ZSandy25

Have only been aboard for a little more than 24 hours and my husband and I are pleasantly surprised!

Check in was a breeze.The HAL shuttle dropped us off from airport to Koni's port and 1/2 an hour later we were walking to our room. No priority pass just regular passengers.

Having been on several cruises on Crystal and Azamara.....must say this is a wee bit classier and overwhelmingly larger! We have a verandah that could sleep 3 but I would say could be a bit cramped for 3. Lovely set up and finely organized but I still use my shoe organizer for my cosmetics. Bathroom is by far better with the best of showersr in comparison to any of the above listed cruise ships.

We got lost a few times but we are getting our bearings.

Service is top notch and the restaurants have been no problem finding seating and if there is a wait it moves fast.

Food is fabulous and we have tried just about all the fast food eateries and have not been disappointed......pea soup in Dutch Cafe (yum).

Lecturer on todays first sea day had the large surround theater nearly full. Very informative. Great venue for lectures!

We had a wine tasting event for us to purchase our navigators package and the ass't cheif sommelier was a informative joy with info for his highligjted wines.

So far.have been nothing but impressed with design and.service...but this is just the beginning.....LOVE IT😍

We are just home from K'dam after a six week cruise. We really loved the ship, as they say, It's not your grandfathers Buick", she was more like getting into a brand new car with all the new bells and whistles. Loved it... No complaints... the ship, crew, food, entertainment, ports of call, all top notch. It's all a dream right now but one that puts a smile on my face when I think about it.

Just off six weeks on the Koningsdam and we had the pleasure of eating there four times. We loved it, the food, the service, ambiance. Have to agree with a few others who posted here, we liked it better than the PG.

DH said it was one of the best steaks he had onboard and he polished off a few at the PG:)

Try it early in your cruise, if you enjoy it you can always book another reservation.

Just off the Koningsdam, we had a Vista Suite which only had a shower. I only had a problem once with water when I didn't look at which way the shower head was pointed and created a little water on the floor.:eek:

It was a safety glass enclosed shower which was nice, no getting all tangled in a curtain. Good water pressure, hand held wand, lots of room.

Ah, now I get it. A little confused as it showed up in the dining section.

Thanks....

Have any of you heard of this or is it new? I went to site to pre-book some dining options and The Blend popped up at $130. You could not review a menu as it was unavailable on the site.

Just thinking this may be there version of the Chef's Dinner and they are doing it as a pre-sale.

If you are a private client with chase the fee is waived, many more perks such as fees attached to purchases etc. worth looking into if you qualify

We will be on the K-dam and just received notice of the cancellation to Kusadasi. We were notified a few weeks ago about Istanbul. They have changed the itinerary around and have added a stop to Sarande, Albania. Have any of you stopped there?

In addition some of the days got shuffled around which is problematic as excursions have been set up for certain days. So far all the tour operators we are dealing with have been able to handle the changes.

When I went to my bank to tell them where i going I was told my CC would be denied in Turkey. Big red flag and I deal with a major bank. I'm looking at this all in a positive way, new adventures, minor inconvenience in the big scheme of things.

I am assuming we will be issued new key cards even thought we are in the same cabin. First booking and second booking have different perks attached to the booking. I would think they will present us with a final bill when first segment ends and start a new one under the new booking.

I believe If you are on a true B2B cruise with two booking numbers then you can bring 1 -750ml bottle of wine per person over 21 staying in the same cabin with no charge. The wine however would have to be consumed in your state room to avoid the $18.00 corkage fee.

I am hoping this will be the case as we have two booking numbers for our upcoming cruise. 26 day and then an add on 12 day.

Will be boarding K-dam in September and Istanbul was removed and replace with overnight in Athens, Mykonos and Santorini. Kusadasi still showing up as a port stop

Thanks for taking the time to write your review. We will be boarding the ship on 9/4 and getting very excited at this point. Maybe we can score that great table in the MDR:)

Agree with all the posters, we have made an 11:00 flight every time we disembark in Ft. Lauderdale with no issues. Airport very close to terminal. If you have the Global Pass you will "sail" through very quickly. Ask for early disembarkation and take the taxi.

Headlines today from Turkey not looking good. WP headline reads Turkey & IS appear headed toward outright war. There is more to the article, I think this would be the defiant turning point to avoiding that area.

So sorry for those injured and families that are grieving. We were to stop there overnight in Oct. and was so looking forward to that area. Will just have to wait and see...

supposed to go there on upcoming cruise. While it is one stop I was looking forward to I would not be disappointed in a change of ports

Did you book a VH guarantee?

