Just Back From The Zuiderdam

[carabou1]

Positives:

S cat. suites is great. Plenty of storage and great balcony. Suite Perks and Neptune Lounge cannot be beat. Room Steward did a wonderful job.

Eastern Carib. was a good choice. Tortola left a little to be desired but still interesting.

Negatives:

Food in dining room was not great, in fact at times poor. Some soup was cold and lumpy and meat, especially roast beef was tough.

One evening our table of eight ordered dessert and never saw our waiter again. We ended up the last table in the dining room. Of course we complained to the appropriate people and this never happened again.

We will give Holland America another try but can honestly say if this happens again, we won't be back.

We are not complainers and usually have a wonderful time while cruising. This was our 16th cruise on various cruiselines, so we have alot to compare this with.

[localady]

Positives:

S cat. suites is great. Plenty of storage and great balcony. Suite Perks and Neptune Lounge cannot be beat. Room Steward did a wonderful job.

Eastern Carib. was a good choice. Tortola left a little to be desired but still interesting.

Negatives:

Food in dining room was not great, in fact at times poor. Some soup was cold and lumpy and meat, especially roast beef was tough.

One evening our table of eight ordered dessert and never saw our waiter again. We ended up the last table in the dining room. Of course we complained to the appropriate people and this never happened again.

We will give Holland America another try but can honestly say if this happens again, we won't be back.

We are not complainers and usually have a wonderful time while cruising. This was our 16th cruise on various cruiselines, so we have alot to compare this with.
Thanks for your comments, service problems in the dining room sure seems to be a continuing theme.:o We are told that those from HAL peruse these boards, if they do, perhaps they will see a situation that deserves review and action, and hopefully, a decision to beef up the service in the dining room before they lose passengers!!:eek:

Thanks for sharing your review with us!:cool:

[Tak8]

Carabou1: What days/times were you in St. Thomas and Tortola? Also what time were you in Nassau. I know a lot of summer folks had their itinerary changed, so I wanted to see if it is consistent now.

[sail7seas]

Carabou...


Welcome Back. Happy you enjoyed your "S" Suite on Zuiderdam. It really is a nice cabin, isn't it. :)

Sorry the dining room was a disappointment to you.

Thanks for posting your comments.

[floridakeith]

Thanks for your comments, service problems in the dining room sure seems to be a continuing theme.:o We are told that those from HAL peruse these boards, if they do, perhaps they will see a situation that deserves review and action, and hopefully, a decision to beef up the service in the dining room before they lose passengers!!:eek:

Thanks for sharing your review with us!:cool:
My wife and I and a friend also just returned from the Oct 31 to Nov 6 Zuiderdam Eastern Caribbean cruise. I will post a review later.
We were at 6.15 dining in the Lower Vista level. Our waiting team of Ali and Anwar were superb and we had no problems whatever with service, though we did hear other passengers talking about slow service.
The food was not up the standard of our Celebrity Horizon cruise but we all found it very good. I usually judge the selections by how many times on a cruise I have to fall back to the old standby of steak, chicken or salmon, and the answer was not once.
Our only real problem was with a toilet that persistently would not flush. After 4 days of complaining and getting no permanent solution I wrote a letter of complaint to the Hotel Manager. That got action! We had no further problem with the toilet but we continued to hear of other passengers with problems. This "new" vacuum flushing system seems problematic. Have other people experienced this problem on the Vista Class ships?
Anyway we will be happy to cruise with HAL again, not least because my wife won a free 7 day Caribbean cruise at the bingo!

[JDee]

If only more people would stay away from the DR and eat at the Pinnacle, order room service, the Lido or the pool side Bar-B-Q. That way, the wait staff would better service those fewer people who showed up....

[carabou1]

We were in St. Thomas on Tuesday and Tortola on Wednesday.

On the St. Thomas we were to dock at Crown Bay, this was changed to anchoring off shore. Our schedule at first was to leave at 11:00 P.M. and then it was changed to 6:00P.M. and finally they settled on our departure being 9:00 P.M.

I believe our time in Tortola was 8:00 A.M. to 5:30 P.M.

We went to Freeport and not Nassau.

I'm sure someone else can give you the exact times of each port.

[snoe]

Carabou~

More questions about St. Thomas..

1. Since departing time was changed to 9:00 PM., what time did you have to be back on ship?

2. Do you know the time that the first tender went to St. Thomas?

We're going to be on the Zui on November 27th and we're planning a day sail. I want to make sure that we have ample time to get to the charter and then ample time to get back on board.



snoe

[MandyGirl]

We went to Freeport and not Nassau.

I'm sure someone else can give you the exact times of each port.
Thanks for sharing!! Was Freeport your original itinerary? Or had it previously been Nassau?

Thanks!

[Ziggy7]

Hi Carabou,

Welcome Home. Glad to hear you enjoyed your "S" Suite on Zuiderdam! Sorry you had poor service in the dinningroom.
We havent tried a suite yet but hope to some day :)
Thanks for sharing with us :)

[Giorgi-one]

If only more people would stay away from the DR and eat at the Pinnacle, order room service, the Lido or the pool side Bar-B-Q. That way, the wait staff would better service those fewer people who showed up....

