Review of Volendam/Vancouver/Vancouver (long)

[westlab]

Volendam, August 25, 2010

Vancouver-Vancouver

This was my second experience on this ship and route. The previous was 9 years ago.

Arrived in Vancouver a couple of days early. HAL arranged for transfers/hotel. Transfer from airport to Fairmont Waterfront Hotel was via taxi. HAL representative in red jacket handled it with ease. After checking in at hotel, we walked to Gastown for dinner.

 

On the full day in Vancouver, we did the hop on/off trolley. We were told that trolley has live narration while the double decker bus has recorded narration.

 

The transfer from hotel to ship included a 3-4 hour bus tour of Vancouver. Personally, I feel that the transfers to hotel/to pier were not necessary. On a previous cruise out of Vancouver, we handled all this by ourselves.

 

Embarkation. We arrived at the pier about 2PM after the bus tour. Embarkation was easy/quick, no lines. We went directly to our stateroom (deck 2, main deck) 2647 and 2649. These are connecting rooms. However, we had rooms set up with twin beds. The beds blocked the connecting door. I liked the location as it was near the elevator/stairs to the deck 3, which has exits to the outdoor walking deck. It was easy to quickly get outdoors.

 

Service. I felt that the service was excellent. The staff was friendly, helpful.

 

Anytime dining. Each morning at 8AM, we called for reservations. This was the earliest time we could make reservations for the next day. Each day, we were told that 5:30PM was the only time available for reservations. We were told by employee that they reserve half of the Anytime dining for reservations and half for walk-ins. We would have preferred to dine later, but didn’t want to take chances of having to wait for table. The last night, we made reservations via card on the table the previous night for the Chef’s Dinner. It was a fun evening with music and more.

 

Lido. IMHO, the food on the Lido was OK at best.

 

MDR. Service/food/ambience were wonderful. Prior to the cruise, I thought I would eat fish, fish, fish. Instead, I ate beef almost every meal. The beef was outstanding. I am not a foodie, but felt that the desserts were a weakness. Of course, I always had dessert. Only disappointment was the lack of sparklers on the Baked Alaska the last night.

Ship. In some ways, the ship looked worn. It was sparkling clean, but there were little things that did not look new.

 

Entertainment. We attended most of the nightly shows in theatre and enjoyed them. We did not spend time in any of the lounges.

 

Disembarkation. We had transfers through HAL to the airport. We walked off ship, onto waiting bus to the airport. All very quick.

 

Excursions. Skagway. Best of Skagway by Land and Sea was coach (bus) ride to Fraser. The driver/guide was outstanding. We rode the train back down. From there, we went to Liarsville for salmon bake, a “hokey” show and panning for gold. The excursion ended with tour of the brothel. The bus/train were excellent.

 

Juneau. Mendenhall Glacier and Whale Quest. We had an outstanding, knowledgeable driver. The catamaran whale watching was outstanding. We saw many, many whales.

Ketchikan.

 

Best of Ketchikan by Land and Sea. Brief coach ride to see Totem Poles with plenty of time to driver to tell the legends of the totem poles. Then, on to George Inlet Cannery. There was a short walk through a lovely rain forest. I would like to have had more time in the rain forest. A short video about cannery and a tour of old cannery. From there, we boarded a catamaran to see wild life. We saw juvenile bald eagle and bald eagle parents.

[IRL_Joanie]

Great review, very well balanced:) WELCOME HOME!!!

 

Joanie

 

 

[JWJs]

Great review so far....looking forward to the next installment.:)

[Krazy Kruizers]

Welcome Home

 

Wonderful review.

[aliaschief]

Glad you had a nice cruise. Good review. Thanks

[teacherman]

Thank you for this very timely review. We leave tomorrow for Seattle (2 nights) and then AMTRAK to Vancouver to board Volendam for the Alaska cruise. The reviews we have received of this ship and cruise seem quite positive. We are excited about our coming cruise. Thanks again.

[portofrome]

Thank you for the review.

[Himself]

I enjoyed reading your review though I though it would have been longer. I have spent about 58 days on this ship the first being a 10 day cruise in November 2001. This ship is one of my favorites. My only regret about it is that it goes down under for most of the year and we are denied the opportunity to sail this ship in the Caribbean.

