10/22/05 Oosterdam Cruise

Just got back from the 10/22 Oosterdam cruise. this was my first ever cruise. We parked the car at San Diego Airport Parking (SDAP) on Kurtz Ave. About 4 miles from the terminal. $47.50 per week. Dropped me right where the porters were waiting to take my bag. Much better then parking across the street, and cheaper! Took maybe 30 minutes to get on the ship. That time was for 4 of us. Was concerned about the leisure dining. We had reservations for the 8:00pm upper dining. Based upon the many mesages on this forum I thought I was going to have to fight HAL for my table of 4. I did not. They honored the reservation! Table 81 for 4 all week with the same dining staff. Cheppy was great, as was the whole crew, but I have gotten ahead of myself.

Got to my room SS cabin 6068, our friends were in 6070. We had our room stewart Djoko open the divider between our verandah's. By coincidence, Janice (Stadford's Girl) was right next to our friends in room 6072. It was also funny that Janice was celebrating her 20th, Our friends their 25th, and us our 30th. Consecutive rooms, 20, 25, and 30! :)

I knocked on Janice's door (there was a happy 20th flier on her door that mentioned she was Stanford's Girl), and intoduced myself to her. We had both read posts from each other on the forum.

Went to lunch at the Lido buffet and had a great roast beef on rye, and a salad. Spend the rest of the day walking around learning the ship and at the Bon Voyage Party. As I said at 8:00pm we went to the Vista Dining room upper level and our table was waiting for us. I did not have to make a special reservation other then my original request when I booked the cruise. What a relief! The food was outstanding and the stewarts were awesome. I enjoy talking to new people. (huh, Janice?) The stewarts, especially Cheppy and his boss Anne treated the 4 of us like old friends, but still very respectful and not intrusive.

As a side note, I bought Bonine pills, but never felt the need to use them. That was a miracle because I get seasick on motion rides, smaller boats, and in back seats of cars. Had a GREAT nite sleep on the new firm but comfy beds. I will continue about the second day tommorrow.

Good nite until then,

Brian

Brian, thanks for the review and great to hear you had an excellent time on the Oosterdam!:)

Really happy to hear that you had a good experience on the Oosterdam, what with all the worry about the changes HAL has been making. We will be on the Oosterdam in January and can't wait.:) I am looking forward to hearing your impressions of the ports you visited. -g.

Can't wait to read the restof your review.

Hi Brian - Welcome Home. Thanks for posting. I am anxiously awaiting the rest of your review :).

Marie

Hi Brian!!!:D You sure are fast on the review. I'm still unpacking and starting laundry. I'll be working on my review and posting it sometime this week.

Hugs to you, Patty, Scott, and Terri!! :) Loved talking with you.

Welcome back, and thanks for such a quick report on THE topic.

Am looking forward to the rest of the story as soon as you can get to it.

Woohoo! I can't wait to hear about the rest of the cruise. :)

Thanks for posting. Looking forward to the rest of your review as we will be sailing on the Oosterdam in May, 2006.

Sunday the fog cleared up just south of Ensenada. The view from our verandah was great. We tried the Vista for breakfast. Wasn't exicted about the scramled eggs. Not firm enough and small peices, almost like Curds, I like big peices almost like an omelette. Other then that the breakfast was mediocre. Not so bad, not so good. I expected better in the Vista Lounge.

Lunch was in the Lido. Pretty good. Pepperoni Pizza was GREAT. I like thin crust. This pizza crust was thin and so light it was almost pastry. I also loved the ice tea, which is weird since I usually only like fresh brewed. We bought the soda card for $27.50. Deffinately got our money worth out of it.

Dinner I had the peppercorn sirloin steak. Good flavor, but a little tough. Soups and salads and all was very good. Service was excelent. Went to th Northern Lights night club. Lots of fun, but......

OK, now nobody get offended, but about 11:30 the gay "bears" group which is an overweight +++, hairy gay group (yes really), came in and took over the club. The problem is that they were on a mission to prove they could do whatever they wanted. Butt grabbing, spooning on the dance floor, and even playing tonsil hockey. I, and several others that were not with our group thought it was very disrepectful toward the rest of us. Incidently did I mention that about 4:00pm every day they also took over the aft adult pool. I didn't see any straight couples acting that way, and that also would have been offensive and not respectful to us.

Anyways, we walked around the ship and finally hit the sack.

Monday in Cabo to follow.

Brian

Welcome back Brian. Glad you had a great cruise....

Nice review...

