Just back from last Alaska voyage on Oosterdam

[annie2]

Just got back Sunday night from the Oosterdam. The pinnacle grill was open the second day for deluxe suite passengers...no more delays due to code red. The lido is still serving the first few days rather than self serve. We had fabulous weather the first several days including an awesome day at Glacier Bay and John Hopkins inlet. I was stripping off jackets, sweaters and gloves as our balcony faced the glacier for a nice long visit. We got as close as allowed, about 1/4 mile. Juneau was an ideal day and I was so surprised that night when our captain came on saying we would miss the port of Sitka and go straight to Ketchikan. We sailed to Victoria via the inside passage. Great call on our captains part. The Pacific had 100 mile winds, sick and some injured passengers. We got 55 mile an hour winds and the outside decks were closed for one day. Not too bad tho considering the alternative. I would sail with Cap. Van der Loo anytime! I was in a long line getting back on the ship in Juneau and the he was patiently waiting in line too. He also did a cooking demonstration. Good communicator when there was a fire in the incinerator that got out of control. After the crew emergency (7 short blasts) signal he or someone else would update us every 5 to 10 minutes until it was out and smoldering.

The food was great and our cabin stewards, Ronie and Hendrik were the best in 20 cruises! Really outstanding and so sweet to my mom. I have cruised "higher end" lines but none ever come close to the warmth of the crew on Holland America.

[Homala]

Annie2, thanks for the short but sweet review of your Alaska cruise on the "O." I'll be on her (my first cruise ever) in November to Mexico, so I read every single "O" review I can find.

 

By the way, I see you're in Chico. I grew up in Paradise (most people don't know where Paradise is, although they usually know Chico) and I still have quite a bit of family in Paradise and Chico. Look forward to our next trip up that way for Thanksgiving.

[annie2]

Hi Holly,

I have sailed the O to Mexico before. It is a great trip and I know you will enjoy the Oosterdam. You are ahead of most first time cruisers by checking out cruise critic! I met one passenger the first day that didn't know room service was included at no extra charge.

If you have any questions I will be happy to answer them. My husband and I go to Puerto Vallarta every year for three weeks so we know that town pretty well.

It is a beautiful day in Chico and should reach 100 degrees today!

[portofrome]

Thanks for the review.

[Laminator]

The food was great and our cabin stewards, Ronie and Hendrik were the best in 20 cruises! Really outstanding and so sweet to my mom. I have cruised "higher end" lines but none ever come close to the warmth of the crew on Holland America.

 

This was my 4th Oosterdam trip. We have always had great stewards but Ronie and Hendrik were in fact a step or two above great. I have to be honest and say I am the world's worst person at remembering names so I always name the cabin stewards Ben and Jerry. Two reasons. First I can remember those names and second I love the ice cream. At the end of the cruise they wrote a thank you note in which they signed their names Ronie and Hendrik scratched them off and then wrote Ben and Jerry. Those two are the best.

 

Ronie requested our next itinerary for the Oosterdam in April so he could make sure he could take care of us again.

 

They make it very difficult for us to even consider another cruise line.

[SwissMyst]

........

If you have any questions I will be happy to answer them. My husband and I go to Puerto Vallarta every year for three weeks so we know that town pretty well.

...!

 

Heading back to PV on the Statendam and enjoyed just walking the old back streets on our last day visit on the Oosterdam last Christmas. Any tips on old parts of town to visit or places for lunch. We really liked Galeria Indigena for their luscious selections of Talavera ware, but do you know of any other places where their sell the real stuff and not the cheesy tourist knock-offs? We expect to take the local bus from the ship to downtown again. And are willing to do a lot of walking.

[annie2]

This was my 4th Oosterdam trip. We have always had great stewards but Ronie and Hendrik were in fact a step or two above great. I have to be honest and say I am the world's worst person at remembering names so I always name the cabin stewards Ben and Jerry. Two reasons. First I can remember those names and second I love the ice cream. At the end of the cruise they wrote a thank you note in which they signed their names Ronie and Hendrik scratched them off and then wrote Ben and Jerry. Those two are the best.

 

Ronie requested our next itinerary for the Oosterdam in April so he could make sure he could take care of us again.

 

They make it very difficult for us to even consider another cruise line.

 

Yes, Ronie and Hendrik or Ben and Jerry are fabulous. We have tentative plans to take them to lunch in Puerto Vallarta in December! Hope they can get the time off.

