Mary229

In my experience you will not see the credit until on board.  Ship board credits are usually only available for purchases during the cruise and are not refundable.  

I have never noticed a big difference in price.  What you do get with private tours is smaller size,  variety and customization.  I consider most HAL tours as basic transportation for distant ventures when getting back in time may become an issue.

Interesting...I was just about to start a new post to ask about another HAL ship, Veendam. My husband and I last cruised in 2008 for our 5th anniversary, when we took a Panama Canal cruise on HAL's Amsterdam. We are considering another cruise for our 15th anniversary next year. We love the itinerary of the New England/Bermuda cruise on Veendam, and the dates work for when we want to travel. Unfortunately, however, this cruise has gotten a lot of negative reviews, mainly due to the poor condition of the Veendam. Anyone have additional thoughts to share?

there are many choices for that itinerary so be sure to shop around. If you are flexible there may even be newer HAL ships available for the itinerary.

2018 Voyage of the Vikings is $7500 for an inside. You can book it now.

My quote was per cabin not per person. Which ship are they using? Not that I am going;p

It always amazes me the way two people can be on the same cruise and have a totally different experience. I am suspicious of any review that is totally negative. Every situation has to have something positive about it. I do not want people to be warned off Holland America. Obviously, if you are able to and/or want to pay premium price for the most luxurious lines you MAY have a different experience, but possibly not. I agree that there may be maintenance problems that should be fixed, but a ship is not a condo building and cannot always be fixed immediately. We are living in an insty-fix culture. I have been on Celebrity, Princess, Azamara, and Holland America, and enjoyed every cruise. I have found life is never perfect, and that includes me. So sorry if anyone is offended by this post.

We are not saying that is was a totally negative experience. We are simply talking about the deplorable condition of the ship. I have been on many cruise ships since the 1980s and none had maintenance needs like this one

I have to comment here because you're posting misinformation. You submitted a review that is in our queue pending processing. Granted it is taking longer than usual because we have a HUGE number of reviews coming in but the confirmation e mail you received does tell you that you will get an e mail when the review is processed.

 

 

I'm happy I could clear that up. If you have any questions, you can write to reviews@cruisecritic.com

How interesting and how timely.

Wow! Quite a sweeping statement. I can't wait to sail on an "old" ship again....next month, in fact. Until you have sailed on every ship in the fleet, I believe your finger pointing is without merit.

I don't think a customer should have to sail on every ship in the fleet to find a good one.

We do not write cruise reviews for CC because of the selective editing imposed by the mods. It is the prerogative of CC to control what they allow on Reviews and out of respect we simply do not bother taking our time to author detailed reviews. One might consider that if critical reviews are routinely rejected then the existing reviews represent a false positive perspective.

 

The CC Mods do allow a lot of leeway on the various boards, so this does seem to be the best place to post and discuss aspects that are not permitted within the reviews.

 

Hank

Thanks Hank. I appreciate you confirming what I supposed. So how on earth can anyone find a fair review anymore? I don't trust Tripadvisor now that they sell travel too.

It may be HAL's decision to defer maintenance but it is my right and DUTY as a customer to warn others and I have and not only here. I find it disturbing that CC will not publish my review which though critical was fair and polite.

 

And, this is not a cheerlead post, nor making excuses, just pointing out that some issues cannot be fixed immediately, sadly.

Sorry, but it pretty much is. This ship not only had apparent problems it had multiple signs of old and continue maintenance problems. It should not have sailed. Bluntly, it was nasty and unacceptable. There were many 4 and 5 star mariners on board and many who were as disgusted as the folks posting here.

Just a point of clarification. The VOV starts at $18,000 per cabin or near $500 per day per cabin. That is for an inside cabin.

So the whole line is blackballed because of one ship? Perhaps you should test the Rotterdam again after drydock. As has been point out in a preceding post, other cruise lines have similar maintenance problems. Pleasant, no, but also not extraordinary and not always preventable.

Yes, I am afraid so. fool me once and all of that. The level of disrepair showed an extreme level of disrespect and disregard.

I don't know what to make of all these comments; at least one mentioned that the Noordam was not in top condition and we will be on that in February. We've sailed on some quite old ships on other lines without issue. Have we been lucky or is HAL just refusing to do common maintenance?

