Nice cruise

Item: Rotterdam Retired
Rating: 3.9
Author: messyshack

Rotterdam Retired Cruise Review to Caribbean - Southern

messyshack

Contributor Level: Second Mate

Cruises: 2-3 cruises

Reviews: 4

Helpful Votes: 94

Overall rating:

3.9 out of 5

14 Night Southern Caribbean (Tampa Roundtrip)

Sail date: November 04, 2018

Ship: Rotterdam Retired

Cabin type: Inside

Cabin number: 2613

Traveled as: Singles/Friends

Reviewed: 5 years ago

Review summary

All in all this was a very good cruise. This was the smallest cruise ship I have been on and the longest cruise I have been on, I hated for it to end. I would recommend this ship and itinerary.

Embarkation

5 out of 5

The shuttle service suggested that we arrive at the port at around 1 PM because it wouldn't be as crowded. We used their suggestion and we made it through the embarkation process in 15 to 20 minutes.

Ship experiences

Food and Dining

3 out of 5

I only used the buffet, I don't like the dining room experience. The buffet was OK, the only problem was that they seemed to have the same menu every day. I liked the fact that servers fill your plate, it kept me from taking too much.

Onboard Activities

3 out of 5

I'll give onboard activities an OK only because I didn't use any of them.

Entertainment

4 out of 5

Musicians at the Ocean Bar were very good. My friend said the string quartet was excellent, I'm not a string quartet fan so I'll take his word for it. We signed up for the Bar Hop, it was a lot of fun. Trivia games were also fun and we were good at most of them. My friend, his wife and I also participated in most of the happy hours and they were good.

Service and Staff

4 out of 5

My cabin steward and her partner were great. I had an interior cabin and the way the beds were arranged made it difficult to get to the phone. I asked my cabin steward if the beds could be moved against one of the walls to give me more room between the beds and the other wall, I returned to my cabin for my sunglasses about 15 minutes after I made the request and the beds were already moved. The cabin was cleaned every day and the beds were made every day.

Ship Quality

3 out of 5

Design is good for the most part. They need to do a better job of differentiating between lifeboats and life rafts. My friends were assigned to lifeBOAT 1 but during the muster drill they went to life RAFT 1. They probably just saw the word life and didn't notice whether raft or boat followed and even if they did I'm not sure they would have thought there was a difference between a raft and a boat. I would imagine that this could be a real problem if it was a real emergency. I think Holland America should prefix their life raft numbers with an R, people would be less likely to confuse Lifewhatever 1 with Lifewhatever R1. The ship was always clean. The carpet needs to be replaced, it is very worn.

Cabin / Stateroom

4 out of 5

I had only 2 problems with the cabin, one was corrected and the other could not be corrected. The beds were put together as a queen size single bed with a night stand on each side. This made it necessary to side step between the bed and one wall to get to the phone. I asked my cabin steward if the beds could be moved against one wall and both night stands put on the other side, she said she would ask her partner and within 15 minutes it was done and I could easily access the phone. The other option I would have suggested would have been to split the bed into 2 twin beds and put both night stands in between the beds. The problem that could not be corrected was the location of the television. The television was mounted high so if I was sitting on the couch the only way I could get the remote to work was to stand up, if I was sitting down the shelf blocked the sensor on the television.