This was a bucket list cruise for my wife. All the ports and excursions surpassed both our expectations. The narration by Exploration Team as we sailed into and around Antarctica was superb. Zaandam is a typical HA ship, one of their smaller ones with a nice cozy feel. We are 4 Star Mariners, with lots of cruising experience and always appreciate HA’s itineraries and attention to detail on ...
Chose this cruise on a whim, as we saw an advertisement from a consolidator, contacted our agent to see what she could do, and then jumped. It gave me bragging rights, whatever that means, to say I was on all seven continents before I turned 70. (Okay, I didn't 'touch' Antarctica, but it touched me, so close enough.) We also had kids who had other plans for Christmas so we were free to travel. We ...
We've been on a number of cruises with HAL and sailed on 6 different ships. I wasn't too thrilled about being on Zaandam due to it's smaller size but understand that the larger ships don't go to Antarctica.
This was a first voyage on Zaandam, and even though it is a BIT smaller than what we've sailed on, I was pleased overall. I think I was a bit surprised that the food quality seemed to be ...
I really wanted to go to Antarctica, I booked this entire cruise with the plan to do the excursion. It ended up getting canceled due to insurance problems and Holland America gave us (everyone on the excursion) future cruise credit. I think I'm going to let mine go to waste, I have no desire to ever go on another cruise and certainly not a Holland America one. Aside from that: my shower was super ...
We (Married couple in our 30's, no kids) choose this cruise because of the itinerary, because of Antarctica. Because we really wanted to see penguins in the region where they belong. And this was the only affordable way to do it.
It was our first cruise ever. We know now that cruising is not our favorite way to travel, and I'm sure we will wait at least another 30-40 years before we ever book ...
My wife loves cruises; this was our 4th cruise this year (Oceania, Royal Caribbean, Princess, and Holland America). We enjoyed this cruise the most— largely because of the destinations. The lake regions of Chile and Argentina are spectacular and going around the Horn was a treat. Buenos Aires and Montevideo are beautiful, interesting cities. We enjoyed seeing the penguins on the Falkland ...
Cruise selected based on the itinerary. We had 2 issues that we escalated to guest services and were made to feel they did not care at all. Our cabin was hot and after technician checked and temperature was 22.9 Celcius,. i was told by Guest Services, they could do nothing andthere were no other cabins to move. it was a blatant lie, I know this because due to flooding of several cabins later in ...
Having read fellow travellers reviews, I wanted to provide our opinion following our South America trip recently.
Ship
The Zaandam ship is on the small side by today’s standards (1400 passengers) but that does mean you do get to know the staff and fellow cruisers. The ship was well maintained, clean and comfortable. We opted for an outside cabin, mid ships, on the main deck due to the ...
This is by far the worst cruise line I have ever sailed with. It was like travelling on a free holiday where you have to go to a few lectures about time share apartments and be sold the whole story about buying into it, except that this holiday wasn't free and you couldn't get away from it.
I wasn't alone in my thinking either as there were so many agreived passengers on board that it was ...
We chose this cruise because we wanted to get a first impression of South America and go round Cape Horn. It was also one of the few cruises that took in Rio de Janeiro too.
What was good
1. The captain was very good and, to my mind, made the right decision to leave out Puerto Montt becuase of the bad weather and so try and get ahead of even worse weather.
2. Kevin, the entertainment ...