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Back from Oosterdam 5/7 Alaska Cruise-LONG!


Bill S

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Hi everyone! DW and I got back from our Oosterdam Alaska cruise Saturday afternoon after a great cruise! Here is my review:

 

Embarkation: it took longer than I had expected, even arriving slightly after 1pm–it took 45 minutes for us to check in and to clear security. This was in part due to having to clear security screening along with passengers embarking on the Diamond Princess, which was bow-to-bow with the Oosterdam in Seattle. We were able to proceed directly to our cabin. We made dash to the Lido for a bread-pudding fix and all but one suitcase were in the cabin upon our return. The 4th one showed up about 4pm–I was getting a bit nervous when our cabin steward, Andi, came by with the "missing" suitcase. Andi was great-he made towel animals for us—a first for us!

 

Itinerary: From Seattle, we sailed out in the Pacific and then over to Juneau, then to the Hubbard Glacier, then to Sitka and on to Ketchikan and then to Victoria for a short evening visit before ending up back in Seattle. We had good weather and seas until Ketchikan, where we encountered a bit of rain. We had a beautiful day in Juneau, with a high temperature of 70 degrees! The Hubbard Glacier really put on a show for us with major and frequent calving during our entire visit-it was an awesome display of nature. Captain Mercer was able to get us to about 1,000 feet of the glacier face for an extended period of time. We were on the bow, portside and took about 100 pictures, and we bought the cruise video, mainly because the ship’s videographer was able to capture the action! We took only one excursion, at Sitka, the sea otter/wildlife/raptor center excursion. Although we did not see any whales, we were able to see otters, seals and eagles in the wild. The raptor center was excellent-I highly recommend it if you want a close encounter with eagles.

 

This was our first cruise on a Vista-class ship. I have mixed emotions about the Vista-class. While I thought that the "ride" was better than in other HAL classes, there were some things I did not like about the size: a lot more people and if your cabin is not amidship, boy is it a long walk to the dining or entertainment venues. We make it a practice not to use the ship elevators, and the extra two decks were very noticeable to us. We did not particularly enjoy the main dining room being on Deck 3 and 2. We were in the upper dining room and experienced significant vibrations at each dinner. We ate lunch on the aft lido deck, outside, two times and never felt any similar vibrations, so I have to conclude that placement of the dining rooms so low in the ship and right over the azipods, subjects the dining rooms to the vibrations.

 

Food: a highly subjective subject, but I thought the food was very good and tasty. I like my steak/meat cooked "medium-well", and one serving was just a tad on the dry side, but everything else was above par, IMO.

 

Things I liked about the Oosterdam: as noted above, the "ride"; the mail racks by the cabin doors; the computer controlled bingo system; the spacious Crow’s Nest; the Northern Lights lounge; the new showerheads (part of the SOE program); and the layout of the Lido restaurant.

 

Things I disliked about the Oosterdam: too big, too many people;, I found the location of the front office, way down on Deck 1, to be highly inconvenient; lack of any reasonable drawer space-we had to use the drawers under the bed (VE cabin)! Finally, the main dining room seemed dark and cramped compared to the other class ships on which we have sailed.

 

Our cabin steward was Andi-he was great and he created towel animals for us-a first! DW really enjoyed them - we only say Andi twice. Our table stewards were Tobing and Felix, both nice and personable and really did well under trying circumstances (stay tuned). For the first time, we received attention each evening from a 2nd Maitre’d, in our case, Fabian-a very charming young man from Germany. We dined in the Pinnacle on Dutch Night and it was excellent, as usual. James Deering has left the Oosterdam, so I was not able to meet him.

 

Entertainment was better than average IMO, and we had The Shirelles on board and also Chris Pendleton (comedienne/violinist)-she was great! Very funny and talented violinist-she did a segment of 10 songs you never want to hear performed on a violin-hilarious!

 

We experienced a another "first" this time: tablemates who posed a challenge. We were assigned a table for eight. No one else showed up the first night. On the second night we were alone again, until about 20 minutes after dinner commenced and 3 people joined us and 10 minutes later, 3 other people joined us. For the rest of the cruise, between the other 6 people, they were always very late or did not show up at all. One night two of them arrived 30 minutes late and another came 45 minutes late! I felt sorry for our table stewards who had to accommodate the seriously late arrivals. Our table was almost always one of the last tables to leave the dining room each night, On formal nights one of our table mates wore a jacket but no tie. I guess it happens. I would say that less than 10 percent of the men wore tuxes on formal night, judging from observation and looking at the photos.

