Zuiderdam Cruise Reviews - Reviews

Absolutely brilliant 22 day Mediterranean cruise. Best ever holiday. Food, entertainment, crew were all fantastic. The ship has a good feel and class about it.

1)  The Vista dining room was closed every day for lunch, except for one port day when it was open from noon-1pm.  This means they were open for lunch 1 out of 11 days.  This has never happened on any cruise with any other line. 

2) The air conditioning did not work well in the public spaces.  It was hot in Vista dining, Pinnacle specialty restaurant, Lido Cafeteria, Atrium bar, Vista Lounge, Ocean Bar.  Luckily the A/C worked well in the cabins.  We have travelled in the summer in hot climates (Caribbean, Mediterranean, Galapagos, French Polynesia) and have never had this problem before.

3)  At 3 am, one night, paint vapors were pumped into our room via the A/C.  We awoke in the middle of the night nauseated, with burning eyes, and a headache.  Never before have we had noxious fumes in our cabin.  The front desk attempted to compensate us for this.  The bottle of wine ended up being poured down the sink.  We used the $20 credit in the Pinnacle grill.  That being said, I would have much preferred a better night’s sleep that evening.  Not to mention, there is the medical risk Holland America runs by pumping noxious vapors into passenger’s quarters.  It could trigger an asthma attack in somebody with sensitivities.  It also is not very healthy for the liver.

4) Our toilet stopped working.  We have never had this happen before.  It took 3 phone calls and 2 hours before it was fixed. 

5)  We had to wait for 30-40 minutes to board a tender because there were only 3 tenders operating at a given time, and at least one of them, if not two, was dedicated to transporting only passengers that had booked excursions through Holland America.  One of the tenders stopped working in the middle of transporting passengers from shore to ship (lifeboat number 15).  Lucky for us, it was the one that left before the one we got on.  We saw the stranded passengers and life boat.  It is not comforting to see lifeboats malfunctioning.   No one could tell us why only a small number of tenders were operating despite our queries.

6)  The last 4 days of the trip there was a locust infestation of the ship.  We couldn’t sit comfortably on our veranda without their company.   We do not like bugs, and these were approximately 5 inch grasshoppers.  We refused to go out on our veranda with these huge insects.  We do not know where they came from, but nobody seemed to take the time to get rid of them.

7) Something needs to be done about the Santorini port visit.  We waited from 3 to 4 pm in line, in a very hot temperature without shade, to get to the cable car for the return trip.  By the time we got back to the ship, it was 4:20pm.  We also had to wait in line for a tender once we reached the dock.  We were not the only ones who had this long wait.  Others reported waiting even longer than we did.

8)  The food was of variable quality, more often not tasty.  We even ate at the Pinnacle grill.  The fish was dry and the vegetables were overcooked and mushy.  On every other ship that we have eaten at a specialty restaurant, the food has been a cut above the food served in the dining room.  This meal in this specialty restaurant was actually worse in terms of the food than in the Vista dining room.  A real disappointment.

9)  We purchased the unlimited internet.  It was not only slow, as expected, but kicked us off ever 15-20 minutes, requiring us to log in again.  We had also planned on checking emails before disembarkation.  At 6:30, we were unhappy to discover that our account was already disabled.  We had been told that we would be able to access the internet until we had disembarked.

The SINGLE positive remark we have about this ship has to do with the positive attitude of the predominantly Filipino and Indonesian crew (front desk, wait staff, cabin stewards) who did their best to make a bad situation better.  Eleven  days is a long time to cruise under these conditions.

Although we may cruise with Holland America in the future, we will NEVER sail with Zuiderdam.  We have already recommended to our travel agent that she avoid this particular ship for any of her customers.  Needless to say, we will also recommend that any friends who plan on cruising with Holland America, not to travel on the Zuiderdam, no matter how tempting the fare or the itinerary. 

The stops in Dubrovnik, Kotor, Korcula and Split are the best. Other stops not so much. Our six person dinner seating was a bust as the other parties were not comfortable with the other and left after the first night. We were then left alone and Holland America did nothing to relocate us with another table. Do not like the over priced charges for every little thing on the ship. The photo people took no care in getting a good picture, just one shot even if no good.

