Oosterdam Review
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I traveled with 3 friends. We decided on this cruise because it was a good deal and we all have Alaska on our "Places to see" lists. Embarkation and disembarkation went as smoothly as possible I thought. This was my first cruise so I have nothing to compare it to. I would go again but not to Alaska, on a cruise. I feel like we could have seen more of Alaska had we flown in or something. I would totally go on another cruise. We were not in port very long on our Victoria stop and it was almost dark when we got there. I feel like the Victoria stop was a let down. Other than that, it was pretty good. We booked a Hummer Excursion for Ketchikan which I enjoyed. The food on the boat was pretty dang good! The staff was very helpful. We really enjoyed our servers in the dining room for our evening meals. There were some rude cruisers but I think that probably happens on all cruises. Some people did not understand that they had to pay to use the internet and I witnessed more than one occasion where people got ugly with customer service on the boat because they didn't think they should have to pay to use it. I did have one issue with customer service. They require that everyone put down a $60/day/person deposit on the first day of the cruise which I did, only with cash instead of a card. My group was then worried about not being able to do early check out at the end of the cruise. I went back to customer service and asked if they would give my cash back and put the deposit on my card. They would not give me my cash back and told me to just come back the last night of the cruise to collect my deposit but they "could certainly swipe my card to put in on my account". So then I got to use my ship card to purchase something about an hour after all of this and it didn't work. I went back to customer service and told them the issue. They told me I didn't have a deposit on account. I'm like "Um yes you do, I have two receipts to prove it". So a few minutes go by, then they assure my card should work and it was just a mistake. Apparently, the lady that swiped my card did not do it right and then somehow unchecked it in the system that I had a cash deposit on file. Long story short, just put the deposit on your credit card and avoid the cash deposit all together. The piano bar was great....we didn't find out about it until about 3 nights into our trip, but then we went every night. They took lots of song requests and it was a great time. We did not test out the casino. The bartenders were great.
Cabin Review
Large Interior Stateroom
As long as we kept everything picked up and put away, we had decent room in the cabin. We wondered how we would do with space, but we did pretty well considering we had 4 adults in our group and we all stayed in the same room. The cabin steward was great. Room service was a bit slow, especially when coming to pick up the tray. Other then that, I don't have any complaints about the room. There were 3 closets, some cabinets, shelves in the bathrooms and a drawer at the end of each bed to put things in. The table and chairs in the room at the end were pretty useless when the ceiling bed was down but the room steward was very good about getting it put up while we were at breakfast. Take the 3M hooks and use them to hang things up in other places, especially the bathroom. Magnets work well on the walls to hang the papers you get every morning and it's a good place to keep excursion tickets and other important things.
Port Reviews
Sitka
We walked around for an hour trying to find a place that served breakfast. Apparently only two places in Sitka serve breakfast. Everything else is lunch and dinner. Walked through some of the shops. Walked by the boat docks and out to the Totem Pole park. My friends went through St. Michael's Cathedral and got some great pics. Wish I had gone through there. We all went through the Russian Bishop's House, at least the part that was free. That was neat.
Victoria
We got there right before it got dark. We paid $11/person to ride a bus from port to downtown...it was suppose to cover our ride back but you had to keep your receipt and not lose it. It was crowded on the bus as they were fitting as many as possible on them to get every one in. We walked around what I assume was downtown Victoria and most shops were already closed or fixing to close for the day. We ate at The Old Spaghetti Factory. It was so-so, the appetizers were good. I just went along because that's where the other girls in my group wanted to eat, I think they were looking for pizza. I didn't get my salad which wasn't a big deal but the service was lacking and there was a big group of teenagers there and they were being very loud and disrespectful. Their sponsor kept telling them to pipe down but eventually she ordered them all out the door. Unfortunately, it wasn't soon enough, We were pretty much done eating by then. We headed out the door and it was dark so we decided to go back to the ship to wait for it to leave port since we only had about an hour left in port. We took a cab ride back, we liked our cab driver. That was probably the best part of the whole Victoria stop. They didn't even stamp our passports and I felt a little cheated with the whole stop.