This was a cruise with my granddaughter age 12 (she will be 13 next
month) and was her first cruise and first trip outside the US
Previous Cruises: (for me - age 71l)
HAL Nieuw Amsterdam 1950 transatlantic NYC to La Havre
HAL Nieuw Amsterdam 1950 transatlantic Southampton to NYC
04- NCL Crown to Bermuda
05- NCL Crown repositioning -Phila to Miami.
06 - HAL Maasdam back to back Caribbean and repositioning
07- RCI Grandeur of the Seas - repositioning Baltimore to Tampa
07-NCL Pearl - Caribbean from Miami
08 -NCL Jade - Med cruise Barcelona to Venice '08 with my grandson
08 - HAL Statendam - back to back Panama Canal cruise
The ship was basically similar to the Maasdam and the Statendam
although a little newer and a tiny bit bigger. I did not like it
quite as well as I liked the other two ships, but it was the tiny
little things that made the difference - not any big hairy problems.
Initially I wanted to do a cruise from England to Rome and back, but I
decided that the Med would be too hot for me in June. So I signed up
for this one while on the Statendam cruise.
I had a LOT of trouble with this reservation because HAL credited the
wrong travel agent - not the one that I made the Statendam reservation
with, but the one I made the Maasdam reservation with. They would not
correct their mistake and insisted that I get a release from the agent
which they booked it with. I refused to do that as the reason I was
not using that agent anymore was that I wasn't satisfied with her.
After I had one HAL person hang up on me, and another one refuse to
deal with it, I finally got someone who would "allow" me and my agent
to fax them our intentions and change the agency.
[They also had my name listed wrong (with my maiden name in with my
married name) and it took me a long time - actually several years to
get them to fix this.]
I booked a GTY and for a small fee was upgraded to a fully obstructed
view. We could actually see the water if we looked sideways so this
was OK. I didn't get the room number for the luggage tag until one
day from embarkation - my agent (Cal) emailed it to me.
Embarkation:
Embarkation went pretty smoothly except that they should have had some
wheelchairs for people. We had to run across from the end of the
awning to the gangway in the rain. We got on the ship behind a guy on
crutches and he almost fell on the gangway. The first step shifted
under my foot when I went on and I am steadier on my feet than he was.
When we went to the counter the person checking us in (Patrica) had a
great deal of trouble - first the passport wouldn't scan because the
machine was on the table backwards. She just had a horrible time with
everything. Finally she got us checked in and we went on board about
12:45.
But the first time we got off the boat, the scanners said we had the
wrong pictures on our cards (mine was on my granddaughters and v.v.)
and we should get that fixed. So we went up and had new pictures
taken. When I got our passports back for St. Pete, the wrong
embarkation paperwork was in our passports - that had been reversed
too. The second time we got off the ship, the pictures were still on
the wrong card. So we went up again, and this time the lady said that
the cards themselves had the wrong name printed on them, so she took
the old cards and gave us completely new ones.
Cabin:
The cabin was nice although I had to call and have them switch the
beds to two singles. They had a nice shelf under the sink for storage
which I like. The cabin steward was overburdened and didn't get to
our cabin until late (on sea days). Sometimes I could not tell what
the towel animals were. I blew a fuse in one of the outlets and it
took a couple of days to get it fixed. They fixed the flickering
light over the counter at the same time.
Ship:
The decor was more 'generic' i.e. not themed. Instead of the Van Gogh
Theatre, it was the Queen's Lounge and I found that name confusing.
Instead of the Rembrandt, the dining room was La Fontaine. There
were flowers, but sometimes there were dead flowers in the various
arrangements.
The decks were labeled differently from Statendam and Maasdam where
the Lower Promenade deck is deck 6. On this ship it is deck 3. The
buttons in the elevators do not have to be pushed - all you have to do
is put a finger tip on it. One or two elevators were out of service
at all times.
In the self service laundries, only one or two washers was working on
each deck (out of three or four) and two driers out of three. I
understand they are going to take out the laundries.
From the ship store, I bought my granddaughter a necklace for her room
card, a sweatshirt (because she had brought shorts and warm weather
clothing and didn't have enough stuff for the cold rainy windy weather
we had) and a watch. By the end of the first day, the watch band had
separated from the watch on both ends. We did buy some of the Russian
items for souvenirs and gifts on board because we really didn't have
the time or energy to shop in port.
Dining:
We had Personal Choice dining and generally this worked well.
There were three formal nights, and every other night was listed as
'smart casual' and the description of smart casual was coats and ties
for men and cocktail dresses for women. Most of the time when we got
to the dining room, the sign there said that dress was 'Casual' but a
lot of good that does if you are already dressed when you get up
there. I do usually go to the dining room already dressed.
The Statendam had really good bread in the Lido which was one reason
to eat there. The bread on the Rotterdam was 'ordinary' so I rarely
ate in the Lido although they always helped me with my tray there.
I found the food not quite as good in general as on the Maasdam and
Statendam. I never saw the breakfast specials cards on the tables
although I saw some of them at the waiters stations. Sometimes
service was a little slow. There's no butter knife or fork for the
butter at the table - you have to use your own butter knife.
My granddaughter left the table early one night, and someone phoned
her twice and called her by name and said they noticed that I was
there in the dining room without her and asked whether she had eaten.
She found this creepy (and I found it disturbing) but she didn't know
who phoned other than it must have been one of the dining room staff
as the person had an accent and she could hear others laughing in the
background. One of the waiters had her name in fancy letters on the
paper he was using to write orders on, but I could not prove that he
was the one who phoned. From then on she didn't answer the phone.