This was our first cruise ship experience, and we won't be traveling on Holland America any time soon.

At the outset I should note we've got years of travel experience internationally - from our first trip from the US to Mainland China in 1984.  We're very familiar how the hospitality industry SHOULD work.  HAL is the kind of organization that stinks from the head down, with policies and employee attitudes that are clearly reflective of senior management.

The first overall issue with HAL is their attitude towards "Customer Service".  There is none.  We had emails with HAL months before the cruise that guaranteed certain amenities to be provided.  One example was the "VIP Package".  An in-cabin bottle of wine, flowers, and other amenities that were never received.  When we inquired with the front desk about it (including their reviewing the email we received), they refused to act on it saying only "they would need a response from their head office (which of course is closed on US weekends and holidays).  I've never heard of customer service people that weren't empowered by management to take action on behalf of the customer.    

This ship itself is at the end of its useful life.  We had plumbing and water issues, elevators stalled for no reason, and huge rusted areas inside the ship were visible when ceiling panels were removed to fix some problem during the cruise.  Judging from the long lines at the front desk and other passenger comments, these issues were endemic to many of the passengers.  We ourselves experienced all of these issues (on deck 6 in a highly upgraded "Signature Suite" cabin). The Zuiderdam had just left drydock, where apparently the primary concern was building more expensive cabins at the back of the ship.  The captain made a big deal about this "$39M upgrade", but it was largely spent in an attempt to jam MORE suckers into higher-end cabins, instead of items that it is sorely in need of fixing.  The tender boat dock was covered in rust, and the handrail was almost rusted through!  (See photos)

The air conditioning on the ship is useless as well, and complaints about it are routinely ignored.  And our decrepit balcony furniture (one chair too unsafe to sit in) showed how inattentive to the ship's maintenance the company is.  A photo attached shows the slopping of paint around the outside, on our "luxury balcony" - a bad job apparently supervised and approved by worse management.  If this is the quality of care and maintenance on the OUTSIDE, VISIBLE part of the ship, what's going on in the kitchens and engine room??

We are at the younger end of the cruising crowd, and were able to organize non-HAL shore excursions everywhere.  In most cases the same experience as those who purchased the HAL excursions, but 2/3 less cost.  Sadly however like the airlines, the cruise experience is filled with sneaky tricks that HAL uses to charge you for what you might think is included.  

One egregious example is the "$50 per day drink package".  The fine print on this little gem excludes all branded wine and many beers, as their is a "maximum drink price" of $7 for inclusion in the package.  Essentially the passengers who drink themselves into a stupor on lousy beer at the buffet can get hammered, and the upscale passenger in the dining room gets hosed.  Get a reduction in the price of the cruise and pass on the drink package is our recommendation.  And while the cruise lines will not allow off-ship wine onboard, you can load up on soft drinks at nearly every port at half the price or less.

And on arrival into Citvitavececchia, we were told by the destinations specialist (who never would tell anyone her real name) that "there are almost no taxis and the train station is a dangerous walk and not recommended" - all in an attempt to sell us transport into Rome at twice the price of the competition  

I again note that we've attempted to discuss these issues with the so-called onboard management.  They refuse to come out of their offices for ANYONE - we saw passengers angry at minibar charges and other billing errors demand to see a manager and refused.  Over the years we've had our share of hotel difficulties, and have never been refused the step of speaking to management, who were almost always able to correct the issue.  

Much of the staff (mostly indonesian and filipino) were polite and responsive, but did not exude any particular happiness or enthusiasm for their jobs.  We had one barman at the Lido Pool deck who never smiled, rarely greeted anyone, and never proffered a hello or thank you.  Perhaps someone that should be in the kitchen instead of serving the public directly.  

The main dining room was very will run, and the food generally interesting and tasty.  It's a difficult task to feed some 2000 passengers a cruise dining experience everyday, but we were generally satisfied with their result.  The waiters here went the extra mile to ingratiate themselves with the passengers.  The portions we found very reasonable size, and we didn't experience the cruise ship "bloat" that many have.  Of course with the average cruise ship passenger moving "downscale" from the past, we would guess several hundred preferred the fast-food but all-you-can-eat environment of the Lido Grill (aka "hillbilly") deck.  If dining room staff were a little more aggressive in discouraging passengers who don't even own any "smart casual" dress from the dining room, it would be more pleasant for everyone.

