Statendam Review
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We generally enjoy cruising with Holland America. The food was as good as we have come to expect, and service very good also. I was traveling with my 23 year old son and his wife, who stayed in the cabin next door, and my 27 year old daughter, with whom I shared a cabin. When we got on, we found out that one of our ports was closed, Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala. We were looking forward to that port and still aren't sure why Holland America would not know ahead of time it would be closed during Easter week. This gave us, however, daytime in Panama City, which turned out to be very enjoyable.We bought on-line time the first day and then there were specials when Holland America gave twice the time for the price, but you had to be signed up before. With the internet, we were able to check what we wanted to do in Colombia, because we didn't have time to research before we went on our cruise. For some reason, Holland America seems to spend a lot of time at ports where there isn't much to do, and have less time where you would like to be longer. We had engine trouble and at one point, after we left Colombia, our engines stopped and we started going backwards. We were on the Verandah deck near the front of the ship, and there were many officers in uniform running around. The captain made an announcement that we had engine troubles, and that they would soon be fixed. It took a couple of hours, and then we were back on our way. We had gale force winds in the Caribbean sea, but we aren't prone to get sea sick and we were fine, even though the sea was very rough. The night before we got to Ft. Lauderdale, we heard a crash, then a shudder around 1:30 in the morning. In the morning we found that we were going very slowly toward Florida. It seems that there was more engine trouble. We were supposed to get off between 7:45 and 8:30 because we were supposed to be the first ones off. We didn't get off until 10:00 due to the engines having difficulties. It didn't affect us because we were planning to spend the weekend in Florida anyway.
Cabin Review
We got a Verandah cabin at a very reasonable price. One cabin was almost totally obstructed and the other had some view. We did like the location, as it was very central. We had the first two cabins on the left side at the front of the boat. We were next to the door to go outside and outside we had the stairway to go up the front of the boat. It was good also, because we did not have a cabin opposite of us, and there were not many people walking by.