Thanks for your review.

[2RetiredCDRs]

We were on the same cruise as Westielvr and had a great time as well. Our impressions of the ship were almost identical. We stayed in one of the "Secret Staterooms" at the stern on the Navigation deck with a big window that was virtually unbstructed. We were very pleased with our own "private veranda" right outside that hardly anybody else used. It's too bad HAL figured out these rooms weren't so bad and are now going to charge more for them.

 

I can't remember if Westielvr left the ship in Skagway or not. A a number of passengers departed for the land-based portion of their cruise-tour and we took on other passengers for the rest of the cruise back to Vancouver. If they did leave the ship in Skagway, they missed out on the best part of the cruise!

 

The Glacier Bay National Park cruise on the 29th was fantastic! Within the first hour or so in the park we saw bears on the beach getting frisky, then later saw more bears feasting on a washed-up whale carcas. After watching a half-dozen brown bears gorging themselves, the ship turned away just as a small pack of wolves showed up. We were able to watch the large dark grey wolf in front work his way down to the whale carcas and start eating on the other side of the bear that remained.

 

Over-all we saw the following animals from the ship (I had 12x50 binoculars which were instrumental in seeing most of the critters...): brown bear, black bear, wolves, a moose, mountain goats, humpback whales, orca whales, Dolls porpose, harbor porpose, sea otters, and sea lions, including a pup with it's mother floating on a small chunk of glacial ice.

 

Some people witnessed a small calving at Margerie Glacier, but I missed it. Our ship wasn't able to cruise the Tracy Arm to Sawyer Glacier earlier in the week because of tide and schedule issues, but I heard from some people that took the excursion on a smaller boat up to Sawyer Glacier that they saw a number of large calvings and were very impressed.

 

The best part of the Glacier Bay National Park cruise was on the way out when the clouds parted, the sun came out and God was showing off! It was simply gorgeous! All-in-all we had surprisingly good weather for the entire seven days, with quite a bit of sun and only a few sprinkles while walking around Ketchikan. The days that it was overcast, it wasn't especially cold.

 

As far as the seas, we were told that just the week before, the ship has experienced pretty rough weather and a number of days quite a few people were sick. We only had one day that I remember any noticable wave action and that was the last day at sea from Ketchican back to Vancouver during the time we were exposed to the Pacific and not on the inside passage. I read on these message boards that the inside passage cruises from Vancouver, BC, were much more confortable than the outside sailings from Seattle, WA, and now I'm a believer.

 

We enjoyed our first trip on HAL so much, we booked a future cruise while on-board (see signature below...). We're staying in another "special rate" room on Noordam - F4122. Suposedly this room is sold as an obstructed view room because it is on the deck with lifeboats blocking the windows, but this one is the last room past the lifeboats and is supposed to also have a fairly unobstructed view for a lot less. Plus I was told it had a floor to ceiling window vice the smaller windows being sold at the same rate. We'll see... If anyone has sailed in this cabin, let me know if you liked it or not. I have 18 months to change our plans if needed.

 

Cheers and happy cruising!

[adkkev]

what a difference a week makes ... the previous week's Volendam venture into Glacier Bay was under cloudy skies (very low cloud deck), with no bears to be seen on the shores. Did see some seals, otters, and a few small whales. Trip into the Bay was delayed by over 2 hours due to a medical evac. Glacier viewing was still awesome!! We were a bit jealous of the sea kayakers who were exploring closer to the glaciers, having come from a smaller excursion boat.

 

All HAL excursions at Ketchikan were cancelled due to the rain. We had an independent booking and went sea kayaking (lotsa fun despite the rain).

[westlab]

We did not leave ship in Skagway.

You saw more wild life from ship than we did. We did see the bears and the whale carcass as well as whales. I did not take binoculars as I didn't want to handle camera and binoculars. That was a mistake.

 

Mindy

Volendam, Vancouver-Vancouver 9/01

Osterdam, Baltic, 07/03

Volendam, Vancouver-Vancouver 8/10

Jewel of the Sea- Boston-Boston 10/10

[erewhon]

Thank you both for your reviews. How wonderful to see all those animals, hope we get to see them too.