Review of Our Westerdam Cruise ~ 3/7 to 3/14/2010

[gizmo]

Thanks for taking the time to write the review. I enjoyed reading it. It sounded like you had a great time.

[twinkletoes4445]

What a wonderful review, Heather! I'm glad you had a nice time.

 

We also love sea days and this itinerary interests us. We've not visited Curacao or Aruba, and would like to do so one day.

 

Marco van Belleghem was the HM on our last cruise.

 

I agree with the jokes. We've only cruised 3 times, but we've heard the same jokes over and over again.

 

Thanks for the info on the drink cards. I do believe we'll not use one of those on our next cruise, unless someone gives us one as a gift.

 

We've not been to the Pinnacle before, but we'll have a free dinner on our next cruise. It's free, so I guess I can't complain, but I hope our experience is better than yours. I can understand why you'd not want to dine in the PG again.

 

We did notice on our last cruise that our steward wasn't around as much as the one on our previous cruise. I think 29 cabins is a lot, even though our main steward had a helper on our last cruise.

 

Thanks for a well-balanced review! :)

[serendipity1499]

Terrific review Heather..

 

We've had the same experience with the Pinnacle.. Sometimes it's fasntastic, other times it's been so so..Our last Pinnacle dinner was fantastic! We had two charming ladies wait on us instead of the usual Men..

 

And a couple of our Key Cards were a disaster..We had adjoining cabins with Friends too...Both my Friend & I had to get our key cards re cut, while our Husband's key cards worked perfectly for the entire cruise..Go figure..

 

Re your Cabin Steward...HAL started a new thing last year & have assigned two Stewards to all the cabins...It looks like there is one primary or Head with an Assistant Steward..

Individually, they used to have only 13 or 14 cabins each, but now they together seem to have 29 or even 30..On our last cruise of 28 days, our head Steward left us in San Diego...He was replaced with another head Steward.. His replacement was actually much better than our original one..We've also been on some cruises where our cabin was at the end of the line & was made up much later than usual..

 

We have a B2B Carribean planned on the Noordam in Nov.. But DH is getting antsy & thinks we should have one in between..Right now I'm looking at Alaska now, but not quite sure..

 

Thanks again for a terrific review..

Cheers...:)Betty

 

[jmps]

Thanks for your very balanced review. What did you do in Curacao? We are there soon and are looking for ideas.

[HeatherInFlorida]

Thanks for your very balanced review. What did you do in Curacao? We are there soon and are looking for ideas.

 

You're welcome! :) Please see my post #24 which gives an overview of our tour on Curacao.

[Oceanwench]

I tried to post this yesterday but the board wouldn't let me! ;)

 

For the key cards that stopped working - do you have a magnetic clasp on your evening bag? It can demagnetize your card.

 

I noticed Serendipity and a friend had a similar problem ... but the guys didn't!

 

It has happened to me on several cruises. Now I have to find an evening bag without a magnetic clasp! I have a lovely Kate Spade evening bag I had been using, too. :(

 

Even the $10 bags in the shops onboard have magnetic clasps.