My extended family of 13 (4 couples, 5 teenagers) took a 7-day Caribbean Cruise from HAL Nieuw Amsterdam in early Jan.
My wife and I had just taken a 10 day cruise in December on Carnival Venezia. It’s very interesting to compare the 2 trips. HAL clientele definitely skewed older, whiter, quieter, and better behaved. NA being the smaller ship, it didn’t have as many “extracurricular” ...
As we were on our first cruise ever we chose the Niew Amsterdam because it is a mid-size ship. We spent a wonderful week. Embarkment and disembarkment went very smoothly and rapidly as a wheelchair was required for one of us. Easy process. No line!
Once onboard, we were directed to Lido Market for lunch.
PROS:
Cabin, excellent food, very diversified more so very fresh, many specialty ...
We took the two week cruise offered, which started December 30. We were at the start of this cruise a 3 star Mariner. We have always liked Holland America, and this has been our 11th cruise on this brand. That said, I have to say we have noticed small but important changes which because we are in a suite they are not that important, but if you do not have the perks of the suite, then you may have ...
On a cruise in January 2024 on the Nieuw Amsterdam. The ship was clean and our room stewards, Hendra & Eva, were attentive and kept our room clean and organized. While not top-notch, the food was pretty good. The chiefs were out and about making sure the serving staff was hoping and taking care of the guests.
The itinerary was good and we did excursions in Turks and at Half Moon Cay, ...
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 ...
Our cruise through South America to Antarctica exceeded our expectations. Where do we start?
The service on the ship was outstanding as was the food in the main dining room and the Lido deck. We got off to a rough start when we discovered our room was directly below the Rolling Stones Lounge, but the staff kindly moved us to a room with a balcony from which we could admire the icebergs in ...
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. ...
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 ...
Firstly, I am a fan of the medium size ships, so am biased toward the quieter, no outdoor movie screen scene. Entertainment I found satisfying to impressive (more below) although I would have liked an historian and naturalist. For some reason, I could not get the commentary in my stateroom on glacier row, but I didn't ask for assistance with it either.
Cruise director was less omnipresent than ...
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). ...