We don't see the reason that the ship can't have a 7/11 type store onboard for passengers to get bottled soft drinks and other amenities.  The bottled water in the rooms was marked at $3.50 a bottle!  While the tap water seemed perfectly fine to drink, this seemed another petty attempt to slug us for a few more bucks (and the $3.50 doesn't apply to the drink package!)

The Zuiderdam is a technology joke, which I would suspect is a major stumbling block for marketing to younger people.  The in-house TV system was just crap, with bad pictures on the world's cheapest cabin-installed TV's.  And while we had a DVD player included, it wasn't connected properly and the DVD's (get them at the front desk) were mostly scratched, unplayable, and useless.  Satellite TV was available and that was fine,  but the biggest issue these cruise lines need to face up to is internet access.  It's currently an overpriced, gouge-you-for-dollars joke.  I routinely ran speed tests on the connection and it was about 1/3 the speed of when I was using an analog MODEM. And at $249 for 10 days of connectivity (which quits after an hour and requires a complex rebooting to restart), someone's getting filthy rich on this gouge.  The internet provider Harris Corp claims that HAL isn't providing enough bandwidth for the demand (no kidding), but clearly the bandwidth is available to meet the demand.  And it's not like these issues aren't well known - with so many tourists shooting photos on their iPhones, these devices are set to sync to the cloud when connected and most don't know they should or ever CAN disable this feature.  The result is a completely unusable system.  

We understand other cruise companies are doing better (as are the airlines, where I routinely can get an over-the-ocean satellite connection at 2MB+ along with all my fellow passengers).  But HAL will drive away potential passengers with this major shortcoming.  The internet is no longer a "luxury", but a mainstream requirement.  Many of the passengers who were loathe to be raped by HAL for this service on-board could be seen jamming cafes around the ports with their devices, trying to just get a bit of communication.

Worst ship I have ever cruised on. Ocean view cabin flooded on 4th night out. Several outdoor decks closed for entire 22-day voyage. Several venues —including Explorers Lounge—closed for large portion of cruise. Ship was removed from dry dock before repairs were completed. Seemed more like sailing on a construction site than a first-class cruise. Ship staff unhelpful; often refused to talk with passengers. No notification of problems until passengers were on board ship—thus no opportunity to cancel even at last minute. Horrible.

The ship sailed still undergoing refurbishing (not completed at repair facility). Still undergoing after 22 days sailing. Hollands America not responding to guests complaints.

High volume noises. Debris falling on balcony. No access to top deck.

Any-time-dining restaurant running out of food items. RUNNING OUT OF WATER!!!. Insufficient table service crew. Very limited food service hours.

Very poor quality entertainment/activities.

Non-disclosed balcony's partial view obstruction.

Total caos at disembarking time!!  Made some guests miss trains/flights.

We were advised that Holland America line was supposed to be upscale from Carnival.  This was not a good example.  The boat is an older, tired, shabby vessel despite the staff's continued efforts cleaning and polishing.  It was just out of dry-dock and renovation work was not completed, so they brought the contractors to work during the cruise. Access to the Crow's Nest was not available as renovations were not completed.  In our case, the shower only provided scalding hot water. There were leaks of all sorts on the floor on the Lido (food) deck creating many slip hazards.  The contractors working during the cruise created immense amounts of constant banging and cutting noises. The very unpleasant odour of fresh paint was pervasive, especially on the 9th deck eating area.  The food was not much better than mediocre at best, except for the closing meal.  The food selection was not very broad at all.

On the upside, the itinerary was fabulous! The ports of call immensely interesting. Weather couldn't have been better anywhere.  Aside from one individual on the Lido deck, considering the huge volume of complaints the customer service folks were enduring, all service was rendered with a genuine smile. The staff at the front office were very conscientious and super polite.  The cabin crews were quite efficient and kept things clean. The dining room staff were also super pleasant and very accommodating. 

All in all, my wife and I enjoyed the cruise, but it wasn't what it was cracked up to be.  Our expectations were far from met and it was a disappointment.

