islandwoman

Sorry to hear that you've had such bad experiences. I hope your next cruise will be better. Thanks for sharing.

No. I am on the 22 day Eclipse and Hawaii cruise, starting in San Diego and ending in Vancouver.

Yes.

By "crowded", I mean too many passengers for the public spaces. And I could add, too many passengers per crew. Some ships can be "filled to the gills" and still not seem crowded if they have sufficient public spaces and crew. Glad to hear about your positive experience on the Zaandam.

Our experience, too.

I don't remember. We booked a long time ago.

I am currently on the Koningsdam. I was unpleasantly surprised to find it crowded (like Carnival) Anytime dining usually requires waiting or a reservation and when you get into the dining room, it's noisy and frantic with slow service. It is difficult or impossible to find a seat at the pool deck, in the Lido, or at the World Stage. At lunch times, it's difficult to make yourself understood to the servers behind the food counters, probably because of the noise. I am booked on the Volendam for a 42 day cruise in November. Should I expect to find the same crowding on that ship?

I think that you can use HAL gift cards to pay your bill onboard, but I haven't done that myself. https://www.hollandamerica.com/en/us/plan-a-cruise/giftcard : "Gift card funds are in US Dollars and can be applied to bookings in US Dollars and any pre-cruise or onboard purchase." I know that you can use them to pay for your cruise if your TA is willing to deal with them. I have done that.

Sorry, I can't help you with that as I don't have such a link. But I would like to ask you a question: Why would you want to purchase OBC? Do you get a discount or what?

I am answering from my current experience on the Koningsdam. I don't know whether the Westerdam will be the same. We have open seating and it's been quite annoying to try to get into the dining room when we want. The good part is that your parents won't have to stand in a long line. You all will be given a beeper to notify you when your table is ready. Or you can make reservations. We just learned today that the dining room closes reservations at 4 PM. So it will be another night for us of waiting for a table. In your case, since you seldom eat dinner after 6 PM, why not switch to fixed dining and avoid the hassle of waiting and/or making reservations? The only downside to that is your early dining time might interfere with shore excursions. Perhaps someone with more HAL experience than I will tell you how you can work around that situation if you choose fixed dining.

We are currently on the Koningsdam. We booked too late to buy the "Early Bonus Have It All" package that would have covered crew appreciation as well as everything that is included in the HIA (without the Early Booking Bonus). We bought an unlimited internet package online before sailing and are paying for our drinks as we go. We usually have 1-2 per day. Yesterday we didn't buy any because the ship gave us a "free" glass of bubbly at the Captain's welcome party. We did the math and discovered that if we drank enough to make the HIA package a good value, we'd miss the entire cruise, passed out LOL. Ship's excursions are expensive and for you those might make the HIA package a good value, but I doubt it. Do the math. No, we don't regret having passed on the HIA package for our cruise. We would buy the Early Booking Bonus HIA package, when available, because the included crew appreciation would make the difference for us.

I don't have HIA for my upcoming cruise, but my cruise fare came with two specialty dinings. Will those be included as part of daily spending?

If I'm not being too nosy, how many sets of sea day clothing and how many sets of dinner clothing (other than "dressy" night and orange night) clothing do you pack?

How long will it take to get clothes back from the laundry for cold wash/hang dry and for cold wash/low dry? In other words, how many sets of clothing (day clothes and dinner clothes) will I need to pack? I didn't sleep last night, worrying about how I'm going to get all of these clothes into my suitcase.

Is it customary to change for dinner on smart casual nights? Or can I just show up in the same clothing (turtleneck, pants, tennis shoes) that I've been wearing all day, and still fit in? I have some dressier blouses that I bought just for dinners on cruises, but I don't think they're going to fit into my suitcase 😒