Westerdam RT Seattle to Alaska - July 12-19

The Cruise

HAL Westerdam RT from Seattle-July 12-19, 2014.

First off I want to say it was an amazing experience and I am completely hooked on Alaska! Other than Juneau and the morning of Glacier Bay – we had good weather. No rain and it was sunny in Ketchikan! The seas were calm to flat, we were really lucky. We aren’t experienced cruisers by any means but we have cruised on Princess and Royal Caribbean. Princess has been our cruise line of choice in the past. As this was our first time to Alaska and our first time on a Holland American ship and any comparisons I make will be between Princess and HAL.

Embarkation

Since we were able to drive to Seattle we didn’t have to hassle with flying. I had prepaid to park at the pier ($177/week) and once we sorted ourselves out and found the entrance to the parking lot – from car to cabin took about an hour. I thought it was very smooth. As a side note – I had brought my allowed two bottles of wine and though I was asked about alcohol after security screening, nobody looked in my bags – I could have had a whole bar in there and no one would have been the wiser.

The Westerdam

The ship is lovely in many ways, but at first it seemed to be a little worn around the edges, as the week went on though, it became like our house – there were things that needed sprucing, but we didn’t see them anymore. We loved the Crow’s Nest, so much better than Skywalkers on Princess-we ended every evening up there. I did miss a grand Atrium and the busker type musical entertainment I am used to on Princess. Also, other than the Crow’s Nest the rest of the ships interior felt closed in somehow. It was nice to be able to walk from one end to the other (and we were always doing that) in just a few minutes. The other thing we both commented on all week was the ship never felt crowded we always wondered where everybody was.

We did have a little excitement with fire onboard –an electrical fire in an ice machine on Deck 4. I’ve never seen a fire crew in full gear move through a cruise ship – but I did this time. Pretty exciting in a scary kind of way. The Captain did a good job of keeping everyone apprised of the situation and it was quickly handled.

The Cabin

We had booked an SS cabin mid-ship on Deck 6 (Upper Verandah). Now, I do have to say that I found that the cabin felt small compared to the mini-suite (Princess) and junior suite (RCL) we’ve had in the past. After a few days I decided it was the two chairs that made it feel crowded. We never used them except as a place to drop things. I moved one of them off to the side of the balcony door and that helped a bit. The bathroom, while large with a tub, separate shower and two sinks, looked very tired and worn. The balcony was covered and quite large, almost the size of a full-suite balcony on Princess. There were two vinyl wicker chairs and ottomans and a small very scratched up table with two chairs. However, the storage- my stars! I way over-packed for this trip (my husband wants me to enter a 12 step program for over-packers!) and I couldn’t even begin to use all the drawers. We had a problem with the heat/air conditioning vent all week – it blew cold or hot air right down on my side of the bed and was really noisy. The passenger services desk said the facilities department kept trying to adjust the air flow, but they never did solve the problem. What was strange is that on Saturday night and all day Sunday it was fine, when we got back from dinner on Sunday it had started and never was fixed. Oh well, they were very nice about it, just not too effective.

Crew and Service

Out stateroom steward was very good, though both he and his associate/assistant seemed a little overwhelmed. I did find out that between them they had 27 suite style cabins to service, which seemed like a very heavy load. We asked for ice every day, a wine/bottle opener, ash tray and extra hangers all of which materialized almost immediately. I did leave them a note saying although we loved towel animals they didn’t need to feel obligated – but we still had one almost every night.

We had mediocre to almost surly service in the bars (and we tried almost all of them J). On Princess we were able to find a spot for a pre-dinner drink and by the third night the servers knew I wanted my martini very dry, on the rocks with extra olives. We tried the Pinnacle Bar where it was the same server but she never quite got the order correct and in the Ocean Bar we actually felt very distinctly that they couldn’t be bothered. However, the server in the Crow’s Nest did remember our after dinner drink and called us by name so that was nice.

Also, besides the issue with the noisy fan, I really had to struggle with the front desk to change out our bar set-up. When I booked, as a surprise and early anniversary present, I purchased the Suite Amenities package. It came with 2 bottles of wine and a one-time bar set-up. The At Your Service person (Ice) called and asked what we wanted and I picked the wine and one bottle each of vodka and gin thinking it would be like the bar set-up on Princess with those little airline style bottles. Oh no – it was full fifths of each. Well, I spent one day looking at those and thinking – now we like to have a good time but there is no way on earth we are going to drink those in a week. I called and asked to switch them out for an additional two bottles of wine. Well, that was a real thing to get accomplished for some reason. Finally on about the 4th day we were able to convince them that was what we really wanted to do, yes we understood that the value was not a straight across switch but please just do it. It shouldn’t have been that difficult.