Jim & Ruth

Monday morning we woke up with Cabo in sight! It was still dark, and the lights of the city were beautiful. The sun came up just before we passed the Cabo Arch. We anchored off shore and tendered in. The tenders are the lifeboats. Very efficient. No wait, just got on the tender and away we went.

But of course before going to shore, we ate at the Lido for breakfast. The scrambled eggs looked just as bad as they did in the Vista, so I had a bacon omelette made for me. Yummy! I had the potatoes and some ham and some waffles. The waffles were great, and became a regular item for me. Fresh squeezed OJ in the lido, but the Vista only had concentrated OJ.

By the way did I tell you in the 5 months prior to the cruise I lost 71 lbs? I actually had the stupidity to tell friends that I intended to eat properly and gurenteed I would loose weight on the cruise. :) More on that at the end. anyone want to guess how many pounds were lost on gained during the seven days?

After a great breakfast we tendered out to Cabo. We walked the boardwalk to the shops. bought my wife a ring at the "ship recomended" shop. Got a good deal on it. Then we walked about 4 blocks to REAL Cabo, away from the yuppie tourist area, to where there was real mexican food and good deals to be had.

Spent several hours shopping with our wives. Funny side story...

My wife needed some sunglasses. A street vender had some "raybans" (ya right), for $10.00. My wife likes them. I say I'll give you $5.00 for them. My wife says out loud, "give him ten, he's poor". Terri, Scott's wife starts chewing me out for trying to rip off this poor guy. CRAP, shutenzee your mouth women! Ok, finally he says OK to $5.00.

Next vender sells me a No Fear tank top for $10, 9, 6, 5, ok I'll take your lousy $4.00. Now the women are talking down the venders for purses from $12.00 to $4.00 etc.... Hey how about when you were mad at me for getting $5.00 sunglasses? But by then the women were on a roll! They were underbidding what I would have offered! :)

We have lunch at a little dive in the hood, any 4 tacos and a beer or soda for $5.00 USD. maybe the best tacos of the trip!

Went to Cabo Wabo, Scott and Terri had Strawberry daquiri's, Patty and I had virgin strawbery daquiri's. We did a little more shopping and then back to the ship. It was about 4:00PM. What a great day in Cabo!

Went back to the pool and tool a nice dip. Took a nap in the cabin. Time to get ready for the first formal night. There were Photographers EVERYWHERE! After taking 1,234,323 pictures including one with Captain Murcer, we ate. Being a guy I can't remember many of the meals, but in the Vista dining I never met a meal that I didn't LOVE. We also saw several shows but I can't remember what nights we saw which shows, so I'll just mention a show every once in awhile. If you were there, don't dog me for giving the wrong night for the shows.

We saw the rockin road show or whatever it was called. I thought as well as my friends that it was a very good show. The female singer was supurb! She had a set of pipes (don't go there, I mean vocal pipes) that were awesome. The lead male and her did not have chemistry though. Overall out of ten I would give the show a strong 7. After the show we walked the decks again, and then retired into our rooms. What a great Monday!

Tuesday in Mazatlan to come shortly!

Brian

Brian - thanks for sharing your trip with us! I love multi-part reviews! Sounds like you made the most of the cruise. Looking forward to Mazatlan!

Tuesday morning brought us to Mazatlan. This time we had a pier. No tendering. We did room service breakfast. Afraid of the scambled eggs, so on the breakfast order form I crossed out over easy and wrote hard. Patty had a cheese omelette. We asked for 2 orders of bacon, 2 orders of hash browns, and 1 order of ham. Bagel and toast. Orange Juice, and coffee for Patty.

Somehow they knew (or guessed) to put the order of ham, with my over hard eggs. Weird! Anyways the breakfast was good, and right on time. Asked for the breakfast at 6:30 to 7:00am (they give themselves a 1/2 hour window. My alarm on the cell phone went off at 6:30, On the way out of bed to shut it off on the dresser I hear a slight knock at the door. Breakfast was RIGHT on time. The stewart set it up for us on the table on the verandah. Boy it's fun pretending to have money! And HAL makes it easy to beleive. Whata you mean I'm not really rich???

So I take the port tram to the disembarkment building. There I meet Dimetri. He is selling a van trip tour. He promises to take us 4 and 4 others to all the sites and act as a tour guide. Others were stuffing 11 to 15 in the same size van. We only had 8. Only $20.00 a person. Since it appeared that the things we wanted to see were very spread out, we decided to take him up on it. Boy am I glad we did! He gave us Mazatlan history as we went. Went up to a "fort" on the hill. There is a cannon in front, and a GREAT view of Mazatlan, including our ship in the marina.

