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Back from the Zuiderdam's Viking Passage -- some thoughts on our first HAL cruise


Turtles06
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My wife and I returned last week from the Zuiderdam’s 20-night Viking Passage, an incredible adventure (Copenhagen to New York by way of Norway, Iceland, Greenland, and the Canadian Maritimes). It was by no means our first cruise, but it was our first on HAL, and I want to thank the folks on this board for all the help and advice; it was great to go into something new as well-prepared as you all helped make us.

 

We’d had our eye on this itinerary for a long time, but would not book with HAL while smoking was allowed on balconies. As soon as HAL announced that it was changing that policy, we booked this cruise. The itinerary was as amazing as we’d thought it would be; HAL will definitely be in the mix for us going forward, and we purchased future cruise deposit certificates while we were on board. :D

 

Among the things that we particularly enjoyed about HAL were: the open bow during sailaways (weather permitting) and narration by a member of the EXC staff; the food in the Dining Room, which was quite good overall, and the excellent service we received there; the table service for beverages (water, lemonade, coffee, etc.) in the buffet, and the fact that passengers are NOT allowed to serve themselves most food there; room service, with hot food arriving hot (and, with so many early-morning excursions, we really appreciated that breakfast orders were consistently delivered at the start of the half-hour window we’d requested); a port guide in our stateroom upon embarkation, with a map of each port, points of interest, places to eat, etc. -- although we’d of course researched our ports in advance, this was a helpful addition (it was a bit disconcerting, however, that the guide showed us calling at Saint John, New Brunswick, when in fact we were scheduled to visit St. John’s, Newfoundland :eek:); the Navigator intranet site (great to have the day’s schedule on our phones!); and, the easiest disembarkation we’ve ever experienced in terms of the factors within the ship’s control.

 

Adding to our enjoyment was that we had booked a Signature Suite on Deck 6. It was spacious and comfortable, and we really appreciated that on such a long cruise. It was also very conveniently located, and we never felt as though we had to go far for anything.

 

I also want to say that this cruise posed many challenges for Captain Bart Vaartjes, and for the passengers as well: we missed two ports due to weather, had an extra day and a half in another, also due to weather, and missed a third port so that we could assist in the search for a person who had jumped overboard from the AIDALuna. (He was not found, and that was an incredibly sad day at sea.) I thought that Captain Vaartjes handled all of these challenges and changes well,and kept people informed about what was going on.

 

Of course, nothing is perfect. ;) Here are some of what we felt were negatives: limited dining options (as good as dinner in the MDR was, we like a break from relatively long, “sit down” dining), including limited hours for dinner in the buffet, as well as a lack of variety in the dinner food offerings (e.g., the only “distant land” in the evening was Italy!) (we also found it off-putting that passengers were allowed in the buffet wearing bathrobes); limited entertainment -- while we enjoyed the Lincoln Center Stage musicians, they repeated their shore-side-dictated programs after a few days, and the Billboard Onboard singing pianists, as fun as they were, sang many of the same songs over and over and over; mainstage shows at 8pm and 10pm – since we had fixed dining at 8pm, this left us with only the 10pm show, much too late on such a port-intensive cruise with so many early port calls.

 

One other discordant note: a week before our scheduled disembarkation at the Manhattan Cruise Terminal, we received letters in our cabins telling us that we were being bumped to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal because of on-going repairs to a damaged pier in Manhattan (thank you, Carnival Horizon). The letter assured passengers with HAL transfers that they would be picked up in Brooklyn, but then curtly stated that those with independent arrangements (which included my wife and me) would need to “plan accordingly.” We were at sea (off the coast of Greenland, no less); the ship’s internet was glacially show (and not everyone had an internet package, anyway). I certainly don’t blame HAL for the change in cruise terminals, but I was surprised by the language of the letter and the lack of any offer of assistance to people at sea to rearrange disembarkation plans. (Fortunately,we did have an internet package and with a good bit of scrambling were able to rearrange things.)

 

All in all, the hits definitely outweighed the misses, and we had the Great North Atlantic Adventure that we’d hoped for when we booked. :D

 

I’d be happy to answer questions about the Viking Passage, our ports, and/or the Zuiderdam. In the posts below, I’ve included several photographs to illustrate the extraordinarily beautiful sights of the Viking Passage.

 

Thanks for reading,

 

Judith

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Here a few photographs from the amazing Viking Passage.

 

The beautiful view of Alesund, Norway, our first port of call, from the top of Mount Aksla:

 

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The Hoffellsjokull Glacier, which we visited from Djúpivogur, Iceland:

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Goðafoss, "waterfall of the gods" (complete with rainbow), which we visited from Akureyri, Iceland:

 

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The Reynisfjara black sand beach, part of the stunningly beautiful South Coast tour from Reykjavik, Iceland:

 

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The Skógafoss waterfall, also along the South Coast from Reykjavik:

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(photos by turtles06)

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Turtles,

 

Great review! Very even handed, with both pluses and minuses. Glad to see the positives outweighed the negatives. I found your criticisms to be factually based, and providing good information to those considering this cruise in the future.