Food/Dining

Overall the food was pretty “meh” but food is subjective and I still managed to gain 4 pounds. The first night we ate in the Pinnacle Restaurant and that was very good. For the first time ever we had anytime dining, we try not to do that because my husband has food allergies, but it worked out just fine. “Big D” (I am not really sure what his title is-Dining Room Manager?) – made reservations for us after the second night at around 7:00ish each night and ensured that we had a table with a window in the same section each time. Dewah our waiter and Romeo the wine steward were exceptional and really made us feel special. We never had anything bad, but we never had anything that really excited us either. The Vista Dining room is so much nicer than those small cramped excuses for dining rooms Princess has – plus you could get there from anywhere without having to follow a trail of bread crumbs.

I really don’t like buffets, so we only ventured to eat in the Lido a handful of times. The food was tepid and overall not too appetizing and the pizza is nowhere near Princess standards. That being said, the space is so much better than the Horizon Court on Princess. Easy to figure out traffic pattern and stations and surprisingly easy to find a seat. The Dive-In was great – only a short wait for what we wanted and good (loved those fries!).

Random Thoughts

The muster drill-which was (if I remember about 3:15 on the day we sailed). I happen to think these are very important-I want to know where I am supposed to go in case of an emergency and how I am going to get there, but Princess does it so much better than HAL. As has been previously stated many times – Princess drills are inside, you can hear what is being said, roll is taken by scanning your cruise card and you have the added entertainment of the people who put on the life jackets and try their whistles. Now standing isn’t too much of a problem for us, but I know that it can be trying for others. We were grouped in front of our life boat and standing right in front of a vent fan, so we couldn’t hear a thing our boat captain was saying; but in the grand scheme of things, it really only took a few minutes.

We are sort of geeks and like to watch the ship’s progress and try and figure out where we are. That was aided this trip by maps I got from two cruise books I had ordered on Amazon, plus the Glacier Bay map provided by the ship. I wish the ship’s channel on the TV gave more information and a better idea of where we were, plus it would have been nice to have the outside temperature – but that’s just me.

I found it strange that the “Out and About” newsletter (sorry if that isn’t what is called, I’m typing at work and my notes are at home) wasn’t delivered the last morning. I would have liked to know if the Vista DR/Lido was open and maybe a recap of the voyage etc. Again, a personal preference.

It was a nice touch to have the Cruise Director and what I assume were members of each major department standing in the terminal to wish the departing passengers Bon Voyage.

Disembarkation

Well handled overall. We did figure out breakfast was available so we made use of the Vista Dining Room one last time. I had left our carry-on bags in the cabin while we ate and was a little taken aback to find that they were already turning the room when we went back up to get our things. That aside, we found a place to sit and within about 20 minutes our group (Brown – 8:45) was called. We walked right off – no line, grabbed our bags, went through Immigration and actually were pulling out of the parking lot at 8:45 – I think the whole process took less than 20 minutes – ship to car. Well done on both HAL’s part and the Port of Seattle.

Smoking

I don’t want to get into a debate here, I am just going to report our experience. This cruise was booked at practically the last minute for us as a change from our Princess cruise I had booked almost a year ago. Family circumstances forced us to change our dates or cancel going to Alaska. So when we booked it I had no idea that smoking was allowed on the balcony. For us, that was a plus as my husband smokes. We only had one incident when in a rare thoughtless moment he lit up a cigarette while in port and our neighbor stuck his head around the divider and tried to tell us there was no smoking. Before we could even respond he ducked away and apparently went inside to report us. He was best not pleased to discover that smoking was allowed. He did come back to say he was wrong and when we attempted to engage him in conversation – stating “Hey, you booked a balcony and should be able to enjoy it – so let us know you are out on your balcony and you won’t have to deal with smoke”. But he wasn’t interested in hearing that and was quite rude. That aside, from that point on Kim never lit up if there was anyone out on either side of us and in port he always went either to Deck 9 aft or Deck 10 forward to smoke and the neighbor, while never letting us know overtly did use his balcony quite frequently (and never dealt with smoke). We both know that smoking on balconies is on its way out, I just hope that as that happens a comfortable smoking area will be facilitated for people who do smoke. The two outdoor areas on the Westerdam aren’t bad (we’ve seen worse) but are still fairly exposed to the elements and Alaska can get cold, windy and rainy.