We had a much worse experience on a Carnival cruise and much better on other Carnival cruises.  Only experienced very good to great cruises under the Royal Caribbean marquee.

While I rated this cruise two stars only, it is specific to this voyage.  Hopefully the trouble spots will be rectified because this could be a very good cruise with this itinerary.

Great cruise

ships is elegant; size is about right; food and service outstanding; staff always friendly

Due to rough sea conditions, passengers were not allowed to disembark at the planned location in Costa Rica. While this has happened before, we were told, Holland-America did not offer any alternative plan. The boat would simply float at sea one additional day not allowing passengers to disembark anywhere.

After spending about 5 hours at sea, the captain turned the ship back to Costa Rica, and docked there in the afternoon to allow a sick passenger to be taken off the ship to a local medical facility as an emergency.

It seemed odd that passengers were not allowed off the boat in the morning, but in the afternoon disembarking was fine. Also, it seemed just wrong to have 3,000+ passengers shuttle one individual - don't they have helicopters to deal with these kinds of emergencies?

This experience was very dissatisfying and the reaction of Holland-America to our repeating complaints was disappointing - they basically ignored the complaints and admitted no wrong.

Enjoyed the cruise overall! Dining in the Pinnacle was a treat for a fine dining experience. Disappointed in the entertainment overall and lackluster New Year's Eve Celebration. Staff was VERY friendly as you could tell they enjoyed what they did.  

EMPLOYEE THEFT on a Holland America!!? You decide... Yesterday my family and I left a Holland America Caribbean Cruise in Ft Lauderdale.  My son and I were inquiring about his lost IPod 5 with the customer service manager.  My son described where he had lost it and a family of four next to us said they had turned it into a staff member. The family were able to describe it perfectly to the manager with no help from us, as well as exactly when and where they had handed it to the employee and surprise it was not turned in three days later.  In fact there was no item device listed found for that day, so no mistake was made. The staff also had made no records of my sons inquiries at customer service looking for it as is the policy. My daughter also lost a nice pair of sandals on the deck late at night that were likely cleaned up and never returned and her friend lost her iPhone 6 in the same spot which was also never turned in.  We left the boat disgusted.  My 12 son saved $300 he earned cutting lawns to buy that IPod and an adult Holland America employee stole it from him.  DO NOT TRUST the staff on Holland America!!!

We thoroughly enjoyed everything about this trip.  Even thought the furnishings and decor of the boat were slightly dated, the boat was in great shape.  Our Veranda Stateroom was extremely comfortable and roomier than similar cabins on other boats.  Every member of the staff and crew was exceedingly kind, courteous, pleasant, and friendly.  By day two of the cruise, several of the crew and staff already knew us by name and spoke with us personally anytime we passed.  The food was amazing.  Unlike some other cruise lines, Holland America never pushed us to purchase shore excursions or retail items either in port or aboard the ship.  It was a no-pressure cruise to say the least.  This was our first Holland America cruise, but it will definitely not be the last.  

Is one star the lowest I can give? We took the 15 day Sun Farer Panama Cruise on Ms Zuiderdam 8 Dec 2014. This has to be the worse 15 days of my life. The food both in the dining room and buffet left a lot to be desired. Instead of gaining weight I lost weight. I have seen better entrainment from high school drama clubs. If you were looking for something to do at night forget it. After 8 or 9 PM. The entire ship is dead. If I had never cruised before this would have been my last. Thank God other cruise lines takes better care of you. We have at least 15 cruises with other cruise lines and the list is still growing. We will do 3 this year. Only one with Holland America. When you complain about something they just roll their eyes. It will take a miracle to ever get me near one of their ships.

I've been on 42 cruises overall. This is only my 4th on Holland America, it started poorly with the first person we met on check in. She informed us that cabin # 8044, which we were assigned, had been changed to # 6068. I told her no, I want the cabin I paid for, I like the location, my luggage was headed there. She said no, I've been moved, \"up graded\". I asked for the supervisor, who told me we were upgraded to the largest suite with access to the Neptune Lounge at no charge. Of course this wasn't true. It was the same size cabin without access to the lounge. The woman in the lounge asked if I had gotten the agent to put it in writing. Why would I. I expect if someone tells me something, it's because it's true. But that takes integrity, it's in short supply at Holland America. I asked for a supervisor, who she called. Said she was busy with another passenger problem. How did she get her on the phone then. I asked for an appointment, she called her back, and she answered. No to an appointment. No I got upset, I insisted, she called back again. talked to her and made an appointment. Who answers the phone when dealing with passenger problems. Nothing ever done or resolved. My cabin steward had to go track down my luggage.

