Veendam Review
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Background Infomation I am a single 30 year old male who started cruising at age 5. Since then I have sailed on a few of the major lines. Some of the lines include Carnival, Celebrity, and the now defunct Regent Cruises. However most of my cruises are on Holland America Line. Before the new Mariner program came online I had a total of 163 days. My last two cruise have been by myself. Prior to these I have sailed most of my cruises with my parents. Now I pay the single supplement fare of 150% of the advertised price. I love cruises and plan on doing many more.
This cruise was planned about 1 year ago. I travelled with a family that I met on a previous Holland America cruise. This cruise is was a 7 day cruise out of New York on the Ms Veendam to Bermuda. The last time I was in Bermuda was approx. 19 years ago on the old Nieuw Amsterdam. I don't remember Bermuda that well because I was young. So this was almost a totally new experience for me.
Embarkation I live on Long Island so it was a short 30 minute drive to the New York Passenger Terminal at Pier 90. I car pooled with my friends to the pier. When we arrived we noticed that most of the parking was already taken. We arrived around 9:30AM. The security personnel at the parking lot directed us to Pier 88. This Pier had the parking for our ship and the Norwegian Dawn. It seems that because all of the ship using the New York Piers this summer is causing a shortage of parking spots. Before we got to the parking spot we dropped our bags off with some bag handlers. The room tags were already attached. Because we arrived before the other cruise was totally off we had to wait a few minutes until we could go through the X-ray machines and security check point. When we did go through it we were asked for our express boarding pass so they could check it agains our picture id. After proceeding through the check point the next area was the check in counter. The family I was traveling was in a suite, but these counters didn't have any attendants and they were forced to check in with the rest of passenger. Once our cards were given to us we were directed to the general waiting area. The husband asked about a suite waiting area and know one new about it. Few minutes passed and someone came and got them and directed them to the suite area. By 11:30 we were on board the Veendam and by 1:30 we were in our rooms.