Some people said their cabin stewards were invisiable. We loved that every time we were walking down the hallway they called out our names. They demonstrated towel animals for us several times and enjoyed their warm personalities. Hendrik said he considered all passengers angels because they provide such great jobs for them. He is getting married in four months~

[annie2]

Heading back to PV on the Statendam and enjoyed just walking the old back streets on our last day visit on the Oosterdam last Christmas. Any tips on old parts of town to visit or places for lunch. We really liked Galeria Indigena for their luscious selections of Talavera ware, but do you know of any other places where their sell the real stuff and not the cheesy tourist knock-offs? We expect to take the local bus from the ship to downtown again. And are willing to do a lot of walking.

 

Swissmyst you already know the best store in PV! I have a collections of victoria blue wooden angels I buy there...There is also a small store called Talavera near Posada Rodger in the romantic zone on a main street. Cant remember the name but they have great talavera.

I think the best tortilla soup is at Le Bistro on the river cuale...it is a modern jazz decor restaurant. For a wonderful and reasonable lunch on a beautiful beach I would go to the Lindomar(in the conchas chinas area) You enter the hotel and take the elevator down to the beach area. Buses or taxis go there....I love the sizzling fajitas and the laid back atmosphere. La Palapa is on the beach in the romantic zone as well and is quite popular. We get an inside table to cut down on the beach vendors coming by....they serve a great tropical salsa with banana and mango chips with your lunch.

[Bill HaHa]

Thanks for the review...I will be on the Oosterdam in 4 days to Mexico (oct.2). She is a great ship. We last sailed on her Oct. 2007.

[Guest Indigogarden]

Hi Annie2 et al.........

I was interested to read your review and glad you had a good cruise. We were on the one day transfer from Seattle to Vancouver that happend the day you returned. I was curious about the code red you talked about because it sounds like it was not in effect when you returned to Seattle? We boarded and faced the worst lines I've ever seen on a cruise ship on the Lido deck. NOTHING was available for self serve and they seemed to have limited counter people to help serve dishes. I am not kidding when I saw that I stood in line for 30 minutes and moved less than one foot. It was seriously disheartening and not the HAL experience we have seen before. While we have come to enjoy the service level of HAL--this was truly an exceptionally poor situation that we and other passengers faced. Upon departure the Lido deck was wide open and people were self serving everything --evidently whatever they decided was the issue for a one day cruise--disappeared over night. This doesn't change past good experiences with HAL--but we experienced healthy servings of disappointment on a simple one night cruise!

[SwissMyst]

Swissmyst you already know the best store in PV! I have a collections of victoria blue wooden angels I buy there...There is also a small store called Talavera near Posada Rodger in the romantic zone on a main street. Cant remember the name but they have great talavera.

I think the best tortilla soup is at Le Bistro on the river cuale...it is a modern jazz decor restaurant. For a wonderful and reasonable lunch on a beautiful beach I would go to the Lindomar(in the conchas chinas area) You enter the hotel and take the elevator down to the beach area. Buses or taxis go there....I love the sizzling fajitas and the laid back atmosphere. La Palapa is on the beach in the romantic zone as well and is quite popular. We get an inside table to cut down on the beach vendors coming by....they serve a great tropical salsa with banana and mango chips with your lunch.

 

All sounds good. Thanks for your insider tips. We thought Galeria Indigena was a mind-blowing shopping experience. Glad to know we hit a home run when we found this by chance last time through. We are sorry this time we will be limited by luggage weights since we have to fly back from FLL. But when we take the Oosterdam from San Diego we get to drive so we can come back loaded down with as much as we can cart off the ship to the car.

[Krazy Kruizers]

Welcome home.

 

Thank your for your report.

 

We are all too familiar with fires in the incinerators. Has happend a few times.

[SwissMyst]

Hi Annie2 et al.........

I was interested to read your review and glad you had a good cruise. We were on the one day transfer from Seattle to Vancouver that happend the day you returned. I was curious about the code red you talked about because it sounds like it was not in effect when you returned to Seattle? We boarded and faced the worst lines I've ever seen on a cruise ship on the Lido deck. NOTHING was available for self serve and they seemed to have limited counter people to help serve dishes. I am not kidding when I saw that I stood in line for 30 minutes and moved less than one foot. It was seriously disheartening and not the HAL experience we have seen before. While we have come to enjoy the service level of HAL--this was truly an exceptionally poor situation that we and other passengers faced. Upon departure the Lido deck was wide open and people were self serving everything --evidently whatever they decided was the issue for a one day cruise--disappeared over night. This doesn't change past good experiences with HAL--but we experienced healthy servings of disappointment on a simple one night cruise!

 

From what I have learned here, HAL tries to control the few day noro-virus incubation period with served food and an automatic code red at the start of every cruise. It is a hassle but seems to be working on the larger issues of noro-outbreaks.