Ship's maintenance was about average. Crew did spend a lot of time cleaning and polishing common areas. Did not like the fact that smoking is allowed on balconies - we had to request to be moved due to continuous smoking on the balcony next to ours. Cruise line did provide a move but that involved the hassle of packing and unpacking again. Maintenance personnel were painting on lower deck near the air intake for ventilation and fumes were dispersed into the staterooms and hallways above. Front desk investigated and got the work stopped. This type work probably should be done in port instead of when at sea.

I am a repeat passenger of HAL and any to its ship contains excellent service. I only had one experience with a bad cruise ship - Zaandam. That ship had a lot of attitude and arrogance.

That ship is an embarrassment to HAL. 

Any other ship is excellent. The latest cruise I did was with Zuiderdam. 

The Filipino and Indonesian crew members are models of service excellence. Such service and customer relations are hard to find in hotels, restaurants, retail stores and airlines anywhere else in the world. HAL does not make up excuses like those I  often hear from the retail staff at WalMart. At HAL, you're treated like a royalty that anything you need is like coming from a magic wand. As long as HAL has the destination I want, I'll keep on cruising with this company. Also a good thing common in HAL ships : seldom you'd meet a rowdy crowd. 

The ships was not clean. The food was very salty. The meals had no taste. I was very disappointed, will not take this cruise line anymore.

Our first cruise (my husbands retirement present) we were so excited. When we first arrived everything was just great after all Holland America belongs to one of the largest if not THE largest cruise lines in the world Carnival Cruise Lines.. It didn't take long for the shine to wear off our cruise, the stench coming from the toilet was unbearable, each time the toilet was flushed the odor filled the bathroom area. A lady who was in the cabin a few doors down from us was so angry about something, I'm not sure what it was, blew a tantrum and changed rooms from the 6th. floor to another floor, oh yes we paid for and were in the upper veranda ss rooms. And then it happened, we had to step on and kill a COCKROACH yes a COCKROACH and believe me it was a big one. How would you feel if you opened your upper veranda ss suite room door and were confronted by a cockroach. After killing it we took a picture of it and brought the photo to the front desk. She actually came up to the 6th floor, confirmed it was a cockroach and picked it up and took it away, she said she would have our room scanned and cleaned for any other roachs that may be lurking in the dark. Then the nightmare began, the front desk manager a young lady by the name of Nancy just about came out and said we had brought the COCHROACH aboard the ship. She did everything in her power to pooh pooh the incident away. Then she said she wasn't going to offer us anything for our troubles because she didn't want to insult us, and if we wanted to take this incident any further we should talk to their head office, and that is that. That was our first cruise experience, we won't be taking our chances with any of the Holland Cruise or any Carnival Cruise companies again.   

We were only on the last half of the cruise which was on the back end of a Holland American Land Tour which was excellent BTW). The destinations from the ship were great. Glacier Bay - unbelievable! So gorgeous! Ketchikan was a cute little town. Very touristy but that's to be expected on any cruise tour or cruise line. A couple of disappointing items. One was the food in the Lido deck. I'm not a big fan of "buffet" but understand the necessity when you are feeding 2,000 people. Food was generally luke warm at best, never hot, however, you could order freshly cooked at almost all stations. Just never felt the cooking staff was friendly. We have cruised with other cruise lines and have to say this was probably the food that was the least good. The other thing that kind of disappointed us were the activities. Just didn't seem like there were many "fun" things. There was an art auction who's costs were so way out of our price range and they had computer classes (who wants to think about that on vacation?). Finally a full day at sea surely there would be a pluthera of things to do, right? Nope. But the ship was especially clean and our room steward was so very nice. Knew and remembered our names which was very impressive.