 

For those interested in such things: there was no dress code enforcement from what I could tell: bluejeans were common during dinner along with tee shirts and sweats and BALL CAPS! I guess the wearing of ball caps during dinner is really more a matter of manners, but I was still surprised to see a man wearing a ball cap at dinner on casual nights. (No, it did not ruin my cruise!!!!!)

 

All in all, ghe Oosterdam and crew lived up to recent reviews and we had a grreat time, even though DW would not let me enter the Oosterdam Superstar contest! But, I did get to sing a bit with the Shirelles - great fun and very nice ladies! It is still good to be home, however and tomorrow morning we get to retrieve our doggies from the vet! Hope they will still "speak" to us!

 

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Welcome home, and thank you for taking the time to share your experience.

 

My DH and I sailed on the Oosterdam in April. Having never been on the smaller HAL ships, I find your comparisons to the vista class very interesting.

(For instance, I was not aware that the mail boxes outside the cabins are not on every ship.)

 

May I ask why you make it a practice not to utilize the elevators? Perhaps walking off the bread pudding? :rolleyes:

 

I was surprised to learn that they allowed passengers to enter the dining room so very late. I thought they had a fifteen or twenty minute cutoff for latecomers. So inconvenient for the servers and for other diners!

 

I'm glad you had a great time, and I know your dogs will be so happy to see you tomorrow they'll forget they're mad at you!

 

Thank you again,

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Your review was excellent and it was not too long. We will be on the Amsterdam in two weeks for our Alaska cruise. We have excursions (and sometimes two) in every port so we will be pretty tired by dinner time. We have also requested a table for two and we will know when we get on board if this is available. We have had wonderful tablemates and some as you had on this cruise; we didn't want to deal with them for this special cruise.

 

We will be doing the renewal of vows ceremony for our 35th anniversary--but don't tell, it is a surprise:)

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We took only one excursion, at Sitka, the sea otter/wildlife/raptor center excursion. Although we did not see any whales, we were able to see otters, seals and eagles in the wild.

 

 

Hello. Sounds like you had a really good trip! :) We are going to Alaska in July aboard the Statendam. We're considering the Sea Otter Wildlife excursion and I was wondering if you would recommend it or another excursion in Sitka? Thanks!

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We just sailed Oosterdam on April 30th for the coastal trip. We also had Andi for our cabin steward and had our first towel animal too! And, Fabian was our Maitre'D. We really enjoyed talking with him each evening.

 

Very interesting that your tablemates were allowed in so late each evening. Our last night was in Victoria where the ship stays until midnight.We had the first seating at 5:45 and didn't make it back in time, but we reallly wanted to say goodbye to our table mates. We were stopped at the door by the yum yum man. He said we couldn't go in and wasn't about to let us in. Eventually a Maitre'D did let us in, and our waiter immediately brought us menus, even though I explained that we could certainly eat elsewhere, but we wanted to see our tablemates. We did end up ordering a main dish and dessert.

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Welcome back, Bill, and thanks for the report. Rain in Ketchikan? How unusual! ;) Com'on, you know it has to rain in Ketchikan or it doesn't count as a stop! :rolleyes:

 

How rude of your tablemates to arrive so late to dinner. It not only throws off the steward, but those who arrive on time, too. I would have been very upset had I been at the table.

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Bill, thanks for the review. We're taking the same cruise in a few days and I was wondering which 2 nights are the formal nights? My guess is Sunday and Thursday, but then I also guessed the Yankess over the Sox last year.

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The dogs are happy and are both resting, as are we! Otherwise, it has been a tough day. . . . . . . . preparing our own meals, making the bed, no bread pudding, etc. :(

 

 

We watched the cruise video on DVD (another pleasant surprise BTW) - the videographers do a great job capturing the flavor of the cruise. They were able to catch some of the major calving events at the Hubbard Glacier.

 

OK, now to answer questions :) :

 

stormyc: you guessed it! We use the stairs to help work off the extra calories we ingest on cruises and I had bread pudding only twice on this cruise!

 

DAllenTCY: David, Dutch Night was Tuesday, the day we were at Hubbard Glacier-the dress for that night was informal.

 

sparklingstar: I really did like our sea otter/wildlife/raptor center excursion. I would recommend without any hesitation. The excursion commences right at the ship, that is, instead of getting in a tender, you board the excursion jetboat, right at the ship and it drops you off at a pier in Sitka, where you transfer to a bus for the raptor center. It doesn't get any easier. Also, I think the reason we did not see any whales is that we were there too early in the season. Two years ago, we took the same excursion but a week later in May than this time, and we saw lots of whales. I don't think you will be disappointed with this excursion.

