Oosterdam Review

4.0 / 5.0
1,087 reviews

Oosterdam - Alaska

Review for Alaska Cruise on Oosterdam
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cruzinhawn
First Time Cruiser • Age 60s

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Sail Date: Jul 2006
Cabin: Deluxe Ocean-View Verandah Stateroom

BOOKING BLUES: We booked our Once in a lifetime cruise on HAL via an internet website. Everything was pretty neat and fast. I booked our Alaskan cruise on one of those DAM ships that started with a Z and we were quite excited to travel on a pretty new HAL ship (2 years old). Our plans were made and the dates were confirmed in the early part of the year, about six months out. Then one day out of the blue I got the bad news from our travel agent, HAL booked a large group on the DAM Z ship, cancelled our reservations and we are now on the DAM O ship! I was so mad at the agent and HAL, we had travel plans, airline tickets already cut, time off of work and they cancel even though we had paid our deposit.

The new cruise started one day later and had a slightly different itinerary. Well both the agent and HAL said to read the fine print. Well low and behold, the fine print states that they can do whatever they choose and we have no recourse. If this happens to you, dont bother calling HAL, they play pretty dumb and tell you they cant do much without talking to your travel agent. Of course they gave us and extra $100 on board credit which paid for our sodas, but other than that there was not much budging from HAL or the travel agent with compensation for a cancelled cruise.

ROOM ASSIGNMENTS AND RESERVATIONS: So after a day or two of yelling and screaming, we still wanted to go on our cruise and ended up with the Oosterdam (3 years old ship). There were eight of us on the cruise all one family, grandma and grandpa, my bride and I of 25 years and our three adult children 18, 21 and 24 and our son-in-law. We booked four rooms. We paid for a VA and ended up with an aft room on the navigation level (8th floor). The other rooms were booked as inside cabin rooms. We chose to go with a guarantee room option and were not assigned rooms at the time of booking. Our travel agent told us we had a better chance of getting upgraded if we went with the guarantee room option. Being a little curious, we went ahead and played the waiting game with our room assignments. About a month out we received our room assignment on the 8th floor. Two weeks later the Grandparents received their room assignment an inside room on the 7th floor. A few days before the trip we found that our kids were assigned rooms on the 1st floor but they got upgraded to oceanview with a large porthole in their room. When we got to the pier, we found out that one of the rooms on the 1st floor was upgraded to a VA room on the 6th floor so we were quite pleased with the outcome. The biggest problem with the guarantee room option is that our four rooms were all over the ship. It really wasnt a problem and we got our needed private time because our room was so far away from everyone else.

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Deluxe Ocean-View Verandah Stateroom

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