[Himself]

Thanks for your report. I enjoyed reading it. I am glad that the Captain took the inside passage. Hope you enjoyed Victoria and I am sorry you missed Sitka.

[Guest Indigogarden]

Thanks Swiss Myst for the follow up. So are they doing this on every HAL cruise?

I wasn't aware of this and would like to read more about it.........

[SwissMyst]

Thanks Swiss Myst for the follow up. So are they doing this on every HAL cruise?

I wasn't aware of this and would like to read more about it.........

 

I think this is HAL policy. We go to the main dining room those first few days if we want lunch, get room service breakfast, and go at odder times for the Lido when the more typical meal time crowds are down. But I remember being very confused by this policy on our first HAL cruise which was right after a red alert but before this became universal policy. I stood behind a woman at the grill taco bar taking forever to decide what she wanted the crew member to put in her taco. Drove me crazy and then a few days later all was self-serve. Only later did I learn this non-self serve for a few days was part of the noro-virus prevention protocol.

 

If you want to learn more than you may want to know about this, searching noro-virus threads on this forum will give you a lot of information. The deal as I understand it is, that if someone comes on board carrying the noro virus and contaminates the ship, it will cause an outbreak within the first 48 hours. If the ship does not get a rash of outbreak reports, they can then safely assume there is no "Thyphoid Mary" among the newly arriving passengers.

 

However, if there is an outbreak, then I imagine they would keep this prevention protocol in place which would be dreary for all, but the rapidity this virus can spread through a ship and the immediate nastiness of the result is so devastating that even these annoying precautions are well taken.

 

Over and over, the constant passenger hand-washing demands needs to be re-emphasized. Ships are odd, closed systems and our normal behavior and expectations need to change a lot during these temporary and unique times.

 

Witness again the message to make sure nothing goes down the toilets that does not belong and keeping balcony doors closed at all times when not going in and out, become critical for the well-being of far more passengers up and down the line that one may never see or meet.

[Guest Indigogarden]

I will research when this became 'policy'.... We've cruised before including a 10 day cruise earlier this year and did not experience this. On a cruise that is less than 24 hours it is contradictory to control access then have turn around and have free acess the next morning. This is inconsistency at it's worst. It would have been appropriate for HAL to tell us about this 'policy' change. It would also have been a good idea to have the Vista dining room open longer and consistency in staff serving food on Lido for this brief cruise. (That's for HAL if they read this comment!)

[IRL_Joanie]

.....I would sail with Cap. Van der Loo anytime! I was in a long line getting back on the ship in Juneau and the he was patiently waiting in line too. He also did a cooking demonstration. Good communicator when there was a fire in the incinerator that got out of control. After the crew emergency (7 short blasts) signal he or someone else would update us every 5 to 10 minutes until it was out and smoldering.

.......

 

Fire:eek:???? OK, no one else seems to have picked up on that:eek:

 

BTW, Welcome home!!! And thanks for the review. Now I wanna hear more about the Capt's cooking demo, and this fire....

 

Joanie

[annie2]

Joanie, as the comedian on board said, " Isn't there supposed to be a fire in the incinerator?" LOL. Apparently the fire was not under control but it only took about 20 minutes to get it controlled. I believe the captain demonstrated how to make dutch pancakes!

[AZWTRLVR]

Our wonderful captain gave a delightful demonstration making Dutch pancakes. I was surprised there weren't more in attendance. It was an hour long and he answered lots and lots of questions re his background and education, the ship, the change in itinerary due to the storm and how he arrived at the decision to make the change. He explained the incinerator fire which is too technical to go into but not serious and immediately taken care of. A comment was also made that he sometimes shows up at Bingo to call the numbers! He is so people-oriented and personable. We feel lucky to have sailed under his helm.

Joani, pictures of our cabin on the way, probably next week.

[IRL_Joanie]

Our wonderful captain gave a delightful demonstration making Dutch pancakes. I was surprised there weren't more in attendance. It was an hour long and he answered lots and lots of questions re his background and education, the ship, the change in itinerary due to the storm and how he arrived at the decision to make the change. He explained the incinerator fire which is too technical to go into but not serious and immediately taken care of. A comment was also made that he sometimes shows up at Bingo to call the numbers! He is so people-oriented and personable. We feel lucky to have sailed under his helm.

Joani, pictures of our cabin on the way, probably next week.

 

I do not know if he was our Captain on our first HAL cruise, which just happened to be the Oosterdam, in May 2008. But, it's great to hear he was such a great person:)

 

Will be keeping my eye out for the photos. Thank you so much!!!

 

Joanie