Holland Masdam vs. RCL Dawn out of Boston

Recently took these two ships out of Boston on an almost back to back (came back on Dawn from Bermuda on Fri and left on Massdam for Canada on Saturday).

 

Liked much on both but saw stark differences in the two cruise lines.

 

Entertainment - No doubt the RCL does this best. Entertainers on Holland ship it varied from passable to really awful. Ncl had some great shows as well as special entertainers.

 

Food - Buffet on NCL was held in the Garden room (after several days we called it the Garbage room). It was always massive crowds and impossible to find a table. Holland had a really good hamburger bar and taco bar with crowding never a problem plus good food on buffet.

 

Holland had a far more refined dining and better food by far including a new England seafood dinner one night and Lobster and lamb chops another with no required add.

 

Also had room service several times on Holland with no added service charge

 

Shipmates - RCL was comprised of probably 90% people from Boston who were on the unlimited beverage package. On first day at sea saw two fights and on arrival of ship in Bermuda saw the shipboard security staff forcing a couple off of the ship who were in cabin near me. Holland was comprised of more mature people from all over the US and Canada.

 

Wait staff for drinks was non existent and waits at bars for a drink often exceeded five minuets. With such overloading of staff quality of drinks was always suspect.

 

Waiters in dining room handled all drink orders and often got them wrong and had no knowledge of wine.

 

Had no problem getting drinks on Holland and they were more economically priced with a 15% service charge vs. 18% on RCL

 

Casino - Always smoke filled on RCL but with much action Holland casino was dead all of the time.

 

Embarking and exiting ship - because the RCL was almost three time as large spent much time in lines with over two hours being required to get on ship at the beginning and at the end of cruise. If you like lines you will love RCL.

 

Children program was very good on NCL and was poor on Holland. Used the threat on my child that if they misbehaved I would check him into this program. It worked.

 

General conclusion. Unless I receive another free promotion coupon from NCL I will probably never cruise them again. Holland offered far more of what I was after (with no upcharge like NCL) and am contemplating other cruises with them.

You may want to do a quick edit, you wrote RCL several times instead of NCL.

HAL'S OK it's based on what you're looking for. The service is much better than NCL. Unfortunately the entertainment is worse than my local theater group. The food is a little better on HAL. Mostly it's the demographic you need to consider(OLD, OLD then Older.) If being in bed by 11:00 is your thing, then HAL is for you. Our last cruise on HAL they had to close the main pool because there was an "accident" in it. They had drain and clean it. It was closed for 2 days. There were no children in the pool at the time. If go by the lounge where they play chamber music in the evening it reminds you of a retirement home. Half the people are asleep. Again. the food is good and service is great. It's really based on what you're looking for in a cruise. We were on the Nieuw Amsterdam our last 2 HAL cruises in a Neptune suite. Here's an example: A video is worth a 10,000 thousand words?.

This video is taken on the main entertainment deck on that ship. BTW this is not my video. We're much older than these two poor souls. But, I'm sure we're not old enough to enjoy this type of atmosphere very often on a cruise.

You may want to do a quick edit, you wrote RCL several times instead of NCL.

 

Yeppers, and also the R and N keys are not anywhere as close together!

 

:cool::cool:

Could I said it was Freudian. As diamond on RCl I guess I was used to that. Anyway not much difference between the two lines these days other than RCl is far better

I enjoyed the lack of children on the Bermuda cruise last June after having done several Dawn to BDA trips. You could actually get in the pool.