Zuiderdam Review

4.0 / 5.0
1,028 reviews

Zuiderdam - Alaska

Review for Alaska Cruise on Zuiderdam
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Black Blur
First Time Cruiser • Age 60s

Rating by category

Embarkation
Dining
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Additional details

Sail Date: Jul 2007
Cabin: Signature Superior Verandah Suite
Traveled with children

I am a 47 year old male traveling with my wife and two young men (16 and 18 years old). This was our second trip on HAL, fourth cruise in 4 years.

We arrived in Vancouver a couple days early to do some site seeing and stayed a couple nights at the Day's Inn by Canada Place. The room was small but adequate. Vancouver is an interesting city, if we were to do it all over again, we would have started with a bus tour to get a lay of the land. Embarkation on Saturday June 30th was incredibly fast. From the time we got dropped off with our luggage (11:30 am) to when we were having lunch on the Lido deck was a short half hour. Our cabin was ready at 1:20. On this trip, we had a wonderful cabin attendant, Vincent. One tip is that although the Z'dam no longer has self-service laundry facilities, the $45 unlimited laundry (including unlimited pressing) worked well for us.

The quality of food in the Vista dining room has improved considerably since we were on the Amsterdam four years ago. The second formal night (surf and turf) was particularly noteworthy. They also had some excellent starters and the desserts were very good. The negative is that, for whatever reason, the wait staff was extremely slow in getting our drinks and food. As a matter of fact, on day one, we got to our table on time but we were rushed out because they were setting up for the main seating (we had early). After two nights of this, we complained and got reasonable service for the rest of our time that we ate in Vista. This was accomplished by having the supervising steward pitch in. As I wrote in the survey, if the wait staff is new, better training is required, if they are not, something is wrong and has to be fixed. But, the most egregious event of the cruise occurred on that first night in Vista. The photographer was running around taking individual pictures and we do not like to have our pictures taken but since this was our 23rd wedding anniversary, we asked if he would be so kind as to take our picture with my wife and me together. Imagine our surprise when he refused. And, when we went through the photo gallery the next day, we saw a bunch of "Wanted" posters. The pictures for the week were uniformly goofy. HAL really needs to fix this.

Cabin Review

Signature Superior Verandah Suite

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