On the Zaandam today

We started the day with out flushing toilets and ended the day with no A/C. Our verandah suite is a sauna..thank God for the balcony. This is the pits. Supposed to be back up and cool sometime. The A/C's been out all day. Free bottled water! WHEEEE!!!!

Write more later!

OMG! We will be on the Zaandam on Sat.! Is the problem shipwide? I hope everything gets worked out QUICKLY for your sake!!!! You may not get the chance to reply, but make the best of it, and try to enjoy your trip.:rolleyes: It can only get better!!!:)

YIPES!!!!!!!!! -- we are on the Zaandam on the 26th -- and I just moved out of cabin 000 today and into a nice verandah! Where are the issues? Please don't leave us hanging here.........

Toilets on ships occasionally have problems because some passenger puts things in that don't belong. This can affect a number of cabins "upstream" of the problem.

A/C could either be plumbing or compressor (just like at home. Whee!). Plumbing can usually be fixed very quickly. But if they need parts, well, it's a lo-o-ong way to the Home Depot!:)

Oh my! I hope for your sake things get fixed ASAP and for my sake that they stay fixed. We sail on Saturday! :eek:

Pboedeker

Don't leave us hanging! What happened? Was it all fixed? Have you melted? I suspect the balcony at night is a great advantage with the AC out. How are you doing? We are wondering. Don't leave us in suspense any longer.

My guess is all is well and you are out having the time of your life while on the water rather than wasting you time talking to those of us who are currently land locked!

We are leaving on 4/2 on the Zaandam. Tell me these problems are fixed...I hope...:)

May you Zaandam people should pack a plunger and a fan. :)

OMG the internet has been virtually non existent since Wednesday. First time I have been able to get on and it's taken my 30 minutes! A/C was fixed Wednesday night and by 2 or 3 am it finally cooled down so we could sleep in the cabin. Rained out Half Moon Cay today....that's too sad. We stopped there but didn't spend anytime because of the wind!

Later more...internet guy wants to shut the thing down!!!

Whew!!! Thanks bunches for your reply. Good to know that you are cool again and hopefully we will also be cool on the 26th. One of the things I like about the Zaandam is that their air conditioning has always been super -- we have always been able to have our cabin as warm or cool as we wish and have never experienced under-air conditioning elsewhere on the ship.

By the way, where is your cabin? Was the AC out on the whole ship or only in certain areas? Is everyone comfortable now?

Thanks again for interrupting your time at sea to share!

We were on the Verandah deck 6208. The A/C was out all over the ship. According to the captain, both compressors went out and the back up compressor had recently been upgraded and hadn't been "charged" yet. So when the two went out..they had to recharge the back up. By 5pm they had the back up recharged and then continued working on the originals. They were back up by 10pm, but it takes a long time to cool the ship off.

Here's a 3 minute review:

Great service, great food, beautiful ship. Clientele too old for our taste. Will try HAL again in 20 years.

We were on the Verandah deck 6208. The A/C was out all over the ship. According to the captain, both compressors went out and the back up compressor had recently been upgraded and hadn't been "charged" yet. So when the two went out..they had to recharge the back up. By 5pm they had the back up recharged and then continued working on the originals. They were back up by 10pm, but it takes a long time to cool the ship off.

 

Here's a 3 minute review:

 

Great service, great food, beautiful ship. Clientele too old for our taste. Will try HAL again in 20 years.

Just how old was the clientele? We are on the Zaandam in 4 weeks, looking forward to it. Hope we aren't disappointed.

According to the cruise staff this was a really young crowd? There were 25 people under the age of 25! 10 of those were under 17. The rest of the passengers were mostly over 65. Mostly we saw men in black socks with shorts and lots of hearing aids. Nice people, but with that age mix the cruise staff slants their activities to that group.

I've been on many cruises...never before did I ever hear the poolside band play polkas!

We had a great time...but won't do that again for a while!

Here's my full review:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=152832

Thanks Pboedeker.......So we won't be seeing the Baha Men pooside huh? Will be a little different for us as well, although not in that age group, we are easy to get along with.

Thanks again....

How things change in a week!! We were on the March 5th sailing of the Zaandam and had gorgeous weather for our entire trip. There was one evening of a sea day that the winds were present but that was no big deal.

We found the guests on the ship were mixed ages and we like that. In fact we expected a more mature crowd than there was.

We traveled as two couples trying to get away from our jobs and the cold weather. We wanted a relaxing atmosphere and that was exactly what we had!! We always find friendly passengers onboard HAL ships and this cruise was no exception.

