We have been on a couple of Holland America cruises in the past which were charters for The Jazz Cruise and were always a little disappointed in the food and service. But we figured that this was because The Jazz Cruise is a chartered event and they went a bit cheap on these things. We were right. The food, service and ship were excellent. We usually ate in the specialty restaurants and they were excellent. We never eat in the main dining, so we have no input on that but the buffet was really nice.

There seemed to be an overall lack of musical entertainment though. The band played in the Queens Lounge now and then and were pretty good. There were some string players in one of the other lounges now and then. But even the background music in the bars was uninteresting. The ship was very nice and smooth sailing even though we had a bit of weather.

Embarkation was one of the easiest we have ever had but this was most likely because we boarded in Quebec and the ship already was pretty full with people doing back-to-back from NY city. Read more