To be fair the choice of this cruise was mine, to celebrate a significant birthday and then explore a part of the world I have always wanted to see. The itinerary was very attractive, as was the price when we booked. I was also drawn to the size of Westerdam, being a small ship. First things first, the lead up to the cruise was a daily argument with Holland America over needing visa's for some of ...
Visa Services: told to get a Chinese visa by Holland at a cost of $1000; ship offered them for free while underway. Guest Services barely apologized and offered no compensation. Excursions: over half the guides didn't speak English well enough to answer questions or give commentary, visited sites were repetitive and boring. It was clear Holland had done no quality control on their excursions or ...
This cruise was chosen based on the itinerary and not the ship. If you are looking at this ship for entertainment purposes, there are other ships to consider, this one only provides a few entertainment opportunities.
If you are going for the destinations rather than the ship, then this ship will serve your purpose if you go in with the mindset that this is an older ship and the ports are the ...
I choose this cruise because I was looking forward to exploring and getting to know SE Asia. It was a terrible experience overall. The ports of call were in dirty, large cities where it was difficult to get out of the city areas without taking long bus rides. The tours were long, boring and we could barely understand the guides. When we went to the shore excursion desk, they didn't know anything ...
This is a very comfortable ship which is spotlessly clean and which has excellent friendly staff.
Our Neptune suite had a comfortable 3 seater lounge and 2 queen sized beds as we elected to have the very large dual mattress bed separated so as not to disturb one a other. The balcony was extremely spacious.
The onboard entertainment was impressive. The choice of eating venues was enjoyable. ...
our 2 week Indonesian explorer was disappointing. some issues we experienced:
- the airco of our cabin (incl the complete corridor incl our neighbours) was not cool enough. esp. at night the cabin temperature was way too hot. we woke up in the middle of night sweating. HAL did inroom measurements and acknowledged that it was up to appr. 20% higher than it should be (24 degrees vs 20 degrees). ...
We have only cruised 3 times with HAL, however each was 14+ days. We were on the last Asia cruise before Covid, and the 1st one since Covid (ports in Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan). Both on Westerdam. However HAL is down trending for us.
Preface: Let me just say that running a cruise is a very difficult thing. Nearly every guest on board has a unique need or request. Staffing turn over ...
This was a special birthday gift for my husband it was bad no organisation after 2 hrs in Singapore immigration and booking in we got to ship to find another queue to hand in passports after another hr we were free they said they needed them for immigration to Phuket which was 2 days away dinner that night took 3hrs.
In Phuket we were landed in an industrial area by tender very choppy and long ...
To resume pre-Covid travel, we decided to take up an attractive 2 week fly/cruise package departing Singapore. Having previously sailed on Cunard and Celebrity we sought out a different cruise line,HAL, which was scheduled to visit approx 6 interesting Asian ports. This proved to be a huge mistake.
Amongst the few positive aspects of the line's Westerdam ship is it quirky, modern art deco ...
Holland America changed the itinerary several times and the final one was not at all interesting. The food was mostly mediocre and not up to the quality on Azamara, Princess, Cunard or Celebrity. I was looking forward to America's Test Kitchen, but, alas, it was not on board. There were no professional lectures and the man who did the Thailand history lesson was very poor. The tender ...