Music on the Lido deck came from the Oasis lounge above and they featured more contemporary music. At times a band was outside playing typical Caribbean music.

Hey!! We LOVED our cruise!

Music on the Lido deck came from the Oasis lounge above and they featured more contemporary music. At times a band was outside playing typical Caribbean music.

 

Hey!! We LOVED our cruise!

Now I'm really puzzled? Where was the "Oasis" lounge above the Lido deck (Deck 8)? Never found an "Oasis" lounge on my deck map layout? Deck 9 was Sports deck with Club Hal, The Loft, Sports Courts and the Crow's Nest. Maybe the teen area, Club Oasis that played recorded music at the back of the pool, is what you are referring too?

I'm not sure that the "Chicken Dance" qualifies as 'typical Caribbean music'?

But JMHO

Now I am attempting to post a few pics of the Oasis taken the week of March 5th, 2005. My camera was new and I did not realize that incorrect dates wpould appear on my photos.

Here is the waterfall..

Okay, that is the teen area called Club Oasis. Fun place, but they won't let 18-21 up there. :(

Cool music that was pretty hip if you were on the aft pool area.

This was definitely an older crowd...I was told by a member of the cruise staff that the average age was 57, and that it was the youngest crowd that they had had on board in weeks. Like on any ship there were a few interesting passengers - the Ben Stiller and Jeff Daniels look alikes - and there was an actual star. The gentlemen that played the part of Ike Godsey on the Waltons was a passenger. I talked to him on several occasions, and he was quite friendly.

I am forty, and felt quite young. We had the late dinner sitting (8:30) and our section was pretty empty. It seemed that quite a few people ate at the Lido every night. Met a few couples who only ate in their cabin.

We did not experience any plumbing problems, but our cabin did get a little hot the afternoon the a/c went out.

Food and service were great. The aft pool area gets very crowded on sea days - and I miss the deck space that has been taken over by Club HAL and the Loft. , but all in all, I found it to be an average cruise - no wow factor, and very little night life - it was like a ghost town. By Wednesday I was looking forward to going home. For someone looking for a more sedate cruise - this particular cruise would have fit the bill. Next week's may be entirely different.

Personally, I prefer the Vista Class ships, as overall the atmosphere is a bit more livlier.

Cheers

I, personally, cannot understand how anyone can be sympathetic (at $400 a day) for problems in the infrastructure of the ships of a company earning many millions of dollars a year.

If these boats have passengers who aren't going to comply with requests about putting unwelcome things down the toilets (if this is indeed the reason they break) then they should take the thing into drydock for 2 weeks, spend 20 million dollars on their waste disposal system, and make it work! I cannot THINK of what would make elevators stop working, but if they are not designed to take the rolling of a ship, replace them with ones that are! If the air conditioner compressors are so old or worked over-capacity that they continuously break down, replace them!

This is engineering, not guesswork!

Understaffing vis-a-vis the purported luxury status of this line is a slap in the face as far as I'm concerned, right up there with cold overcooked steaks.

A number of past passengers have said on this thread that they were through with HAL. Maybe HAL should take notice.

Lane :(

Thank you all for your honest reviews. At least we will not have unrealistic expectations. This would probably not have been our first choice for cruises, but we won it and certainly are not going to complain.

I really appreciate being able to read about others experiences, thanks again.

I agree with everything RD 64 said but we had a little extra fun. We left on Feb. 26 and arrived at the port at 11:45 and was promptly checked in and told we would be onboard within a half hour. Something did happen within the half hour, the coast guard took over the ship. They emptied the ship of all staff , had police, dogs (We did not know if they were looking for weapons or drugs) , we were never told. We were locked into the building and everyone arriving were locked out, police guarding the exits. We did have it better bathrooms and water, we talked to some that had been outside, no bathrooms and a lot of these were older people. We were not allowed to board to 4:00 so we had no lunch and they were going around asking if anyone had any snacks for people feeling faint and sick. Remember we were the lucky ones locked inside, can you think sitting outside after you pay $70 to park you can't move your car with no bathroom, water or anywhere to sit but the ground. After everyone boarded we all rushed to the food and the trip did go better. Passengers should have been offered something for this, room credit, drinks, something would have been nice but we got nothing. It really makes you look at a upcoming " next cruise" with a different line. We sat at a table of 10 in the dining room and all said they would probably be taking another cruiseline in the future and 4 out of 5 couples had cruised before. This was one we will always remember.