 

Roz

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Just some comments about HAL internet. The nicest comment would be that it totally sucks!!! And our recent Regent Princess cruise showed us just how bad HAL internet is compared to the competition. On Princess we had unlimited high speed internet ( it really works) and it was free for frequent Princess cruisers. On HAL, even 5 Star folks must pay for awful internet service. HAL needs to get off their butts and modernize.

 

Hank

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Hi Judith,

 

Enjoyed reading your review and loved seeing your wonderful pics! Sorry we never actually met up onboard!

 

We also had Independent arrangements for Debark. We booked our air with HAL going to CPH but used a Companion Tix for LGA to home. Our flights were cancelled due to Florence and had quite an adventure getting home! :eek:

Totally agree that Brooklyn Terminal was one of the easiest Debarks ever especially compared to NYC (which we've sailed into many times). Only issue we found was the lines were so long for Taxi's (the Cabs mustn't have expected a Ship in that day) that we ended up calling Lyft to get to LGA for a Rental Car. Worked out better anyway and half the price (note to Self for future)!

 

Kudos to Captain Bart for handling all the challenges the way they did and especially for accomplishing getting us into Prins Christian Sund! Also, Kudos to HAL for the compensation which was totally unexpected! We really thought they went above and beyond with not only giving us $50 OBC pp for missing St. John's due to Search and Rescue but to the 15% off a Future Cruise based on our Cruise Fare.

 

An amazing Cruise and one we definitely want to repeat! :D

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Thank you. This looks like an interesting cruise that we will have to consider. Your pictures are fantastic!!!

 

One of the things we have noticed over the years is that the corporate HAL policies seem to be trending a bit downward. It is clear that when "issues" arise, it is the corporate HQ making the decisions leaving crew with very little decision making abilities. We continue to see the slide from HAL on offerings and what once was is no longer available. I think some of the cruiselines are getting it right. We are 4 star HAL mariners, but if this downward trend continues, we'll have to go elsewhere. I think that is a sad statement.

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Hi Judith,

 

Enjoyed reading your review and loved seeing your wonderful pics! Sorry we never actually met up onboard!

 

We also had Independent arrangements for Debark. We booked our air with HAL going to CPH but used a Companion Tix for LGA to home. Our flights were cancelled due to Florence and had quite an adventure getting home! :eek:

Totally agree that Brooklyn Terminal was one of the easiest Debarks ever especially compared to NYC (which we've sailed into many times). Only issue we found was the lines were so long for Taxi's (the Cabs mustn't have expected a Ship in that day) that we ended up calling Lyft to get to LGA for a Rental Car. Worked out better anyway and half the price (note to Self for future)!

...

 

 

Thanks for the kind words, and I'm sorry we did not get to meet as well! And I'm sorry about your air travel home. We were certainly worried about Florence during those last few days of the cruise.

 

We had rented a car that we were going to pick up upon disembarkation in Manhattan, very near the Manhattan Cruise Terminal. As we discovered from the middle of the Atlantic when we got the letter about being bumped to Brooklyn, there are far fewer car rental options in Brooklyn. And while HAL's letter said there would be cabs at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, you are correct -- getting a cab was a huge problem. Just a handful of cabs, a long line (and we were off very early) that grew and grew and then, as became clear, long waits before any more cabs showed up at all. Even then, just one or two dribbled in. I read here on CC that no one had updated the port schedule when we were bumped to Brooklyn. Someone really dropped the ball in failing to make sure there were cabs. Once it became clear we'd be waiting forever for a cab, we called a car service and they got a car to us in half an hour.

 

I agree that the OBC and future cruise credits were very nice. I should have mentioned them in my first post; I think I was too tired when I was typing this morning! ;p

 

Perhaps we will meet on a future cruise!

 

Judith

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Thanks for the kind words, and I'm sorry we did not get to meet as well! And I'm sorry about your air travel home. We were certainly worried about Florence during those last few days of the cruise.

 

We had rented a car that we were going to pick up upon disembarkation in Manhattan, very near the Manhattan Cruise Terminal. As we discovered from the middle of the Atlantic when we got the letter about being bumped to Brooklyn, there are far fewer car rental options in Brooklyn. And while HAL's letter said there would be cabs at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal, you are correct -- getting a cab was a huge problem. Just a handful of cabs, a long line (and we were off very early) that grew and grew and then, as became clear, long waits before any more cabs showed up at all. Even then, just one or two dribbled in. I read here on CC that no one had updated the port schedule when we were bumped to Brooklyn. Someone really dropped the ball in failing to make sure there were cabs. Once it became clear we'd be waiting forever for a cab, we called a car service and they got a car to us in half an hour.

