off cruising, at least for anything longer than 10 days. By about day 11, we were ready to get off the ship. We felt there had been some (post Covid?) cutbacks.
EMBARKATION AND DEBARKATION (Fort Lauderdale/San Diego)
Both were fantastically swift, the best we've experienced ...
We chose this cruise because we didn't feel up to going to Europe this year. Never having been to Alaska, we felt that the three-hour flight to Seattle wouldn't be too taxing and then a leisurely, relaxing cruise of seven days with no jet lag would be just the ticket. We opted for Holland America to assign our rooms and when, the week before, we were assigned Room we were at first happy. Back of ...