I don't think I'm the target audience for this cruise
Oosterdam Cruise Review to Europe - Mediterranean
Contributor Level:
Deck Hand
Cruises: 7+ cruises
Review: 1
Helpful Votes: 18
Review summary
I'm in my 30s and perhaps that is the problem, I know that we are not the target audience for this cruise. We went with my father in law who is in a wheel chair and I will say that they did a reasonably good job at making things work for him. I suspect better than other lines. Their ground staff was in constant confusion and no one really knew what was going on, getting things resolved took multiple phone calls. Our pre-cruise hotel was oversold and holland completely dropped the ball on that and the transfers. The post cruise transfer was also really poorly managed and required standing the sun for 3 hours with our bags. But - they did have options for people in wheel chairs and it more or less worked out. At one port, they didn't have any employees in the terminal and sent us the wrong direction killing 30 minutes of our tour. The activities onboard were the worst I've ever experienced. I don't know if the cruise director has any additional staff helping her, but I only ever saw her. They didn't really schedule any activities, certainly nothing after 8pm. Many days were spent reading since there was nothing to do other than seminars trying to get your money or live classical music. Trivia was only scheduled in the middle of dinner every day. no Karaoke. no other little things to do to pass the time. Feedback was provided via their mobile "app" but no one ever followed up. Speaking of the mobile app, it's not a mobile app, but a web page really. Carnival (their parent company) has a brilliant mobile app which includes chat and other feature and the ability to message people. While holland has this function, it doesn't notify the other person, which makes it useless. The food and service was second to none, mostly. Things are a bit confusing since they try to offer additional service over other lines - like you can't put food on your own plate at the lido, they get you drinks and such, but they don't have the staff to really handle this efficiently, so I ate breakfast without drink 2 or 3 times. Being a bit more pushy would have likely worked to help me. High end food options were everywhere, smoked salmon on the lido buffet in the morning, real, quality lobster tails in the main dining room, etc. Note that breakfast in the main dining room was actually a bit worse than the lido breakfast. It didn't have any additional options, actually less options. All in all, it was a good cruise, but I don't think I'm their target audience. I wouldn't pay a premium for this cruise over NCL for example.Embarkation
Carnival (their parent company) has embarkation down, you're through and on the ship in 20 minutes. For some reason, Holland is still mostly manual and requires lots of queueing.
Ship experiences
Food and Dining
Onboard Activities
our most used activity was doing puzzles. They would schedule maybe one activity a day through the CD's office and almost every day it was during dinner. They did schedule unattended meet ups, but no one came and sometimes, very unorganized, like they scheduled a trivia pursuit meetup, but didn't provide trivial pursuit. No Karaoke, we only could play trivia twice the whole trip due to poor scheduling. We provided feedback via their "app" but no one ever responded.
Entertainment
The comedian was great. The rest of the entertainment was song and dance numbers to hit music.
Service and Staff
Ship Quality
She was fine, but showing her age a bit.
Cabin / Stateroom
Ship tip
you can get above the bridge by going all the way forward on deck 9.
Thumbs up
0
Ports of call
Livorno (Florence & Pisa), Italy