jtopicz1
November 4th, 2007, 02:44 PM
Wanted to right a quick review and offer to answer any questions you may have about our sailing last week on the Zuiderdam.
We were able to meet a bunch of great people from the CC boards that really made the trip for us.
Let me start off by saying we are 26 and 24, so we're young for HAL's targeted demographic. We knew going into this cruise that there would be more relaxation as opposed to constant activities.
As other reviews have stated, we missed HMC and Grand Turk due to Noel. We were able to arrive about 4.5 hours early in Tortola and have a super long day there which was nice. HAL was great in crediting the shore excursions and port taxes to our accounts with no hassels. This is the first cruise I have walked off the ship after a week with them owing ME money instead of the other way around. HAL also had champagne at dinner one night and a great Rum Punch Gala the final night to make up for missing the ports. Weather is certainly not HAL's fault, and they did what they could. We cruise hurricane season for the savings and the fact that individual ports don't matter to us as much as a nice ship and good service, so we were bound to run into weather like this eventually.
I think many reviews have GREATLY overstated the renovations needed on the Zuiderdam. We found it's condition to be better than, or at least as expected for a ship of it's age. It was NOT kept as well Explorer of the Seas, which I believe is about the same age, but it was not run down by any means. The balcony furniture was BAD, one of our chairs was hardly useable as the "wicker" type material had basically unravelled. The rest of the ship, while showing some age, was always clean.
Service was an issue for us, and many others we talked to had similar experiences, while other had completely the opposite. The first day we of course attended the Life Boat Drill in a light rain shower. Of course HAL had a photographer going around taking everyones pictures to sell you later. The next day, we got a very nasty letter under our door demanding we come to the front office to explain why we did not attend the drill and that we needed to attend the make-up drill. I was not happy and it set a bad tone to the beginning of the trip, since we HAD attended this drill. Rather upset, I went and talked to the photo gallery who allowed us to borrow our photos. The front desk offered no apology and basically argued that we were likely not there "on time"! We were in the first 20 of our group to be there.
When showering the first night, the knob that keeps the height of our shower head adjusted was broke. Consequently the shower head was always at it's lowest and would not stay up, making the shower hard to use. It took 2 days to get this fixed.
Either the third or fourth night of the cruise, they changed our sheets. When getting into bed that night, we discovered the sheet covered in hair that was obviously not ours. The pillow case was also covered in someone else's mascara. Stuff happens, but it took them three attempts to finally get clean linens on the bed.
Our waiter and assistant waiter, had absolutely NO personility and were slow as molasses. In fact they never spoke to us at all. "What for you?" were about the only three words they knew. Our waiter NEVER smiled or offered recommendations. We had the 8:30pm seating and most shows were scheduled around 10:30pm. The first three nights we were always late. After the entree plates were cleared, it was often a 30 minute wait for desserts. I don't expect dinner to be fast, but there is no reason for gaps like this. Our table mates were great and we enjoyed the conversation with them, but I also like to be able to make the show. Finally on the fourth night, my girlfriend nicely asked the waiter if there was anyway they could speed up the desserts a bit as we wanted to make the show ontime. His response - "You want fast? I'll give you fast!". He then proceeded to walk around the table, hand out the four menus, when he handed out the fourth menu he went back to my girlfriend and said "What do you want?". She said "You just handed me the menu 10 seconds ago", and his response was "You wanted fast".
She left the dining room in tears and was spotted by the dining room manager, SAnjay, who was absolutely excellent and bent over backwards to help the situation. He begged us to stay in the dining room (we wanted to just leave and eat in our room) and gave us a table for two upstairs. So up we went. She is vegetarian and usually just orders a pasta dish with no meat. She did so, but upon biting into her third mouthful found the whole bottom of the bowl was covered in ham!
Granted none of these service issues themselves except for the waiters comments would have been that bad, but it was small things like these the entire week. Many nights she would try to get her pasta no meat in the dining room and it would be no problem, and then out of nowhere they would say one night "Thats not on the menu". Another night there was a salad with chicken that sounded good to her. She requested it, hold the chicken, and was told "That's premade - take it how it comes and pick it off".
I will say the bar staff in the Crows Nest and Northern Lights were great. Oro in the Crows Nest provided perhaps the best service we've had on any ship. All the crew members we encountered, with the exceptions of the dining room, were always smiling and pleasant.
The entertainment they had was good. The Amazing 88's (dueling Pianos) were great, as was Elliott Max the comedian. I'm not into magic, but the magicians show was entertaining none the less. There was not much in the way of activities for us, but we knew that when we booked, and it was certainly no fault of HAL.
Overall, I'm not sure we would do HAL again, or at least the Zuiderdam anytime soon. I don't want this review to come across as overly negative as many things were great, but the highly billed service on HAL just didn't compare with the previous line we sailed (RCCL) for us. If we had different dining staff to begin with, I think our experience may have been different, but who knows.
