betsey

I clicked on the "Contact Us' Icon and got a "bad request" page. The photos are now blank as well. It sure doesn't make me want to book specialty dining!

Hey Holland America (yes, I know no one at HQ ever reads these boards, but Jeez!), I was thinking about making a reservation at Tamarind for my birthday coming up soon on the Nieuw Amsterdam in October. I clicked on the link to see what the menu looked like and it was a broken link. How am I supposed to make a reservation and spend my hard-earned money if I don't know what's on the menu? Back in my day, a very long time ago, when I worked at a fancy cruise line, someone would have been in trouble for not getting this fixed pronto. But things have changed I guess. Oh well, I'll keep my money and leave HAL wondering why I'm not going to the specialty restaurant when I go cruising this fall....

We paid $95 last week. Quite a deal compared to prices on land.

Interesting thread here. I just got off of a British Isles cruise on the Journey this week. This is my third Azamara cruise post Covid, and the only real issue I had was with the shore excursions. They were top -notch in terms of vehicles, guides, etc, but the bookings of them were a disaster. Myself and many others booked one tour and were given tickets for another tour. Most of us realized this the morning of the tour. The poor beleaguered shore excursions rep managed to accommodate us. On another one, the description in the onboard booklet in our room was nothing like the screen shot I took of the tour when I made my booking online. Again, this shore excursions agent told me that this verbiage was for a tour that had long been cancelled (WTH?). Later in the cruise I politely asked for a meeting with the Hotel Director, and she also brought in the Shorex Manager, and I explained my concerns and asked her who can I can contact in the home office, since I thought they did a fine job onboard, but also drove home the point that if this website and shorex booking issue wasn't fixed pronto, their jobs were in jeopardy. During this meeting I found out from them that there were multiple guests with the same issues. I stressed that I sail on Azamara because of their interesting itineraries and that there are few options to take tours with third-party operators. Now, I don't know if it's going to change a thing, but I do hope that if they can say that a passenger took to the time to meet with them and explain to them what their issues were and how it affected their vacation, perhaps they take it seriously at the top and can start to fix the issues, or not, who knows? The Hotel Director thanked me for the feedback when I disembarked.

I was able to download the document for my cruise coming up next month. Unfortunately, the typos, shore excursions with no descriptions at all, and shore excursions with incorrect descriptions were still there. Absolutely embarrassing. I worked for a luxury cruise line decades ago, and if this had happened where I worked, people would have been fired.

I think the date is the departure date of the cruise. The port listed is where the Azamara Celebration being held, which is not on the departure date.

I'm able to view and book most of the cruise shore excursions for my upcoming cruise in July. Some of the excursions have no descriptions whatsoever. They also completely skipped putting in shore excursions for one port. So amateurish.

Same here. Now you see it, now you don't. Makes you wonder what is going on.

It looks like other cruise lines are having problems too. https://www.cbsnews.com/boston/news/vantage-travel-cancels-trips-blames-data-security-incident/

We just got back from our second cruise to Japan a couple of weeks ago (not on Azamara). Check into the Goodwill Guides in Japan. You do need to request them two weeks in advanc, but they are complimentary other than you do pay for their transportation and meals. We had one (actually two, one was a trainee) in Osaka, and they were wonderful! They spent 7 hours with us and took us to everything we wanted to see and more! Japan is easy to get around on your own, and people will go out of their way to help you there.

Sorry to hear about the weather in Kochi. I've been there twice. My favorite thing to do there is to go the Hiromi Market and get some Bonito Tataki cooked over rice straw. We were on the March 13 sailing, and the dish was just as delicious as I remembered it. I agree, there's no excuse for running out of the sodas and teas in Japan. One of the staff could just go into town and find a vending machine nearby......

I just returned from a Japan/Korea cruise on HAL. There were also few shore tour options. Out of four tours that we booked with the ship, two were very good, and the other two, although their command of English was very good, their tour guiding skills were terrible! There is such a shortage of guides that guides were being flown from Busan Korea to Jeju Korea to guide there the next day. Our best guide experience was the volunteer guides we booked in Osaka through the Goodwill Guides.

Same here!

Yes, like you, I was only able to see half of it last week while on the Westerdam due to another committment. Would have loved to be able to see it rebroadcast.

I hope so. I just picked up a couple of small gifts yesterday for our goodwill guides. When we were in Japan before on a cruise, I gave our cruise line shore excursion guides some Ghirardelli Chocolates ("from our hometown"), they seemed to appreciate them.