 

I agree that the OBC and future cruise credits were very nice. I should have mentioned them in my first post; I think I was too tired when I was typing this morning! ;p

 

Perhaps we will meet on a future cruise!

 

Judith

 

Just this morning we disembarked at Red Hook (Brooklyn) after a Regal Princess cruise. We walked off the ship at 9am (our preferred time), grabbed our luggage, walked outside, and within 1 minute was inside a "Green" boro taxi which quickly ran us over to our desired Manhattan destination. The queue for taxis was so short (and there were about 4000 on our ship) that we did not utilize our "Plan B" which was to summon an Uber car.

 

We do agree that the Manhattan Cruise terminal (on 49th Street) is more desirable but Red Hook does have its advantages...especially for those going to JFK. Rental cars are a big problem at Red Hook since the nearest rental car agencies are a cab ride distant.

 

Hank

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Thank you everyone for reading and for the very kind comments, I really appreciate them!

 

Judith, thanks for the review. Regarding taking questions, we have an upcoming cruise booked from Copenhagen and would like to hear your thoughts on travel, transfer to hotel, hotel choice and transfer to port.

Thanks, g

 

Happy to try to help. We stayed in Copenhagen for three days before the cruise. This was a good amount of time -- we spent two days seeing a great deal of the city, and the third on a tour outside the city. (More on that below.)

 

We normally book our own hotels, but this time we booked through HAL, which was using the Scandic Palace Hotel, as some folks on the prior year's Roll Call enjoyed it, it gets fairly good reviews, and HAL had an excellent price for the stay (including a very nice breakfast). Our room was comfortable, and the hotel is certainly in a great location; indeed, we walked everywhere. However, the hotel turned out to have a major drawback -- it's on City Hall square (which we knew), which has a bell tower with a bell that chimes every 15 minutes from 8 in the morning until midnight. We deliberately did not get a room along the square, but nonetheless could hear the bell as though it were in our room. We found it very disturbing when we were trying to sleep. It doesn't seem as though all the rooms have this problem, which makes the hotel a bit of a crap shoot. We would look elsewhere if we are ever back in Copenhagen.

 

In the Ports of Call/Europe board here on CC, there's a Northern Europe ports forum with discussions about Copenhagen, including hotels. It's a good place to do some research if you haven't done so already.

 

Because we had booked our hotel through HAL, we had an included transfer from the airport to the hotel and from the hotel to the pier. These worked very well. Indeed, upon our arrival at the airport at about 7:30am after a red eye from the U.S., it was great to be greeted by a driver holding up a sign with our names, and whisked to our hotel. But I don't think cabs would have been a problem either way.

 

I don't know how much time you are planning in Copenhagen before your cruise, but as I mentioned above, on our third day, we took a tour outside the city, the Grand Day Trip Around Copenhagen, with Hamlet Tours. It visits four very interesting places -- Kronborg Castle (aka Hamlet's Castle), Frederiksborg Palace, Roskilde Cathedral, and the Viking Ship Museum. I'm glad we saw them, but it was a whirlwind day and naturally there was not enough time in each place. However, we absolutely fell in love with Frederiksborg Palace -- a magnificent Renaissance palace with incredible rooms filled with art, fountains outside, gardens out back, a sort of Danish Versailles. I'd love to have spent at least half a day there, and I highly recommend a visit. (From what I've read, it's very easy to get to via train from Copenhagen.)

 

I did not post any photos earlier from Denmark, as it was not part of the cruise itself, but here are several photos of Frederiksborg:

 

The entrance:

 

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The jaw-dropping Coronation Chapel:

 

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Just one of a zillion rooms, each filled with art, beautiful floors, intricate ceilings...

 

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There were beautiful gardens in the back; we had no time to visit them, only to see them from the Palace windows:

 

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While I'm at it, let me just post one photo from Copenhagen, an iconic shot of Nyhavn (we really lucked out on the weather!):

 

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I hope this has been helpful; have a great trip!

 

(photos by turtles06)

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Judith, can I ask you what kind of camera you use to take these stunningly clear pics?

 

Sure. My main camera is a Sony a6300 mirrorless. When conditions warranted, I was shooting with an old Nikon AW100 waterproof camera. And, quite frankly, I took a number of photos with my iPhone 8, which does a great job with stationary subjects, especially in good light (and if you don’t need zoom). It’s quite amazing how good the cameras on smartphones have become.

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Sure. My main camera is a Sony a6300 mirrorless. When conditions warranted, I was shooting with an old Nikon AW100 waterproof camera. And, quite frankly, I took a number of photos with my iPhone 8, which does a great job with stationary subjects, especially in good light (and if you don’t need zoom). It’s quite amazing how good the cameras on smartphones have become.

 

No doubt! Thanks a bunch!

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