I'd be happy to answer any questions about the good or bad :)
We were able to meet a bunch of great people from the CC boards that really made the trip for us.
Let me start off by saying we are 26 and 24, so we're young for HAL's targeted demographic. We knew going into this cruise that there would be more relaxation as opposed to constant activities.
As other reviews have stated, we missed HMC and Grand Turk due to Noel. We were able to arrive about 4.5 hours early in Tortola and have a super long day there which was nice. HAL was great in crediting the shore excursions and port taxes to our accounts with no hassels. This is the first cruise I have walked off the ship after a week with them owing ME money instead of the other way around. HAL also had champagne at dinner one night and a great Rum Punch Gala the final night to make up for missing the ports. Weather is certainly not HAL's fault, and they did what they could. We cruise hurricane season for the savings and the fact that individual ports don't matter to us as much as a nice ship and good service, so we were bound to run into weather like this eventually.
I think many reviews have GREATLY overstated the renovations needed on the Zuiderdam. We found it's condition to be better than, or at least as expected for a ship of it's age. It was NOT kept as well Explorer of the Seas, which I believe is about the same age, but it was not run down by any means. The balcony furniture was BAD, one of our chairs was hardly useable as the "wicker" type material had basically unravelled. The rest of the ship, while showing some age, was always clean.
Service was an issue for us, and many others we talked to had similar experiences, while other had completely the opposite. The first day we of course attended the Life Boat Drill in a light rain shower. Of course HAL had a photographer going around taking everyones pictures to sell you later. The next day, we got a very nasty letter under our door demanding we come to the front office to explain why we did not attend the drill and that we needed to attend the make-up drill. I was not happy and it set a bad tone to the beginning of the trip, since we HAD attended this drill. Rather upset, I went and talked to the photo gallery who allowed us to borrow our photos. The front desk offered no apology and basically argued that we were likely not there "on time"! We were in the first 20 of our group to be there.
When showering the first night, the knob that keeps the height of our shower head adjusted was broke. Consequently the shower head was always at it's lowest and would not stay up, making the shower hard to use. It took 2 days to get this fixed.
Either the third or fourth night of the cruise, they changed our sheets. When getting into bed that night, we discovered the sheet covered in hair that was obviously not ours. The pillow case was also covered in someone else's mascara. Stuff happens, but it took them three attempts to finally get clean linens on the bed.
Our waiter and assistant waiter, had absolutely NO personility and were slow as molasses. In fact they never spoke to us at all. "What for you?" were about the only three words they knew. Our waiter NEVER smiled or offered recommendations. We had the 8:30pm seating and most shows were scheduled around 10:30pm. The first three nights we were always late. After the entree plates were cleared, it was often a 30 minute wait for desserts. I don't expect dinner to be fast, but there is no reason for gaps like this. Our table mates were great and we enjoyed the conversation with them, but I also like to be able to make the show. Finally on the fourth night, my girlfriend nicely asked the waiter if there was anyway they could speed up the desserts a bit as we wanted to make the show ontime. His response - "You want fast? I'll give you fast!". He then proceeded to walk around the table, hand out the four menus, when he handed out the fourth menu he went back to my girlfriend and said "What do you want?". She said "You just handed me the menu 10 seconds ago", and his response was "You wanted fast".
She left the dining room in tears and was spotted by the dining room manager, SAnjay, who was absolutely excellent and bent over backwards to help the situation. He begged us to stay in the dining room (we wanted to just leave and eat in our room) and gave us a table for two upstairs. So up we went. She is vegetarian and usually just orders a pasta dish with no meat. She did so, but upon biting into her third mouthful found the whole bottom of the bowl was covered in ham!
Granted none of these service issues themselves except for the waiters comments would have been that bad, but it was small things like these the entire week. Many nights she would try to get her pasta no meat in the dining room and it would be no problem, and then out of nowhere they would say one night "Thats not on the menu". Another night there was a salad with chicken that sounded good to her. She requested it, hold the chicken, and was told "That's premade - take it how it comes and pick it off".
I will say the bar staff in the Crows Nest and Northern Lights were great. Oro in the Crows Nest provided perhaps the best service we've had on any ship. All the crew members we encountered, with the exceptions of the dining room, were always smiling and pleasant.
The entertainment they had was good. The Amazing 88's (dueling Pianos) were great, as was Elliott Max the comedian. I'm not into magic, but the magicians show was entertaining none the less. There was not much in the way of activities for us, but we knew that when we booked, and it was certainly no fault of HAL.
Overall, I'm not sure we would do HAL again, or at least the Zuiderdam anytime soon. I don't want this review to come across as overly negative as many things were great, but the highly billed service on HAL just didn't compare with the previous line we sailed (RCCL) for us. If we had different dining staff to begin with, I think our experience may have been different, but who knows.
I'd be happy to answer any questions about the good or bad :)