My fiancee and I had taken our first cruise together in July 2001 aboard the Westerdam, in fact, on one of it's final voyages. It was my first cruise and my fiancee's second. It was everything I'd ever heard about cruises and much more. The food, both quality and abundance, the opulence of the ship itself and all the displays. The desert extravaganza was absolutely breathtaking. So this summer we decided to do Alaska again and with Holland America. We booked on the Volendam and were excited to know that this ship was only 4 years old. Compared to our cruise aboard the Westerdam, our expectations were very high. We were to have a balcony suite, which was a very good size (284 sq.ft). We were to set sail at 5pm. and our dinner seating time was 5:30pm. Needless to say, we were too busy at 5:30 setting sail, attending the bon voyage party and walking around the ship to make it to the formal dinner. After unpacking we wandered up to the Lido Restaurant for a bite to eat to discover that it was closed, the hamburger/pizza/taco bar was closed for the day, as was the ice cream bar. Other than room service there was no food to be had on the ship at that time, so we went back to our room and ordered.
Actually, the food from room service was very good and didn't take long to get, we were just disappointed to eat in our room on our first night at sea. For the first nights we would put out our room service breakfast request card to have our coffee and croissants brought to our room the next morning and this would also ensure that we'd wake up nice and early to enjoy our coffee on our balcony. But we used up the two room service cards and they were never replaced again after that. My fiancee called the front desk requesting more, but we went the next three days without them, so we just woke up in the mornings and called room service. Trivial matter, but nonetheless annoying. As is the fact that our ice bucket held nothing but water, as the cabin boy never bothered to refill it. I used one of the glasses the first day. It was removed, but never replaced. And as mentioned by the Cruise Critic, a "large" bottle of lotion and shampoo was available in his suite. Sorry, but we were in a Deluxe Mini Suite and we had one small bottle(2 fl.oz. bottle) of each between my fiancee and myself for the seven days. The shampoo ran out two days before the cruise ended, so we left the bottle on the bathroom counter as a signal that we really did need more, we didn't just stuff it in our suitcase, but that didn't matter, we did without. And while I'm on the subject of our cabin steward, our room didn't get straightened at all on our last night on board...our bathroom didn't get cleaned and our bed didn't get turned down. He didn't show up at all. These may seem like trivial issues, but were very annoying considering the newly imposed gratuity fee now being automatically added to your on board account. Seems like they know the tip is coming now, so why try to hard. As far as the food...like I said earlier the room service food was exceptional. And one small touch we enjoyed that went with the suite we were staying in was that minutes after our orders had been delivered, we would get a phone call asking how everything was...even if all we ordered was coffee. The food in the Lido was "ok", but not exceptional...not compared to what we had on the Westerdam. And one major disappointment was the fact that we could get the same meals whether we dined formal in the dining room or the Lido Restaurant. The only difference was that we didn't have to dress up in the Lido, we ordered which of four plates we wanted, then took a seat and one of the waiters would bring it to our table. That took all the fun out of getting dressed up and going to the formal dining room for a meal that you could only get if you went there. There were many times in the Lido, when something specific would run out....and wouldn't be replaced. At one meal, there were only 3 Bay Shrimp cocktails left. The lady ahead of me took one, then some guy ran up and grabbed one, saying he's forgotten to get one when he went through, so I took the last one and told my fiancee he could share with me. He mentioned to the servers that they had run out, but it didn't seem to matter to them...no comments like "Sorry Sir, we'll have some out in just a moment" etc. They just said "Oh" and that was that. "Half an hour" later we saw them bring more out. So I wonder how many people who were in line after us did without their appetizer??
Like I said earlier, the desert extravaganza aboard the Westerdam was breath taking, the number of cakes and pies and pastries was mind boggling. The chocolate sculptures and displays were incredible, and we have the pictures to prove it. This desert extravaganza wasn't. There were maybe six different cakes and a couple of platters of pastries. Whoopee. The display pieces looked like they'd been taken out of the attic for this occasion, complete with pieces missing off the "bread" windmill, and other display pieces with broken icing and finger-poked areas. It just wasn't really impressive looking. Another thing the Cruise Critic mentioned was how great the Java Bar was. NOT! In the first place it wasn't self serve. We wandered down at 10 pm one evening and it was closed!! And on top of that, they were some of the worst tasting lattes we'd ever had. Very watery tasting, in fact, no taste at all. On one occasion we had wandered down to the front desk to ask for a deck of cards. One of the girls working there just walked over to the counter, looked at us, I asked for a deck of cards, she turned around, disappeared into the back room, came back out with a pack, put it on the counter and walked back to her desk. No smiles, no nothing. But then again, they are getting an automatic tip..... Considering this ship was only four years old, we were also shocked at the state it was in. Not horrible, but not what you'd expect such a new ship to look like. The white shear curtains in our room were anything but white. They looked like they had been terribly stained, but never cleaned. In many places on the ship, the carpets looked very worn and stained, as if there had been a flood, but they looked as though they'd never been cleaned as well. We were instructed to leave our trays of dishes outside our door in the hallway for pickup. Gee, one day our "breakfast" dishes were still out in the hallway by 2 pm. Glad to see those automatic tips are being appreciated.