I don't know what to say. Last year I was on the Zaandam for a month and it was in beautiful condition and it is as old as the Rotterdam. I won't be sailing HAL again unless the itinerary is exceptional and I read current reviews very carefully. I did read the reviews for Rotterdam but must have been blinded to bad reviews as I read nothing in line with my experience. I did write a review and it should be public soon

Reality check.....

 

You all want ships to "be new", but you DONT want to pay the fare's associated with new ships. Sure, other lines have new ships... But the only way they can fund these new builds is to either A) Make them so big they get economies of scale, or B) Charge a much higher price per cabin...

 

You all rave about HAL's "small ships", and reasonable prices compared to the premium lines... THIS is the downside to this!

The VOV is not a budget cruise by anyone's standard. No one signs up for unhealthy conditions regardless

Thanks for the report, Hank. I have seen drip catching buckets on HAL so often that I thought the practice was industry wide. It always surprises me that a ship built to float on water can not keep rain water from leaking in. Personally, I find the buckets kind of amusing, it's like seeing a car bumper held on by duct tape. You have to shake your head when you see the same leak and the same bucket day after day after day.

That and what about that rain water washing in bird droppings or any other microbial contamination from the roof. They harp on the customers to wash their hands but have no concern about dirty water dripping in an eating facility.

I am afraid that you guys are being far too gracious. Now if HAL had advertised the ship as a leaky, moldy scow then the potential customer can make a decision. But to only find out after you are sailing away on a 38 day voyage is not optimal. It cost me a lot of time to make the money to pay them so they should take the time to insure that my experience is as advertised. Poor CCL not wanting to keep the ship in dry dock long enough to repair - boo hoo, I feel for them (tiny violins here). As I stated much earlier: if this is the state of the cruise industry then I will find another way to travel. No one would accept this from a hotel chain.

Let me start off by saying that I also do not take Hank's observations lightly, and while I cannot comment on HAL's maintenance policies or budgets directly, or to some of the observations, let me shed some possible mitigating factors into some of the problems.

 

Having worked on another cruise ship from about the same time period as the Rotterdam's building, our ship was built with plastic potable water piping, that used an electric resistance coil in the fittings to melt the fittings and pipe together, in sort of a plastic welding method, rather than threading or other means of joining pipe. At the time, this was cutting edge technology, and was vaunted as the end all and be all of shipboard water piping. However, ships of this building period (late 1990's) were among the first to receive this product, and there was no real long term data on how it performed in a shipboard environment. Leaks were present almost from the start, and repairs made as needed. Within about 10 years, the amounts of leaks and repairs were seriously impacting revenue due to cabins taken out of inventory for repair and compensations given to guests. It was decided to remove as much of the piping as possible, and upgrade to a newer plastic welded piping product. The ship would take one entire deck of cabins out of inventory, and the piping was removed and renewed over a week's cruise. Then the next deck was taken out of inventory, and so on. The cost of having the contractors onboard for months, and the loss of revenue from the cabins on that deck, and any compensation for moving booked passengers was considered less costly than taking the ship out of service completely for the 3-4 weeks it would have taken to do the job in a shipyard. Even then, there were areas that could not be accessed and replaced, predominately in the overhead of the main galley, without dismantling the entire galley to get to it.

 

"Forensics" on the removed pipe showed that there were two very distinct patterns of welding of the fittings, and research showed that there were two contractors involved in the initial installation, so we suspect that one firm was not doing the welding correctly. All this is to say, that "maintenance" may not be the problem with water pipes, and that the Rotterdam may be getting to the point where the miles of water piping around the ship (we estimated on our ship, a bit bigger than Rotterdam, that we renewed over 15 kilometers of piping) will need to be renewed wholesale, and that this may have been a growing problem that has now reached epic proportions, or it may have been a sort of "sudden" failure of the piping system. Either way, you don't go into a wholesale renewal of piping throughout the ship unless the cost/benefit ratio warrants it. Would you tear out all the piping in your house just because it is x amount of years old?

