Holland America Line, Rotterdam, Caribbean Cruise, Overall Thoughts / Impressions.

Holland America Line, Rotterdam, Caribbean Cruise. Final Thoughts and Overall impression. 

This was the first time I had travelled with Holland America Line. Due to a tempting itinerary, I had booked a South Pacific cruise, but due to constant changes to both the itinerary and ship I requested a cancelation and refund. I was unable to cancel and get a refund but offered a change to booking, with certain stipulations regarding duration and other things. The only cruise that met the conditions was this one. So I changed the booking to a 21 day Caribbean Cruise on HAL Rotterdam.

The ship is new, the décor and the art work throughout the ship is very good. 

The main age group of passengers on the ship seemed to be elderly; we are in our mid sixties and were some of the youngest on the ship! There were many electric wheel chairs and scooters around.

 I did not like the smell of the ship, but this did seem to improve on the second leg of the cruise.

My biggest issue was that the ship was not stable, even in what looked to me looked like calm seas – the English Channel on a good day- the ship was rocking and rolling about, each sea day the ship rocked about. It was so bad that people struggled to walk in a straight line and the water in the back pool was spilling out all over the deck. As I have not been on HAL before I don’t know if this is normal, but I have been on Celebrity, round Cape Horn and never felt this amount of movement.

The size of the balcony cabin was small but adequate, the storage area was good and the shower in the bathroom was large and the water pressure good and always had hot water. Our cabin attendants were fantastic.

The layout of the 9^th floor on the Ship was odd, as there is a pool at the back, then the buffet area, then a pool, with retractable roof at the front. So the buffet area is used as a thoroughfare. Also the smoking area at the back is close to the doors so the smoke wafts through to the buffet area. On the theme of smoking, smoking is allowed in the Casino, there is a stair case down to the music walk on the third deck and the smoke also wafts down into the music walk. I was very surprised that smoking was allowed inside, especially on a new ship. 

Both pool areas were very busy and the amount of sun beds was inadequate. There were a lot of tables in both pool areas; the tables were busy with people playing cards, games, sewing ect.

Whist the ‘Music Walk’ of BB King Blues Club, Rolling Stone Rock Room and the two pianos was good, and provided evening entertainment, actual activities and the entertainment team and cruise director were poor, we did not see the cruise director and could not understand his announcements via the tannoy. The Cruise Director did strange dancing in the BB Kings Blues Bar, dressed in her uniform and Stilettos each night- a very odd thing!

Activities on sea days were Origami, flower arranging and colouring, there were a couple of line dancing classes, no energetic dancing like Zumba, Salsa or Aqua. No sports baced competitions, really very boring and apart from enjoying the bands in the evening there was not much variety in activities.

FOOD. A lot of passengers were complaining about the food, this I do not understand and think maybe they employ gourmet chefs at home? The food was outstanding. The Lido Buffet is open from 06.30 for breakfast, 11.30 for Lunch, 17.30 for dinner. It has many stations, the food is served to you, and there is a salad bar, sushi, pasta made to order, roast meats counter, sweets, breads, fabulous sandwiches, cold meats, fish….. the same food that is on the menu in the formal dining room is also served in the Lido Market. The tables are set with cutlery and the drinks service is fast.

HAL Rotterdam Food 

HAL Rotterdam Food 

HAL Rotterdam Food 

The dining room is more formal and opening times vary depending on if it’s a sea day, we ate in the dining room and found the food to be very good, plenty of choice, always hot and drinks service good. As well as this there is the New York Deli and Pizza for sandwiches, salads and Pizza made to order from 11.30 till midnight, the Dive in for Burgers and hotdogs ( and really crunchy chips)  from 11.30 to 18.00. Movie night snacks such as Nachos / chicken wings on movies by the pool nights. The Dutch Café have Dutch food from 06.30 to 22.00. As well as 24 hour room service should you want it.  Then there are the speciality restaurants!

The crew working in the restaurants, bars, cabins and cleaning the ship are outstanding, hard working and very polite even when dealing with some very obnoxious, entitled passengers – and they were a lot of these type of people! 

Although I enjoyed the food and music walk due to the rocking and rolling movement of the ship, lack of (active) activities on sea days and some extremely rude and entitled passengers onboard I would not go with HAL again.

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