MS Ryndam
It occurs to me that some of you might be contemplating cruises of your own and thus might like some idea of what to expect and how likely you are to get it. With Holland America that would be a generally pleasant cruise, mostly reliably delivered.
However…
Just before Betty Anne and I boarded the Ryndam for our thirty days in the tropics, we got a letter from a friend who happened to be aboard a different Holland America ship in a quite different part of the world. He said: “I have to say that the quality of service on Holland America seems to have fallen off a notch or two — still good, but not quite as good as a year or so ago.”
We have the same feeling. Things are good but they used to be just a touch better. The Lido self-service dining area, an upper deck feature on HAL ships still has that everyday miracle of Holland America’s special bread pudding, but what it doesn’t have any more are those gigantic mountains of iced seafood, shrimp and crab legs and whatever, that used to ornament each Lido once a week.
And things go wrong that never went wrong before. Telling time, for instance. If you want to know what time it is on a Holland America cruise the recommended plan is to look at the TV screen in your room — but on this particular cruise this would have given you the wrong time for, on average, at least one day a week (and for some days two or three different wrong times in a single day).
Well, that’s all trivial stuff. But in my view it’s trivial stuff that just shouldn’t have happened — at least not over and over again.
And then there was the suite question.
See, when you use the word “suite” it’s shorthand for “suite of rooms.”
When Holland America advertises a “Veranda Suite” at only a mildly exorbitant markup over your basic stateroom, you’re promised by the laws of English grammar that there will be more than one room, and there wasn’t. There was the same long, skinny room nearly identical in layout to many others on the ship. To be sure, it did have the promised veranda and a nice thing it is to have one on a tropical cruise.
All the same, that is not too remote from fraud in my view. I’m disappointed in my generally honorable cruiseline for practicing it.
By the way, although the economy was tanking in most of its parts on a daily basis at the time, we had a pretty full ship. I take this to mean that there were vast amounts of last-minute discounting and upgrading going on and doubt that will change much in the near future. In such circumstances you gain nothing by early booking and may gain a lot by late. Talk to a good travel agent.
Jeff says:
I fear the closest I shall ever come to a cruise will be to rent a pontoon boat for a three hour cruise around Pickwick Lake. But I shall certainly take advantage of the cruise ship terminology to liven things up. Maybe I’ll invite everybody up to the Lido Deck for a seafood feast (trans - the front of the boat for a can of sardines).
March 26, 2009, 11:52 amFathercrow says:
My big problem with cruises would have to be wheelchair acessibility or the lack there of.
March 26, 2009, 6:35 pmJen says:
My husband finally got me onboard the Maasdam in January for my first cruise ever. He’s been on literally hundreds of cruises (he used to work in the industry), and had chosen HAL because he thought that I’d have the best experience with them.
Although I did love the destinations and will definitely cruise again, the experience on the Maasdam left a lot to be desired. Malfunctioning air conditioning (which they had assured us was fixed before we boarded, as they’d had problems with it all last fall) meant that my husband slept on our balcony for the entire trip while I wore 3 layers of clothes to bed every night, the food was similar to what you’d find in a roadhouse (except for the Pinnacle Grill, which was fantastic), and in general it was not a pleasant experience. The staff were wonderful, and I was taken aback by the fact that so many people remembered my husband from past cruises- it was like meeting old friends for him, and the service was exemplary to say the least. But by the end of the cruise, my husband was mortified at how the quality had dropped since he’d last sailed with HAL.
As I said, I’d gladly cruise again, but even with our letter of apology and $500 shipboard credit on our next cruise that we ended up receiving from HAL I doubt if it will be with them. Which is too bad, as I did like the library on the Maasdam, and I’m not sure that my husband can live without the bread pudding
March 27, 2009, 6:52 am