The Nieuw Statendam just came out of dry dock, so this was an opportunity to see what a newish ship was like as well as a transatlantic; the holiday time sailing was an added bonus. The dates allowed us to spend some time in Rome before departure, so we were able to do a land cruise. Returning to FLL helped minimize flight costs.
The food was overall very good; Club Orange dining room service ...
I would recommend you pick a different ship and even a different cruise line completely. It is really that bad. The worse of the worst? The food. The overall food quality and selection is poor. Not what you would expect from HAL. The food is either way overcooked or undercooked. The service is slow and there are way too many mistakes. Seriously it is a cruise where you actually dread meal time. On ...
I needed to go to the US and found this transatlantic for a good price and the timing that I needed. My first Holland America cruise 6 months prior on the Rotterdam was disappointing, but I gave HA another try. This cruise was much better. The atmosphere was much more relaxed (I'm assuming this stems from management down), and the crew seemed less uptight too. There weren't constant announcements ...
We chose this cruise because a Transatlantic cruise has been on our bucket list, we liked the itinerary, and we had two previous enjoyable cruises on HAL (one on Oosterdam and one on Zaandam). We have been fortunate that all three HAL cruises have been in a Neptune Suite, which is a special experience.
This cruise didn't go as planned, because a large storm caused an itinerary change. We had ...
I chose this cruise to visit the ports (Cartagena, Malaga, Cadiz in Spain and Lisbon and Funchal in Portugal). Unfortunately due to weather and a pilot boat strike in Portugal the only port I visited was Malaga. We then went to the Canary Islands as a contingency plan for two ports (one was five hours long and the other was 12 hours). These ports were not interesting to me.
The ship itself was ...
We enjoy spending time in Europe in the fall and then sailing home on a trans-Atlantic with our preferred lines - Holland America and Cunard. We appreciated the itinerary as it was full of ports we enjoyed . We also greatly enjoy the ambience on HAL ships. We boarded without issue at Barcelona , concluding ten wonderful days in Spain. The ship was spotless and remained so through our 15 days ...
My husband and I are in our 40's. This was our 5th HAL cruise, but it was our first time back with them since the pandemic. Our last HAL cruise was on the Koningsdam in the Caribbean, and we loved it! We were excited to try out her sister ship in European waters.
PRE-CRUISE
We spent 4 nights at an Airbnb near Termini in Rome. This was our 4th time in the Eternal City, so we skipped the major ...
Selected itinerary for the ports and ability to spend a few days in Rome. Embarkation was the BEST, easiest, fastest we've ever experienced. We were boarded and eating lunch in MDR a full hour before our check in time.
For a ship going into dry dock, we did experience any maintenance related issues or ration shortages. There was no visible work being done in the areas where we walked. May have ...
Although we've been to the other cities on the itinerary, we were attracted to this one because it featured two cities that we wanted to visit --- Istanbul and Barcelona.
Our experience was a combintation of surprise, disappointment, a little anger, and some light-hearted moments. We have never traveled on HAL before, so we didn't know what to expect. The embarcation point and procedure should ...
We just returned from a 26-day TA from Athens to Fort Lauderdale; actually a 12-day Mediterranean to Barcelona and a 14-day transatlantic crossing to FL. HAL sold it as a single 26-day cruise but the second 14-day leg was much cheaper so many got on in Barcelona for TA. Unfortunately the weather prompted the captain to cancel Cadiz and Portugal. We had also lost 2 ports on the 12day segment but, ...