Veendam Review
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As others have already noted, the Panama Canal cruise on the Veendam from Ft, Lauderdale to San Diego, departing Feb. 21 was a huge disappointment. Due to the many missed ports (blamed on engine problems), we basically paid a lot of money to ride around in a big boat from the Atlantic to Pacific Oceans. Delayed embarkation information on Feb. 21st was not communicated until late morning of that date (surely they knew at least one or two days prior that they were going to be late!???). In spite of that snafu, I was pleased to experience a very speedy embarkation. That might have been because we arrived earlier than they originally told us we could board and that might have been because we were Vista class passengers - who knows? Our friends were booked in a Neptune Suite and they had A/C problems for three days before it was fixed. We had no A/C for a solid 24 hours before ours was resolved. I ended up with a severe sore throat and bad cold which may, or may not, have been caused by bad air quality.
It was interesting to read the other posts regarding previous engine problems that, of course, we were never told about. The missed ports were exceedingly disappointing - particularly Cabo since that was to be our first time ever whale watching excursion. Again, reading a prior cruisecritic post, I learned that our Zihuatanejo missed port was known WEEKS in advance of it's cancellation. And, not only did we miss ports, some of our port stops were truncated in order to make it to San Diego on time.
This was not a cheap cruise and the Holland America line owes its passengers more than a future cruise credit. How self-serving is that? Oh, I have to spend even more money in order to save some??? I have heard from friends who took a H-A Alaska cruise recently and they encountered very similar issues. As they like to tell us on our airplane flights "you have many choices of airlines to fly to your destination and we appreciate that you chose ours." So how about if Holland America gets with that program???? We have many other cruise ships to chose from and it probably won't be H-A next time.