Just off Nieuw Amsterdam ... Dec 18

[dchip]

On 12/20/2022 at 11:28 PM, The-Inside-Cabin said:

We had a mariners lunch on the Zuiderdam in March on the South Pacific Cruise.   It was the same as pre covid-

We also had one in November on the Zuiderdam South Pacific cruise. 
 

Hi Pete and Judy. Looking forward to your GWV blog. 
 

Cheers, Denise

[sun~]

On 12/20/2022 at 11:58 AM, MISTER 67 said:

We saw the piano and scratched our heads as is to why no one played it the whole week we sailed which was from Dec 4-11.

Maybe an illness but we were on the Rotterdam in April and there was no live music in the Ocean Bar on that cruise either.

Bottom line is that HAL has cut back on too many things and we just don't care to sail with them anymore.

I was on the NA from Nov 27 to Dec 4th. One of the piano players had covid, I guess the other one got it too. 

[mwj]

We had a wonderful fourteen days. Was it perfect, no there were minor deficiencies most everywhere. None of the deficiencies prevented us from having a marvelous time. If we had one area where we were disappointed, it was the service in the pinnacle grill. Our servers in the MDR were excellent overall. Our room stewards were good overall, with minor details missed. The MDR food was very good, although we found desserts lackluster. The entertainment was very good overall. We had no issues with either embarkation or disembarkation.

[SueMo]

Glad to hear you had a good experience on the NA.  We cruised on her New Years Eve a year ago and the entertainment was just awful.  There was no live dance band onboard (You expect to celebrate the New Year with dancing!).  There was a very bad singer/piano player in Billboard.  The 2nd singer/piano player in Billboard, who was marginally decent, had covid. Evidently, the drummer for the BB Kings group was sick, so without him they didn’t play.  The Lincoln Center musicians were often down in numbers as well.  There were two comedians on board.  One was decent and the other just dismal.  Guess which one came down with covid?  There was one poor entertainment host, Tomas, who was wonderful, but just how much could one guy do?  He had to act as trivia host, game host, DJ, etc.

 

We understand the times were unusual, but with the threadbare entertainment options to begin with there was no way to have a musician from one group to “fill in” for another.  We were on another cruise line during 2021 where there was a live orchestra in the theater as well as several bands scattered throughout the lounges.  It wasn’t uncommon to see an orchestra member fill in for a sick member of another group.

 

Since then we’ve cruised on Nieuw Statendam, and I must say, a great improvement!