Next we went to see he cliff divers. Waited for a dive and then continued to Mazatlan Cathredral. Then shopping in old Mazatlan for an hour. Finally to the Golden Zone (Zona Dorado) where we shopped a little more and had lunch overlooking the beach. All this took about 4 1/2 hours. Now back to the Oosterdam.

Got back to the ship, and into the aft pool to cool down. The activities director says they are going to play pool volleyball. Who wants to play. Well I didn't want to get out of the pool so.....

Passengers against crew members.. They claim to have NEVER lost. They tell us they will play in the deep end. OK, so this (me) 50 year old overweight (yep I've lost 71 lbs., but still 254lbs.) haven't played vollyball in 25 years, and never in the water, makes a stupid decision to try and represent amongst the other YOUNG passengers.

OK so we hit 7 points before the crew and we are told that every 7 points we have to switch sides! HAHAHAHAHA I say, sure I'm going to try and tred water with only my feet since the hands need to hit the ball. OK, let us serve and get on with it. No seriously you need to swap sides! Huh??? ME??? Well OK, get the ship doctor ready for me! But lets "get it on". Oh, did I tell you that I am so competitive I would have drowned before giving up?

So we suprise everyone and win the first game. Whata you mean first game? There's a second?? Ya,best out of 3! Hey nobody said that until we won our "first game". OK kids, help grandpa out (me), no third game, we gotta win this one!

Guess what, we beat them 2 straight and they are no longer undefeated (if they really were). And I represented for all us old guys. The kids (20-30 year olds) said that I played better then anyone on the team. (Well maybe in the top 3). But is was fun. On the other hand my legs were GONE! No stairs that night! Had dinner at the Vista Lounge again. I just remember that is was great, and of course Cheppy and the staff were phenominal again! Didn't see the show because we had a problem about tendering the next morning into Puerta Vallerta.

I will do a short review on the problem and solution in a seperate message and follow that with our day in P.V.

Brian

Brian, great review an very funny Keep it up!:)

Brian, great review an very funny Keep it up!:)

Thank you and other CC'rs for the kind words. I will continue until I finish. :eek:

Brian

I booked a P.V. horseback ride with Rancho Palma Real based upon a recomendation of a co-worker that spent 8 days in P.V. a few months ago. He said they were great. HAL does not book this particular company, so I booked it myself. P.V. is Wednesday, and I found out Tuesday evening that P.V. is Central time, and the ship was staying on Mountain time. My 9:00am meeting time at the Collage Disco Club with Palma Real was really ship time of 8:00. Hal only allows people that book through them the early tendering. Might still have been ok, but I find out that they are starting at 6:30am and stoping at 7:00am for an hour. Another ship has docking rights from 7:00-8:00, or P.V. time of 8-9. So how do I get to the pickup point by 9:00. Can't happen. This would have put a real damper on our trip, because we were really looking forward to the ride into the jungle to a waterfall fed swimming hole.

Talking to the tendering people it was not possible to do the tendering early. I went to the front desk and explained my problem. They understood the problem, and got their supervisor. He said for me to be back at the front desk, ready to go at 6:30am and he would walk me down to the tendering boats and get me on.

6:30am we were at the front desk. They had my name and walked us down. At first they officer in charge refused to let us on. Only after being TOLD by the front office superviser that he would indeed take me to P.V. they let us on the tender. I thanked the Front Office supervisor and he said it was his pleasure to help me with the request.

I understand that HAL wants to book it, but there was only a dozen or so people on the first tender. I did not take up anyone's seat. I would have been very peeved had they not allowed me on. But I really praise HAL for making the exception for me.

The horseback ride was awesome, but that is for the Day Wednesday P.V. review to follow...

Thanks for reading

Brian

Grrrrreat!! reviews, Brian. Really glad things worked out for your PV tour. Looking forward to "the rest of the story".

6:30 they get us on the tender to shore. $3.00 a piece gets us to the Collage Disco. Another company tries to steal us away from Ranch Palma Real. Finally a bus (kinda like the Vegas tour busses) stops to pick us up. Drives for maybe 45 minutes into the foothills. Cesar the tour guide is funny. Tells funny stories the whole way in english and then spanish. We arrive at the ranch and they tell us breakfast is on. (didn't know about that, so we ate on the ship). Scott who is thin grubbed down again. I had an orange juice, as did my wife.

