While having good points, overall our cruise was disappointing and endangered our health.

Cruises: 7+ cruises

Review: 1

Helpful Votes: 6

Review summary

While having good points, overall our cruise was disappointing and endangered our health. First the good. The staff were awesome, and went out of their way to provide excellent service. Our veranda stateroom was spacious and clean, with an efficient and easy-to-use heating and cooling system. Neutral The food was adequate, though nowhere near the quality and selection of the Holland America cruises we took in 1998 and 1999. While having staff serving food in the Lido buffet looks good on paper, it creates significant bottleneck, in that one has to wait for a server to become available, while one’s food is getting cold, for even for simple things like getting jam or a piece of fruit. While several music venues were great, the main stage entertainment for the most part was mediocre. The Bad First of all, even when we booked online, we could not secure a reserved time for the main dining room. When we were on board, we could not even make dinner reservations on a daily basis for the main dining room. I finally went to guest services and managed to secure a set dining time. Our table mates had the same problem, and knew of multiple cases of other guests being unable to secure a set dining time. Yet in the deck 3 level of dining room there were plenty of empty tables. Obviously Holland America’s reservation system does not work. Limited public spaces relative to the number of passengers, for example the small dance floor was very overcrowded for the line dancing lessons and there would be no place available unless one got there early. Hot tubs also had very limited capacity. Up charges for things that are free on other lines, such as no free lobster night and a limited selection of free beverages. Orange night was not free, requiring guests to purchase a 4-drink set package. Tendering even in deep-water ports and an overly short stay in Liverpool with a 3:30pm all aboard. Poor quality tours sold through Holland America, such as our disorganized whisky and cathedral tour which used an over-crowded standing room only public shuttle, scheduled the whisky tasting first at 10am! As well having the guide abandoning us outside the cathedral, with no guided tour of the interior, and no escort back to the shuttle pickup point. However, the most egregious thing was the Captain failing to inform the guests that there was a COVID outbreak, which resulted in us getting COVID. We found out that many passengers were sick from other passengers and staff, though too late for us to take precautions such as masking in public spaces and tenders. As we caught COVID, this lack of being informed in a timely fashion that there was an outbreak significantly endangered our health and ruined the last four days of our cruise. We had decided to give Holland America one last chance and they failed to deliver, therefor we are unlikely to cruise with them again.

Embarkation

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

Onboard Activities

Entertainment

Service and Staff

Ship Quality

Cabin / Stateroom

Ports of call

Copenhagen, Denmark

Newcastle Upon Tyne, England

South Queensferry (Edinburgh), Scotland

Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, Scotland

Dun Laoghaire (Dublin), Ireland

Holyhead, Wales

Douglas, Isle Of Man

Liverpool, England

Disembarkation