 

Stanford's girl: HAL docks it's ships well south of town, I believe it is at Pier 30, in an industrial area. It is not near Pike's Market. We took a Gray Line Cruise shuttle from our hotel for $6 per person. We stayed at the Seattle Sheraton and there was a HAL rep in the lobby co-located with a Gray Line rep. The shuttle bus went straight to the cruise terminal and our bags were unloaded for us to be put on the ship. Good deal!

 

cruzermom: Formal nights were Sunday and Thursday, as you thought.

 

localady: yep, we are anxious to try the smaller Prinsendam! The Vista-class is just a bit too big for us. Although we might sail on a Vista again, our preference will be the smaller HAL ships.

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Bill, one more question, please. For some reason I've been thinking we had 3 informal nights and 2 casual, in addition to the 2 formal. But, DW, who believes in unproven concepts such as RTFM:D was reading our cruise docs and it says 1 informal and 4 casual. Was this how it was on your cruise too? If so, which night was informal.

 

For me, it's merely an exchange of one pair of slacks, but this will set back DW's packing schedule at least one day:eek:

 

Thanks.

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cruzermom: your hubby is correct--we had 2 formal, 1 informal and 4 casual nights. Informal night was Tuesday-it was also Dutch Night. Ask away-I'll be glad to help out (except for packing)! :cool:

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I sailed on the Oosterdam in April. One of the nicer innovations on these larger ships are the glass elevators, located in the mid-ship area. My cabin was on Main deck, so it was a lovely ride from Lido deck, (9), all the way down to Main,(1). You can see the sea almost all of the way down-the view stops at about deck 3.

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stormyc: you guessed it! We use the stairs to help work off the extra calories we ingest on cruises and I had bread pudding only twice on this cruise!...

 

Thank you ... great idea. I was thinking how much larger the ship would feel if we had always used the stairs.

 

Glad the dogs are home and well.

 

Hope the restful feeling from your cruise lasts as long as possible! Have a great week.

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.

 

Things I disliked about the Oosterdam: ......... Finally, the main dining room seemed dark and cramped compared to the other class ships on which we have sailed.

 

 

Thanks for your review. On my only Oosterdam cruise I found the dining room cramped and noisy, to the extent it was hard to make conversation. I did not find the ship too large as I have sailed on RCI and a couple of other ships where the capacity was about 2000 passengers.

 

I prefer HAL because of the ambience of their ships. Alaska is my favorite destination. There will be 3 Vista ships sailing there in 2006 and now is the time to be thinking about it. I think I would prefer the Volendam or Zaandam just because they have IMO a more agreeable dining room.

 

Since the Oosterdam experience I have sailed on Amsterdam and Statendam and their dining rooms were as pleasant as always. On a cruise dinner is the highlight of the day.

 

I also did not like movies in the Queens Lounge, but that was not the end of the world.

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Hi Bill

 

 

Thanks for your thoughts on the Oosterdam!

I was on board in Feb, and reading your review (and others)

put me back on that ship.

 

When you mentioned the 'long walk' from point A to point B, it made me think of the 1st night in my attempt to get to the restaurant in time for dinner!

 

After getting lost, and asking a cabin steward if I where headed in the right direction, got there by 8:40. Then I noticed a few pax were actually using those little fold-out plans!

After that night, I put my copy to good use.

 

;)

 

 

But welcome back, and glad to hear my fav Vista ship is still

loaded with that HAL charm!

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...Then I noticed a few pax were actually using those little fold-out plans!

After that night, I put my copy to good use...

 

LOL! I really put those engraved brass ship layouts at the elevators/stair landings to good use! :p

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I found decks 2 and 3 to be confusing and was still using the ship diagram on the 6th night! I guess I am so used to the S-class ships and the Amsterdam, that I had a bit of trouble adusting to a different configuration. It will probably be a bit easier the next time we sail on a Vista class ship, whenever that will be.

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As one who studies deck plans with a passion, I still manage to get lost even when I return to the same vessel!

 

You'd think that many ships, with thier smallish size, and carbon-copy room arrangement, that it would be easy to find your way around.

 

That's when longer voyages come in handy.... 2 weeks to get used to the layout of the ship. But with the Vista class, I'll still be needing a plan to help me about.

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how did you manage to unscrew them off the bulkhead?

 

:cool:

 

With the fork from my Swiss Army Knife... I did use my duct tape to replace it before debarkation. I am an extremely responsible passenger, you see.

 

Eureka!! Back-to-back cruises - the perfect solution to becoming adapted to the ship's layout!

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