You mentioned that you "wound up" in that cabin.

That was going to be my question ..sounds like a guarantee.

Are you using IE?

I gave up using IE and switched to Chrome -- no problems.

Agree, try using a different browser

Looking forward to your posts as we will be sailing her in Sept.

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Thank you Ruth, having not sailed the Rotterdam I checked out the deck plans and on Deck 10, Sky Deck there is an area called the Oasis. It is a small are that I thought might be the cabana's.

As it now appears that ports in Turkey are being dropped (terrorism warnings) by HA I am wondering when we can expect to get notice of a revised itinerary with the replacement ports? We are on the Eurodam out of Venice on 6/10 and had two ports in Turkey, Istanbul (main reason we chose this cruises) for an overnight stop and Kusadasi. As we will need to change our shore excursion plans I would like to get notice as soon as possible to make new arrangement in the replacement ports (hope they are interesting ports).

 

Thanks!

Where did you get this information? There has been plenty of chatter and as I'm on a cruise where Turkey is a port stop have been paying close attention to the alerts. I haven't seen it officially posted on the HAL site, some cruise lines have dropped Turkey but HAL was not on the list.

We will be on the Rotterdam for 21 days, Feb. 2017. I see that the ship has the Oasis Retreat. I am interested in this and would like to know if you have to book the area for the whole cruise or are you able to book in advance for certain days?

I have found on our cruises that we tend to hunt out spots that are quiet with a little sun and shade. I am not a fan of the Lido Pool and the Rotterdam has that unusual set up in the aft area.

The cruise is port intensive with only 4 sea days. We do like to get off the ship and do a walk about or take a small excursion if we find one that interests us. As we have been to many of the ports in the past we might not even get off the ship which is why I thought this concept might be right up our cruising alley.

Thanks for any input on this, where do I go on the site to do any booking or do I have to call ships services.

You'll love the aft pool....great swimming..

I'm sure you say this tongue in cheek:):):)

No, and I love all the foodie stuff. Did it come to you from HAL?

So happy for you...enjoy your cruise and make sure you send a report on you cruise, the ship, your cabin etc. We are all excited to hear the first impressions.

As was quoted , to each their own. We have had the lanai cabins twice and enjoyed them. Yes, you have your own loungers, there are small brackets on the chairs but I suppose would be hard to see if you weren't looking. We had no problems with finding anyone in using the chairs.

You are not right next to your neighbors chairs. Your door wall be separating you distance wise. We found most were like us, lounging, reading and while a good morning or hello was said we didn't find any one annoying.

The lights are on all night outside on the prom deck. So if you have your drapes open it highly unlikely someone can see in. I had DH do the test and he said the only moon he saw was in the sky😄

I hope you enjoy the cabin as much as we did, we loved the no smoking on that deck. Just got off a cruise in a Vista cabin and both sides were smokers with major hacking issues. Hopefully someday they will change that policy.

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Our first HAL cruise is now history and I can say there will definitely be more!

 

Cabin 7149 was our home for a wonderful 10 days and we were out on that aft balcony morning, noon and night. It was as fabulous as I expected it would be.

 

I'm taking a break from laundry (where is that navy bag to stuff and everything comes back later that day all perfect?!?) to start this thread. I'm happy to answer questions.

 

Oosterdam is a nice ship, with features that we prefer. DH never says much, but he said he wished the center area on the lower decks had more light, higher ceilings. He said he didn't realize how much he likes the Atriums on the grand class Princess ships. I walked 2 miles on the Promenade Deck every morning, even got caught in a shower as we cruised in to Samana and watched docking at Curacao. We had late seating in the Vista on deck 3 and also went to Canaletto and Pinnacle (thanks for suggesting it for the last night - perfect). Breakfast was what we gathered from the Lido and consumed on the Sea View deck - our second home after our balcony.

 

Ports were great, but HMC would have been better if we could have been there alone. The Eurodam was there as their last stop and we couldn't even get near the snorkeling area and I'm sure the fish left town for the day with the mob from the 2 ships.

 

Feel free to ask whatever interests you. Yes, I will be booking HAL again.

 

:D

We were on Oosterdam for 21 days and had a grand time. The ship is going in for a re-fit and the atrium is in for a re-make. I know what you mean about Princess, the atrium is the hub of a lot of activity. Glad you had a great time.