The ports:

As I said we booked this cruise at the last minute and due to several factors we decided to consider it a reconnaissance cruise for the next time and we would scope out the ports on our own. Something that was invaluable in doing that (besides everything I had gleaned from these boards) was our Frommer’s guide. It was a great tool.

Juneau was kind of a bust for us – 5 ships in port and it seemed a madhouse. We took a shuttle (the white bus) to Mendenhall but there were so many people there you could hardly get a picture with everyone crowded around. It didn’t help that the trails were flooded so things were really jammed up. I had really hoped to be able to hike to Nugget Falls. I get somewhat claustrophobic in large crowds so by the time we got back to the ship I was done. Next time we will absolutely book a tour/excursion of some sort. I did hear that one Holland excursion got stranded, on the glacier I think, but don’t quote me, and there was quite an effort on HAL’s part to get those people back to the ship. The people involved in the incident were pleased in how it was handled.

Glacier Bay- what can you say about it other than amazing! I was really worried early in the morning (I was up at 4:30 a.m. almost every morning) because it was so foggy and continued to be foggy almost all the way to the glacier itself – but before we got there it cleared off to a beautiful sunny day. I like to think that Glacier Bay was slowly revealing itself to us as islands and mountains peeked out of the fog and finally there it was in all its glory. The Captain turned the boat and we could see the glacier from our balcony. He must have stayed stationary for 45 minutes. It was awe-inspiring and we got to see a major calving. The cruise back out was beautiful.

Sitka had to be my favorite port. Someone on Cruise Critic and bless whoever that was, had posted to be sure you were up and outside somewhere for the sail-in and I was so glad. What a magical experience. The sea was flat calm and it was so quiet you felt like you were the only people in the world. It is such a pretty town and people were so very friendly. We took a shuttle out to Fortress of the Bears which was very interesting and I managed to make a few purchases at Sitka Rose Gallery (my Visa card only gave one small shriek). I definitely want to go back and see the Raptor Center, the Archangel dancers and many other things.

Ketchikan-we got really, really lucky and had a beautiful sunny day there. Frommers recommended the walk to the Totem Heritage Center and so we were up and off the ship early. I am so glad we did this, it was like getting out and seeing how the people lived. What a nice walk and if you are a culture/history geek like we are – it was very interesting. Other than that we walked back using the Married Man Trail and shopped for more souvenir/gifts. Funny that there were 5 ships in Ketchikan too – but while bustling it didn’t have that crowded overwhelmed feeling like Juneau.

Victoria

It was so windy and cold in Victoria and I was so tired from not really sleeping (from a combination of the noisy fan and all the very early mornings) that we opted just not to get off the ship. We promised ourselves a long week-end in Victoria in the not too distant future. I want to be able to spend several hours at Butchart Gardens.

I am still not sure if HAL is our cruise line, it wasn’t a bad experience at all, but there just always seemed to be something a little off-kilter the whole week. I’m not sure if it was the Westerdam being a small ship, which we have never been on, or Holland as a cruise line…I still can’t put my finger on it.

So, as I said – overall great cruise. I’d look at HAL again, but the price and itinerary would have to be pretty great before I would go with them over Princess, even with HAL’s smoking on balconies – which we both know will go away in the not too distant future.

Thank you for your comprehensive and fair review.

Thanks for taking the time to write and post a very thoughtful report of your Westerdam cruise to Alaska.

Thanks for your review!

Thanks for your review - it seemed pretty fair and well-balanced. I'm glad you enjoyed your ports and Glacier Bay.

Thank you for your review.

Yes, it's worth allowing several hours to look around the Butchart Gardens.

Thank you for taking the time to write your review.

Glad you enjoyed your Alaskan cruise.

Thanks for the report!

Thanks for your review and taking the time to share with us.

I noticed you were looking for the dining hours on the last day. There is no On Location produced on the last day. Instead, you should have received a Cruise Log. Along with info on the cruise, the dining hours are on it.

Thanks so much for your very thoughtful and well-balanced review. It was quite helpful to me, as I am in the process of trying to decide between a Princess and a HAL cruise to Alaska next summer. I've cruised both lines once and both cruises were to "sunny" southern locations. Our main goal is to find a cruise that goes to Glacier Bay, so your discussion of that portion of your cruise was very helpful.