1st time on a cruise and I liked it

Nieuw Statendam Cruise Review to Europe - Mediterranean

Cruises: 1 cruise (first)
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 45

Overall rating:

4.4 out of 5
Nieuw Statendam

10 Night Mediterranean Mosaic (Rome Roundtrip)

Sail date: September 27, 2019

Ship: Nieuw Statendam

Cabin type: Balcony

Cabin number: 8199

Traveled as: Large Group

Reviewed: 5 years ago

Review summary

The ShipMate application needs some work and really made it very difficult for a group of us to coordinate. Notifications did not work on apple phones so we never knew when someone was trying to contact us. And we were traveling with a group of 17 people. There was no way to do a group communication. This made our trip extremely challenging and less rewarding as coordination was so difficult. I think with this feature it would have improved all of ours overall experience. Additionally, some of the onboard activities did not sync up. We would go to some like line dancing, and it was actually ballroom dancing. On some of our phones it showed ballroom dancing and on others it showed line dancing. It was dissapointing as we were celebrating a birthday and we thought we were going to be able to celebrate based on the things we had picked out and that did not happen.

Embarkation

5 out of 5
That was fairly easy

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

4 out of 5
Food options were good. Most of the food was pretty good. Some of the food nights we paid extra for, were not as good as they could have been so I am not sure I would do that again.

Onboard Activities

3 out of 5
More variety would be good. I thought more exercise programs would have been better. Also, if we use the shipmate app to sign up, we would show up at the class and told it was full. This process should be seamless and convenient instead of making phone calls or going to customer service for everything we wanted to sign up for. That was not a good experience and created work on a vacation.

The Retreat

3 out of 5

The massage therapists were very talented. I would give them a 5 star, however, I did not like the high pressure sales pitch at the end. That was not why I came on a cruise.

Entertainment

4 out of 5

Service and Staff

5 out of 5
Staff and service was wonderful

Ship Quality

5 out of 5
beautiful ship

Cabin / Stateroom

5 out of 5
Everything overall was great. I could smell sewage in the bathroom (but specifically in the shower). I think the venting wasn't great. It would have been nice to have a slightly wider shower even taking up a foot in the room would have been nice.

Ports of call

Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy

4 out of 5
Far from Rome. This was our departure and arrival city.

Dubrovnik, Croatia

5 out of 5
Loved Dubrovnik. I had been there before and it is now quite busy but I still enjoyed it.

Kotor, Montenegro

5 out of 5

Corfu, Greece

5 out of 5

Piraeus (Athens), Greece

4 out of 5
I wish it was not so far from the main part of Athens.

Santorini, Greece

1 out of 5
Santorini I loved, however, the offboarding process was horrible. We waited 2 hours to get off the boat. This island was my bucket list item and it was ruined for me by the entire process.

Naples, Italy

5 out of 5

Disembarkation

5 out of 5
easy
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