Why should I stay away from the dining room to make up for obvious deficiencies caused by Holland America not having enough wait staff in the dining room. Perhaps I could pack my own food and eat in my room to help them out.

[elmorejj]

I read JDee`s post as being tongue in cheek! at least I hope they meant it that way.....jean :cool:

[JDee]

Yes Jean, that is exactly how it was intended. Couldh't resist posting it after all the opinions posted yesterday on another thread about not eating all evening meals in the main DR.


Georgi-one, sorry about my post being taken seriously.....

Happy cruising.....

[OCruisers]

carabou1....Thanks for telling us about your cruise! Gosh, almost everyone seems to be a bit unhappy with the food in the dining room on Z.... :(

When you have a minute, could you tell us exactly what you did in Tortola?

Again, appreciate your time for this report!

Happy Sailing! OCruisers :)

[KSCnCA]

Did you stop at HMC? How was it? Did you notice which cabanas are up and operational? Thanks for the review. Sorry to hear about the poor service in the dining room. Listen up HAL! You are losing customers.

[Giorgi-one]

Yes Jean, that is exactly how it was intended. Couldh't resist posting it after all the opinions posted yesterday on another thread about not eating all evening meals in the main DR.


Georgi-one, sorry about my post being taken seriously.....

Happy cruising.....

Sorry about that. I usually pick up on jokes but I really thought you were serious.

[tommy]

We did a B2B last 2 weeks of Oct. had many of the same problems.Mentioned it to the Headwaiter at the end of the 1st week,It didnt help the service didnt get any better the 2nd week.I really do think it is due to cutbacks in personnel,also I BELIEVE IF THE TIPS WERE STILL DONE ON THE LAST NIGHT the waiters would make sure everything was fine with thier tablesbefore helping out with other tables.Our waiter was constantly helping in other areas,and our ass waiter was all over the dining room we were upstairs and would see him downstairs helping while we were waiting for our drink or refill or just some one to tell that our dinner wasnt what we ordered. TOM

[carabou1]

While in Tortola we took the jeep safari shore ex. We enjoyed it. You have to have a sense of humor. The only thing safari was the zebra color jeeps, As far as wild life we saw pigs, cows and goats. it was Tortola after all. We also stopped at a beach near the airport and enjoyed some rum punch (the best part). After our tour we went to the craft market which is close the the ship. They had some nice things and the people are very warm. I think next time we would take the Baths shore ex, but I am glad we did see Tortola.

HMC was very enjoyable. The beach has some erosion and most of the cabanas are up and running

Freeport was on our original itinerary.

As far as tenders in St. Thomas, you need to call HAL because I am sure it will change. Usually, you have to be back on the ship 1/2 hour before sailing.

Jeanie

[peaches from georgia]

I think they are so overworked with too many pax to serve, especially on the Vista ships where the dining room is so large, that the stewards and asst. stewards are helping each other out when they can to try to reduce the amount of complaints they all receive. I know from a conversation on the Maasdam with an officer that the Vista dining rooms are very undesirable places to work because of understaffing and they all do their darndest not to get assigned there. :(

[Oxo]

Just got back from the Volendam. Talked to waiters and asst. waiters. They all say the same thing. Before, there were 2 Waiters and 1 Asst. assigned to 24 guests. Now, there is 1 Waiter and 1 Asst. assigned to 24 guests. Auto tipping has nothing to do with slow/poor service. They are overworked due to cutbacks in the amount of staff servicing the dining rooms.

Another example, our waiter had 22 people and the other waiter had 16. When we asked the Head Waiter for that area about how tips are pooled and divided between the waiters he told us 'regardless of the number of people a waiter serves, they all get the same amount unless a person tips extra.' That is not fair if one waiter has 22 people and another has 16.

Our waiter did not have time to talk to anyone and we very seldom saw our Asst. Waiter.

All of this was common, as we discussed this with other passengers on this cruise who have cruised HAL many times.

The HAL workers are being overworked and underpaid. Now since auto tipping is in force, they pay for their uniforms, cleaning and their trips home. Will write more later.

[tommy]

I just meant before auto tipping they had more help,plus it was to thier benefit to make sure everything was right.You I do believe they would still make sure everything was right if they thought thier tip depended on it. TOM

[OCruisers]

While in Tortola we took the jeep safari shore ex. We enjoyed it. You have to have a sense of humor. The only thing safari was the zebra color jeeps, As far as wild life we saw pigs, cows and goats. it was Tortola after all. We also stopped at a beach near the airport and enjoyed some rum punch (the best part). After our tour we went to the craft market which is close the the ship. They had some nice things and the people are very warm. I think next time we would take the Baths shore ex, but I am glad we did see Tortola.Jeanie

Jeanie .... Thanks for your time to reply!

Happy Sailing! OCruisers :)