My wife and I did a similar cruise on the Zaandam from San Diego to Hawaii several years ago and wanted to try it from a different port, and to see what changes may have occurred to the ship and/or ports of call. The ship seems brighter and refreshed, except for the TVs in the cabins which are from the 70s, or so they appear based on the very poor picture quality. Speaking of which I can't ...
Been on this cruise three times before. Great if you like days at sea, as we do.
The entire staff of the Zaandam, in every department, provided excellent service, with a few monitor hiccups during the cruise. We are confused by a couple of negative reviews of the short repositioning cruise just prior to ours - the one from San Diego to Vancouver.
We heard rumours about up coming changes to ...
I took this cruise to Hawaii because of the long days at see. I was in Cabin 6127 on the Veranda Deck. Great stateroom, cabin stewards very attentive. Loved spending time on my balcony - private sunbathing, private reading and late night drink. Dining in the main " walk in" dining room was awful. You could walk in but you would have to wait forever. Finally, when I wanted to dine there I made a ...
We embarked in Vancouver in a timely fashion. No problems, no surprises other than our bags had already arrived at our cabin and we were only slightly delayed in the boarding process. Very pleasant. After everything we had been told on this site, we expected, as 1 star Mariners we would be able to eat in the main dining room for lunch, but alas, we were turned away and ate our first meal in the ...
Just returned from this cruise,I do really like sea days but there just was not any thing to do during the day
Cooking class MEH who ever goes home and makes this stuff,because of this there were no movie during the day.And when they did have an evening movie it was so very old "Hawaii" come on, that movie must have been 30 years old!
Trivia on the ships has become very old
All the fun stuff ...
First the good, The ship reflects the grandeur of the past glory days of cruising. Quality decor and comfortable surroundings gave us the initial good feeling that we would be enjoying the next 16 days sailing the pacific. Unfortunately, that was about the only good thing about this cruise. We were welcomed to our cabin with a revolting smear on the rim of the toilet seat. After we mentioned it to ...
I should preface this review by saying that even a bad cruise isn't totally bad. On the other hand, I haven't done a Carnival Cruise in a while (ha).
4 out of my last 5 cruises have been on Holland America but this Zaandam cruise was (by far) the worst.
My first cabin was 1882 on the Dolphin deck. On the first night of the cruise the seas became a bit rough and we began to hear this loud ...
After many years of travelling to exciting destinations to celebrate special occasions, we were challenged to come up with a really special trip to celebrate our 49th wedding anniversary. We have sailed on Holland America many times, so our first thought was to explore possible itineraries on one of their ships. It didn't take us long to settle on a 14 day cruise to Hawaii from San Diego. ...
SO much to tell after two weeks! I'll try not to be ridiculously verbose...
We sailed out of San Diego. This is a great port to cruise in and out of. The airport and the cruise terminal are so close together, and many hotels between the two have free shuttles. We stayed at both the Hampton Inn (Downtown) and the Holiday Inn on the Bay. Both were great, with the only exception being the ...
Embarkation: We boarded the Zaandam in San Diego. Boarding was fast and efficient. We arrived at the pier around noon and were in our cabin by 12:30. The staff both on shore and on board were very helpful.
Stateroom:
We were in cabin 2603 (center, starboard side). As with previous HAL ships, the stateroom was roomy and comfortable. Our cabin was not particularly clean.. This was ...