Cal gave us a Pinnacle Grill dinner as a gift (thank you Cal). They
said the options were 1730 or 2030, so we picked 1730. The guy came
around with his plate of choice meat and explained it to us, but
neither of us wanted that much meat. They also gave us a dish of
olive oil and also a pot of butter for the bread. First they brought
the bread and then a small cup of soup. When we ordered they told us
that if we wanted a souffle for dessert we should order it now because
it took a half an hour to do. So I ordered the chocolate souffle.
My granddaughter had Dungeness crab cake as the appetizer, and I had
the lobster bisque which came with a large spoon of lobster meat
beside the soup dish (so unlike in the main dining room there was
actually lobster in the bisque). Then she had the lobster tail with a
side of mashed potatoes. I had the lobster mac and cheese with a side
of creamed spinach that came with the cheese cracker. I love that
cheese cracker. Then they brought us a little dish of chocolates -
dark chocolate balls, white chocolate hearts and nougat balls. When
it came time for dessert there was a long wait for it. Bree ordered
the cherries jubilee which was made with Ben and Jerry cherry ice
cream. They brought it to the table and poured liqueur on it and
lighted it for her.
Room Service:
We did have breakfast service in our room three or four times but
there was no hot cereal available on the room service menu so I
preferred the dining room if I could do it. Every single time I
ordered breakfast, it came 10 minutes before the wake-up call. I
would order breakfast from 7-7:30 and the wakeup call for 6:50 am, and
the breakfast would come at 6:40. If I set the breakfast as 0600 to
0630, and the wakeup call to 0540, the breakfast came at 0530
Tours:
This was a quite port intensive cruise. Schedule was
Embarkation in Copenhagen, Denmark
Sea Day
Tallinn Estonia
St. Petersburg, Russia (2 nights)
Helsinki Finland
Stockholm Sweden
Sea Day
Berlin, Germany
Arhus, Denmark,
Oslo, Norway
Sea Day
Disembark in Rotterdam, Holland
I used the ship tours everywhere except Tallinn and St. Petersburg and
Arhus. For tours, they made us get in line somewhere outside the
starboard side of the theater (aka the Queen's Lounge) and go all the
way around to the port side to get stickers. It is annoying to stand
in that long a line without knowing what tour they are giving stickers
for until you get there.
In Berlin, we were to be in the Queens Lounge at 0650 and we got there
before that to find that our group had already been called.
I really do not like the way HAL makes you pay for the tours when you
book, and this is particularly bad because they do not tell you that
the tour is canceled until the last minute. In the case of St
Petersburg, no re booking options were available if your tour was
canceled because all of the buses etc were ordered well in advance. I
would think if that was so, that they could also tell you well in
advance that the tour was canceled.
I was quite worried about this port because I had arranged for a tour
for the two of us with the Alla tour agency for a private car, driver
and guide, and they warned us that HAL would make it difficult for us
to meet the guide in a timely manner.
And they did. They had the HAL tours very regimented, and indicated
that no one could get off the boat at any time other than on a HAL
tour or with a visa. And said how hard Russian immigration was and if
there was the slightest mistake that we would hold everyone up and our
name would be a hissing and a byword.
We were arriving at 0800 and I thought that perhaps we could have
breakfast first and get off at 0900, but the Alla instructions were to
get off as soon as the ship was cleared. And well before 0800, the
cruise director started calling the first tour which was scheduled for
0815. Then she said that everyone with a visa (which we didn't have
of course but we didn't need one because we had a tour with a
recognized agency) must get off with the first group at 0800 or else
they could not get off until all the ship tours had left. So we
picked up and left without breakfast although we had some fruit in the
room and my granddaughter ate some
I did the ballet night tour in St. Petersburg, and neither of us were
at all impressed with the performance we saw - we thought it was
lackluster except maybe for the main ballerina. I think we would have
done better with the Folkloric performance.
Club Hal
I registered my granddaughter at the HAL kids club, but she really
wasn't interested in that. Seems to be mostly 9 yo boys in her age
group (7-12). I think she would have like the teen club (and there
were some teens), but she was too shy to go up by herself, and I
couldn't get her to go with me either.
I got her a coke card for 20 cokes, and she didn't use it all up, but
she did use over 350 internet minutes with no problem. Part of this
was because her uncle posted on Facebook that her grandfather (not my
husband but her other grandfather) had died, and she was emailing
about that.
Internet:
The internet was down sometimes so I didn't get all my minutes used
up. It was about as usual.
Entertainment:
We went to the pianist's show (can't find his name on the internet
anywhere and I don't have my ship literature atm) and thought it was
good, and my granddaughter went to another one of the shows a liked it
also. I didn't bother with the big production shows, mostly because
on those nights we were too tired to go.
The port lecturer was pretty good and they played his lecture in a
continuous loop on the TV in the cabin. They actually removed the
port talks of the ports we had already been to from the loop so
someone was on the ball there!!!
Whenever I could, I went to Team Trivia and had a good time doing
that. The team I was on (various people - not always the same ones)
won 5 times (got three mugs, a key chain and a luggage tag), lost a
tie breaker once, and was second twice. The Cruise Director (who was
a woman) usually ran the Trivia.
Disembarkation:
I asked for early embarkation. We got luggage tags marked Pink 5,
with a time of 0700 to 0730. I asked for breakfast at 5:30 to 6, and
for a wake-up call at 5:15. Breakfast again came before the wake-up
call. They said they would not call individual boarding times on the
intercom, but we should just go at the time allotted. So at 0715, we
went to try to find where to get off.
However they DID call individual times and kept making an announcement
that we shouldn't congregate around the gangway. So we sat at a desk
in the atrium on our floor and waited. I couldn't log on to the
internet and finish up my minutes because I tried.
After we claimed our bags we walked out to get a taxi. There were a
lot of people wanting taxis and no taxis. We waited about a half hour
for a taxi. |