MAASDAM REVIEW, May 9-21

We have not yet caught up sufficiently on sleep from our 20 hour day yesterday, but since the Maasdam has been the recipient of a lot of negative publicity over the last several months I thought it important to come to the her defense. Here goes with the major items:

FLIGHTS: There has been debate about regular vs. commuter aircraft servicing Norfolk. That has been a negative for a number of people. I booked our flights in late January, at about $ 200 per person less than the HA air add-on. We flew American from Seattle to Dallas (red-eye) and Dallas to Norfolk. Both flights were on MD-80s. The return from Montreal (via Chicago) was MD 80's on both legs. A very positive note for everyone - when leaving Montreal you go through U.S. Customs & Immigration in Montreal. This allows you to check your bags direct to final destination without the hastle of retrieving bags at the connecting hub, then going through customs/immigrations and then taking the baggage to the next drop site. This is a real POSITIVE.

EMBARKATION: After spending a few days on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, we dropped the rental car at Norfolk Airport at 1050 AM May 9. Taxi to Nauticus ($25.00), arrived at 1115. Began boarding process at 11:30, aboard ship at 11:40 and eating eating in Lido at 1145: Into the cabin at 1310. Sailed thirty minutes late (1730), due to a provisions truck showing up late.

DEBARKATION: Arrived Montreal 0730. We were off the ship at 0900 (group 5 for city tour and transfer to the airport). Very painless until arrival at airport. Two busses at same time. Not enough baggage carts to go around. We don't use them, but we had to sit on the bus until more baggage carts were delivered to the bus park. This delayed us getting off the bus about 15 minutes. No big deal but slightly aggravating.

FOOD: Main Dining Room had the usual HA fare with usual good variety. We felt the meals were all very good with the exception of the pasta (we had never tried pasta in the main dining room before), which was rather flavorless. I felt the portions were slightly less than on prior cruises. Lido was our place of refuge for breakfast and lunch. Totally pigged out on salad bar every day. That is in addition to soup, main entree and ice cream for desert. No complaints at all. The staff was very attentive, with one waiter standing out above all others, by the name of "Shy", who absolutely was NOT shy. Pinnacle Grill was excellent as always. We are hooke d on their beef, and it did not disappoint.

ROOM: Had the last verandah on the port side. Being the last cabin aft was not a negative at all. The balcony had almost double the space as the other verandah cabins (see deck plans). But walking to the end of the balcony you can not only look over the stern, but look across the ship and over on the starboard side, so you can see the everything on both sides of the ship. Very little vibration except when in the docking process, and they are "backing and filling" or working the stern thruster. It just helps to remind you that you are on a vessel, and not on a beach side resort! Cabin attendent was the best one we have had. He always seemed to know when we were out of the cabin and it was always clean and ready for us on our return. The new mattresses, towels, and robes are fantastic. I did not think a mattress could impress me. These certainly did. The only area showing some age was the bath tub and the tiles around the tub/shower. They were clean, but definitely showing their age of 11-12 years. One of the closet doors was warped on the bottom and would not shut. Our room steward called the repair staff, and within 15 minutes three men showed up and when we returned to the cabin an hour later the door shut perfect.

ENTERTAINMENT: We attend very few shows, so cant speak to them. The group "Seacrest" in the Crows Nest was very good - played easy listening before dinner & popular music after dinner. "Nevada" in Ocean Bar did a nice job for dancing tunes. Champagne Strings were OK, but we have heard much better on other HA ships. Cant speak of the Piano Bar, but for those interested it was Bill Forrest.

WEATHER: Very little sea motion, but weather was chilly & overcast from Bar Harbor to Montreal. Had lots of fog - a couple times from the Crows Nest could barely see to the sports nets looking aft. The air temp did not get above 52 & but did have some sun a couple afternoons. It felt like winter time in Seattle. Everyone ashore did tell us that it is unusually cold this spring, as a matter of fact there was a dusting of snow in Sydney the week before we were there.

OBSERVATIONS: We had done a New England/Canada cruise with Regency back in 1990 with a few different ports of call. This was a good itinerary, but for the seven day cruises it is a "busy" itinerary with only 1 full sea day. We like a good mixture of sea days and port days. By making the frst cruise of the season we were able to enjoy the extra sea day from Norfolk to Boston. The air conditioning was down for 12 hours on about day 3. The ship was somewhat chilly (air conditioning primed for Caribbean climate), and they had to make some major adjustmnents for the cooler climates. They brought technicians aboard in Boston, and we started feeling some refreshing heat not too long afterwards. We received type written advisories the day the air conditioning went down explaining what was happening. They also had a fresh water pipe break in the overhead on Navigation deck at 430 one morning. Soaked the carpets in the aft stairways of three decks and the aft elevator shaft. Reports of Niagara Falls aboard the Maasdam were circulating in force that morning. Captain van der Loo, came on with a special announcement of the incident in mid-morning and went into good detail about the situation. The repair staff had Niagara Falls stopped quickly, but the drying out of the carpets were still going on when we disembarked. I'm sure it inconvenienced some people, but things like this happen, whether it is in a house, or a car, or in your motorhome. No matter how much up keep and preventative maint. work is done, things do fail. In this case the break came in an area that is not usually seen by the naked eye. Being in the maritime field for thirty five years I have a pretty good feel for vessel upkeep and maint. policies and procedures. The Maasdam is maintained to all USCG and other International standards, as are all the vessels in the company I work for. We operate vessels that are both newer and older than the Maasdam. We are constantly making sure our fleet of vessels meets the highest standards of excellence both at a regulatory level and a corporate level. And yet, you know what ? - we still have engine failures, we have an occasional stress fracture, an electronics failure. Every once in awhile we receive the wrong replacement parts and the vessel is down for an extra day or two. Does that mean the vessel is too old - or needs to go to a shipyard for a re-fit? Not at all. We operate one vessel that has just passed sixty years of service and is still operating in the challenging waters of the Pacific Ocean. It has no more or less problems than our vessels that are 10 years of age. The Maasdam had had her share of problems in the last several months, but it is not to say that one of the new Vista's could not have a similar problem any day. Anything mechanical can and will break down at some point in time whether it be after 1 week or 50 years. Who knows? The weather getting to Norfolk in the winter from San Juan is a major issue and I believe has given the Maasdam a bad "rap". Substituting a different class of vessel would help during good weather (better speed), but once the weather kicks up the speed will be reduced for safety of vessel, passengers and crew. Then it makes no difference what class of vessel it is. There will probably still be delays in arrival. The moral of the story is sailing out of Norfolk in winter can be an "iffy" situation based on weather conditions on the Atlantic Coast.