They take maybe 30 minutes matching us up with horses, based upon rideing experience and then weight. I got on the third horse, the tallest of the bunch. Probably to do with my weight. "Bandito" was his name. I have acrophobia (fear of heights), so this huge horse did make me nervous. "Senior you are very tense, you need to let me tighten the straps". Give me an hour I'll be OK! So I did my best to put my weight on the other stirup so he could tighten the straps. We then proceeded on a beautiful ride through the mountains, following and crossing a small river several times. These horses know the way, however they were ridable. You could make them go where you wanted, they were not stuck following the rear of the horse in front of you. That was cool.

After about an hour and a half ride we come to a walking trail. We unmount and walk 1/4 of a mile, up and down the side of a mountain. We end up at an awesome waterfall. We were advised to wear swimwear under our jeans. Scott and I went into the water which was about 75 degrees F. Cold until you submerged in it, and then great in the 92 degrees weather. Back into the waterfall. What a rush! Knocks you over and then pushes you with the current a couple feet. Feels great on the shoulders, what a deep tissue shoulder massage. :D

We spend probably an hour at the waterfall, and then head back. We take a different path UP the moutain. Rocky switchbacks, Feels like a more advanced ride then we should do, but everyone made it safe. We end up on a dirt road near the ranch and another ranch's dogs spook my wife's horse. It went flying down a wrong road, she holding on for dear life. One of our cabalerros chases after her, yelling at her horse "whoaa". She lost those $5.00 sunglasses I stole from that poor guy in Cabo. :rolleyes: The cabalerro found them and returned them to her. She got back with the group with a scary side trip, but not worse for the wear. The incident also spooked terri's horse, and it turned around and starting trotting the wrong way, but she was able to turn it around.

Got back to the ranch for a GREAT mexican lunch. Your choice of asada (beef) fajitas, chicken something, or chile relleno's. Came with handmade tortillas, beans, rice, and all the drink you could down. Scott and Terri had marguritas, we had soda's and bottled water. Everytime your glass was empty the brought you more. Deffinately a highlight and I would reccomend this company as my co-worker did to me.

The dropped us off at the terminal, and it took every ounce of strength we had to keep Patty and Terri from stopping at the Wal-Mart in P.V. We did some final shopping at the "flea market" next to the terminal. Scott and I abandoned the wives and went back on the ship. We were shopped out!!! Went swimming and layed out by the pool. Found out that the steak and lobster is Thursday night, we had booked the Pinnacle Grill for Thursday night. Scott was SOOOOO lookng forward to the lobster and was bummed. We got free Pinnacles as part of our deal, so we hated not using it.. Went to Mike the maitre'd at the pinnacle, everything was booked up for the rest of the trip. No change was possible. Went and talked to Cheppy and Anne in the Vista dining. No problem Mr. Brian, we will hold back some lobster for you and serve it on Friday! Oh did I tell you how awesome those two were. (of course I have!).

They were having the bar-b-que on Wednesday so we decided to eat out by the Lido family pool where the que was. Great rib eye steaks, chicken, pork ribs, and bratwurst. It was all delicious!

Saw the magic act of Drew and Angela. Funny and very entertaining. BTW my legs were soooooo rubbery after the Tuesday volleyball, and Wednesdays horseback ride. I slept like a rock!

What a great trip it has been!!!!! :cool:

Thursday's sea day to follow....

Brian

Really happy to hear that you had a good experience on the Oosterdam, what with all the worry about the changes HAL has been making. We will be on the Oosterdam in January and can't wait.:) I am looking forward to hearing your impressions of the ports you visited. -g.

Seadrifter, what cruise are you on in Jan? My wife and I just booked the Oosterdam for the Mexican Rivera on 1/28/06.

I've been looking for a thread for the sailing date but can't find one! I guess I'll have to start one!

Larry

Fantastic review!!

Seadrifter, what cruise are you on in Jan? My wife and I just booked the Oosterdam for the Mexican Rivera on 1/28/06.

I've been looking for a thread for the sailing date but can't find one! I guess I'll have to start one!

 

Larry

Denims,

My husband and I are also on the 1/28/06 sailing. The reason you can't find the roll call is the person who started it, started it with the words "Roll Call" not Oosterdam. As of a couple weeks ago, there were only two other posters on it in addition to hubby and myself. I found it by accident. Probably a good idea to start one with Oosterdam as the first word.

89 days but who's counting!

Huntram: Great reviews. Can't wait for our 10 day in Dec. :) Thanks for taking the time to share.

Yes, thanks for the review. I thought that the ship's time was always same as local time. Was this something different, or is it always done that way in PV?

Your reviews are great! I have a small group going in April.