 

As for the windows, this is a particularly painful point for me. These windows, all tempered safety glass are special ordered, and then they must be installed by certified glazers to validate the warranty. The problem comes with the requirement that contractors on ships have massive insurance bonds, due to the historical danger of working on ships, and most glazing companies do not have this, so they must subcontract to a marine repair firm, who then adds their mark-up to the job. These windows are also pretty tricky to deal with for crew, as I've had an errant paint chipper shatter a number of bridge windows just from getting too close to the glass.

 

As I say, none of the above necessarily excuses not addressing problems in a timely fashion, but it does show that sometimes it is not a "maintenance" issue but rather a manufacturing defect or life span issue.

 

And while leaking plumbing and cracked and leaking windows are legitimate concerns for passengers, as this is the front of the house, know that the class societies that inspect the vessels annually check the maintenance records for the major systems and safety equipment onboard, and while the hotel may be aging gracelessly, the ship continues to be maintained. Hank alluded to this, and I know he knows the difference. I agree that a service industry should do its utmost to provide top service, and that minor inconveniences and poor appearances should be remedied.

That is all just fine and dandy but if you are a guest with mold allergies and spend a full week in bed because of the excessive mold you might have a different view of the problem. As a business person I can tell you unequivocally that the customer does not care about the nuts and bolts, they paid for a product and they expect to receive that product. The guests on the VOV paid dearly for that product and did not receive the product they paid for. This ship should never have been used in its current condition. The leaks were the elephant in the room but there were a host of other maintenance problems including ventilation and electrical.

Yes, CCL has a budget but so do I

I just finished a HAL cruise where people had drones for shore days. There are rules that you can find in the passenger docs

I second Hank's assessment. My review should be available here tomorrow and I completed the HAL review also. It was an embarrassment. John and I would often whisper " I didn't mean to say that the Enterprise should be hauling garbage. I meant to say that it should be hauled away AS garbage!" Trouble with Tribbles, Star Trek

Only a superb itinerary would drag me back to HAL and if you tell me this is the future of the industry then I will find another way to travel

We book on the ship or wherever we see a deal. I then transfer it to my sister's agency where they keep up with of any perks or price drops. She gets the commission. You can take advantage of any deals that come up until your final payment due date even if you have paid.

That is new in my experience. Thanks for the heads up

Princess's fleet overall are larger ships with more passengers than HAL's. I think larger ships tend to have more active, nightlife onboard activities. HAL has better enrichment programs IMHO. I do find the food better on HAL but for me that is not a big issue.

Instead of featuring Oprah, maybe HAL should be featuring Bill Maher or Micheal Moore? But those guys are geezers too. Sorry, out of my element here. I used to think comedy improv was fun when I was younger. But I was also a big fan of playing charades when I was younger too.

 

I can see the addition of a more "mature" immature comedy club venue might have appeal to younger passengers. But for all seven nights? That's quite a demand on any performer who plays to the same audience.

Being originally from New Orleans and having a sister with a travel agency I have sailed the Caribbean many times. They usually fly in new talent, it is usually refreshed at least twice but sometimes 3 times on a 7 night cruise. Caribbean cruises tend to be party cruises. In recent years the small ships and yachts have entered that market for a more tour oriented experience but in general they are beach hopping party barges;)

Enlighten us. What is immature night life?

 

Sloppy, noisy drunk or a light show drug fueled rave comes immediately to my geriatric mind, but perhaps you mean something else. Different music, dance venues, more of a similar age group ......?

Remember we are talking about a 7 night Caribbean Cruise not a world voyage.

HAL: It ends early, the dancing is of a certain age, the comedians are funny yet tame.

The mega ships have late night comedy venues, late night energetic dancing and are ideal for a club crawl.

But then again I have only sailed HAL on more staid itineraries perhaps they let their hair down in the Caribbean

We have done one HAL cruise and many on Disney and NCL. We liked HAL for Alaska last year, but we are about 50 and we were some of the younger people on board. I describe the average people on this cruise as Senior Citizens and their parents. Not much night life, pretty quiet. Great Service. After Alaska again this year on HAL, we are going on MSC Seaside, which looks to be nice ship for the Caribbean. NCL is a good choice for nice ships and a good mix of ages, not too much partying and good night life.

I agree about the nightlife. It is mature.