CONCLUSION: Great cruise, great crew, happy we went, happy to be home and looking forward to sailing on the Volendam in November.

I know I am suffering from lack of sleep. Our cruise was May 12 to 21, Our total vacation was May 9 to 21. Sorry about that. Off to bed to catch up!

Thanks for taking the time to write your great review of the Maasdam. I know how tiring it can be to be traveling across country. Sonds like everthing is still going great with the Maasdam and I am very much looking forward to boarding her in July.

Thanks again for writing your review right away.

Terrascape,

Thanks for the positive review of the Maasdam. It is great to start reading some good reviews of her after all the negatives. We are looking forward to our 17 days on here in July. ;) ;)

Jennie

Another thank you for your review. We are looking forward to our cruise in November, and do realize the expectations you need to have when sailing out of a port in Virginia in the fall and winter. We sailed out of Charleston in January a few years ago and weather was cool for two days going and two coming, no rough seas to speak of though. Again, thanks for an informative review!

Thank you for your thoughts about the ship. I feel reassured now that she will be fine on my upcoming cruise.

I am glad to hear that "Shy" is still with HAL and it's nice to know what ship he is on. He is by far the most attentive server we have had on a HAL cruise and also a genuinely kind and caring person.

Thanks for the great review. I was wondering if you could provide any information on the ports, what you did, and any insights or recommendations. You are the first to go and report on this itinerary since last year, so any information would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks and I'm glad to hear that you had a great time.

on this cruise with Terra......and basically agree that things were fine, but yes there can be some adverse situations on any cruise. As for the water pipe break, we felt most fortunate that it was the "fresh water" pipe that broke. We were way further forward on the same deck, but walked back there to get to the diniring room......in which we encountered unpleasant wetness smells, yet they were working on eliminating that.

I agree that it is great to be able to pre-clear customs when flying from some Canadian airports to destinations in the USA, however we encountered the one USA destination that is very difficult. We were flying direct from Montreal (YUL) to Washington National (DCA) and you need to allow plenty of extra time in taking this flight as one gets searched and checked and searched, and then locked behind glass at the boarding gate .......

I'm glad we allowed 3 (instead of 2) hours for this process. We felt very safe on that flight, just tired of taking shoes on and off, and then not being able to go wash our hands again. Screeners that searched my luggage, piece by piece, were very gentle and neat, plus we were first to check in, so their gloves were freshly put on.

Lesson learned is that I will never fly directly into DCA again from Canada, rather I would fly to BWI or IAD which operate as normal flights with the previously mentioned advantage of pre-clearance by USA customs at the departure airport.

For Lomo,

A good way to start for ideas on what to do in the ports is to check the various internet sites for each port or the section on port information on the cruise critc site. However, that being said, we did our own thing in Boston since we had the full day (we were coming from Norfolk). We did one of the trolley excursions (2.5 hours narrated tour) with the option to get on and off at any or all of the 18 stops for one price.

Bar Harbor we made our own arrangements for a tour of Acadia National Park on a small bus with good narration and several stops. Also had plenty of time for window shopping in Bar Harbor - some great shops. We were not prepared for the 42-48 degree temps and invested in some sweaters while in town.

Halifax we did an HA tour to Peggy's Cove & then back in town we walked along the waterfront on the "harbor walk". They have a great maritime museum & numerous other interesting shops and restaurants on the harbor walk which goes for a couple miles.

The port area of Sydney is a longer walk from town than the other ports and is not as interesting. We went on the all day Cabot Trail tour up through Cape Breton Highlands National PArk. If the weather had been better it would have been very scenic, but we had lots of fog & low clouds most of the day.

Prince Edward Island - we had been there 10 years go & covered the island at that time including the Anne of Green Gables tour (It was good 10 years ago). We wandered all through town & the shops. Did a lot of walking & enjoyed their parks and gardens.

Quebec City - great city for walking through Old Town. We had been through it before so this time rented a car at the "info center" right in the center of old town & drove out into the countryside for the day which we thoroughly enjoyed, including a 2 hour stop at the shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre - about 30 km down river from Quebec City. It is a magnificent. We were in Quebec the Friday of the beginning of their three day weekend and the streets and shops were wall-to-wall people by early afternoon. Understand it is not nearly so bad on non-holiday weekends.

Hope this gives you some ideas. Good luck

Thank you so much for the information on the ports. I have already started to do some research on the ports and have been checking this site for ideas. I really like to hear what other people have done so I can get a better idea of what to plan. It sounds like you had a great time. I am going to have to mentally prepare myself for all the ports, because I am more used to a cruise that has about 3-4 ports over 7 days. Thanks again for your great review and for the information on your ports and excursions.