gohunter Cruise Review on Zaandam on Oct 18, 2018

Reviews: 4

Helpful Votes: 40

Review summary

Did San Antonio to Rio on this ship! First and last time on Holland America! Lounge entertainment was a joke. 1) A classical duo playing to an empty lounge that had an unused dance floor. 2) An awful jazz band that didn't even recognize that the ship was in South America. Instead of playing sambas, rumbas, bossa novas, etc. They murdered ABBA, Beatles, etc by playing it in jazz style, and they also murdered loads of jazz numbers too! 3) A bar singer/piano player who hollered and hammered the guts out of the piano. However, he was the best of a bad bunch! Bars closed at 23:30, nothing after that as apparently Holland America felt it was past our bed time! Cruise director Bruce was probably the worst in the 24 cruises that we've been on. Paid lip service but did nothing. His response to complaints was "That's not the Holland America product that we sell!" Absolutely awful attitude!!!! Also, when an act had a night off, there was simply NOTHING replacing them. Want a late breakfast after 10am? Tough! No food available anywhere until lunch starts at 11:30 or noon depending on the day. Some sea days where the main restaurant didn't even open for lunch! Their answer? Room service is available 24 hours per day! Lido Market restaurant is supposedly buffet, but you can't pick up your own food as it is all behind perspex, so you can easily have to queue several times in different lines, just to get what you want on your plate. By the time you've got it all, the first item you put on the plate is cold as they've not understood the concept of hot plates! In the main dining room on one occasion I sent my "medium" steak back twice as it was served and replaced with a similarly rare steak dripping blood. Others at the table did similarly! One day we gave up on dessert and coffee as after waiting for over an hour to get as far as the main course, we'd lost our appetite, let alone patience! Drinks packages are horrendously expensive compared to other cruise lines, but the drinks quality is not any better. Bar staff were the saviours though with Elmer, Neil, Ronnie and co keeping us sane when we felt like jumping overboard due to the "suicide music" being played by the jazz band in the Ocean bar! Theatre entertainment was hit and miss. Some acts were excellent, but other nights were poor. One night the theatre show was a BBC Frozen Planet film without the Sir David Attenborough commentary, with musicians playing music to it. What the heck? Without the commentary, the film just loses all meaning, but I guess they wanted to save paying royalties to Sir David!!! One day our toilet stopped flushing. I reported it before 10am. Came back to the cabin at around 4pm to find it still as we left it. Complained to Guest Services, to be told the plumber had fixed it when he clearly had been nowhere near our cabin. They logged it again and I called them again an hour later, by this time irate telling them to "Get a plumber here NOW!" He eventually arrived 40mins later, well over 7 hours after I reported the fault! They knew very well that my wife was disabled and trekking around the ship to find a disabled friendly toilet was a real nuisance, but they obviously don't care! Our opinion is that Holland America is by far the worst cruise line that we have used.