Mediocre Experience
Westerdam Cruise Review to Caribbean - Eastern
Contributor Level:
Deck Hand
Cruises: 7+ cruises
Reviews: 4
Helpful Votes: 16
Sail date: February 01, 2008
Ship: Westerdam
Cabin type: Oceanview
Traveled as: Large Group
Reviewed: 14 years ago
Review summary
This is our 2nd cruise on this cruiseline. We cruised 2 years ago on the Oosterdam and had a wonderful experience. Not so on this trip. The quality of HAL's service has greatly deteriorated in the past couple of years. Ship staff is either overworked, or indifferent to customers. We will not travel on Holland America again in the near future. We will stick to Celebrity. We have never had a bad experience on that line. We turned our comments in to the ship, but that probably will not make a difference. For example, our rooms/beds/baths were not "made up" until late afternoon, 3:00 p.m. one day, and never before noon. One day, they came in so late they just turned the bed down for the night. This is not acceptable. They formerly had carafes of ice water in the rooms. Now, if you don't want to drink the water out of the bathroom sink, you must purchase bottled water from the mini-bar in the room. They have removed one storage area and placed a mini-bar so the rooms have less storage space. I actually was going to drink one of the diet drinks out of the mini-bar, but luckily noticed the expiration date on the bottom of the can and it had been expired for 2 months. Obviously, no one uses this stuff, or only rarely, so why take up precious storage space. Ice cream and cookie bar had cookies only about half the time. When we finally asked for cookies one day, we were told that we could get them from Room service, but the cookie bar was "Out of Cookies". We asked if Room service and the cookie bar got cookies from the same place and was told yes. We then asked if we could get cookies, why couldn't the cookie bar. Finally, a "higher up" was summoned and he corrected the problem and apologized. It seems the person on duty at the bar just didn't want to walk down to the kitchen and get another tray of cookies. This was the attitude of most of the service personnel. Something was definitly wrong on this ship. Food was only "OK", but nothing special. We did not like the open seating. We were told that the open seating plan was the only way we could eat in the dining room, so every night, we had a different table, different waiters and a different time to eat. Horrible! We like to have our table ready for us with the type of drinks we like ready, etc. Seven nights out of seven, our dinner orders were wrong. We were traveling with another couple and their experience was as unpleasant as ours. As we were leaving the ship, all we heard were negative comments about this cruise. I'm glad I'm a seasoned cruiser, or this experience might have turned me off from cruising.Pros: Weather
Cons: Crew
Be the first to comment