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Eurodam Dec. 22-29 Review

LasseKjus

By LasseKjus,
in Holland America Line

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LasseKjus

LasseKjus

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A few days back from the Eurodam's Eastern Caribbean Christmas Cruise and have some time to reflect. Here is what we encountered:

 

Thanks to a generous gift from my in-laws, we had four staterooms full of people on this, our third Christmas cruise in four years. My in-laws had a verandah stateroom on deck 7, which was well appointed, nicely sized and suited them well. My son, age 4, was assigned to their room, but he bounced from room to room. My wife's sister and her husband had an oceanview on deck 1 with one of their children (age 1) assigned to them. I had an oceanview on deck 1 with two of my children assigned (ages 9 and 6). My wife had an inside across the hall from our oceanview for our 17-year-old permanent house guest and the two other children from my sister in law (ages 5 and 3).

 

Embarkation was a pain in the rumpus. Worst embarkation ever of our 17 cruises. Maybe it was because we had some hassles arriving. Due to extremely expensive flights, we flew into Orlando the night before, rented a 12 pax van and drove down. We stopped for the night in Fort Pierce and continued our trip down the next morning, but ran into a few hurdles. We arrived at port at 1 p.m., much later than we used to. I still had to get gas, return the van to the airport and return to the pier. Everyone decides to line up and wait for me. Nearly an hour later, I return to the busy port only to see everyone finally get to the front of the line. Then, the guy helping us kept getting the wrong key cards, giving us wrong info... So it was nearly 3 by the time we were on board. But all our luggage was in our room at that point, which was nice.

 

Getting on the ship, it was one of the smaller ships we had been on. It was very clean, our rooms were nicely sized and we ended up doing some re-arranging. The inside room was supposed to hold the 17 year old, my two girls and the oldest girl from my SIL's family. After one night, my niece decided not to stay with them anymore and wanted to be with her parents instead of cousins. So they packed themselves, a 5, 3 and 1 year old girl into their room. I guess one of the parents slept on the upper berth. Been there before when our kids were younger! My room was supposed to be the two of us and our 4-year old son, but he, more often than not, wanted to sleep in the inside room with his sisters. The inside room was as large an inside room as I've ever seen.

 

Upon boarding, we head up to Lido and the food was very nice. They do have signs up saying you can't serve yourself for the first 48 hours of a cruise. Kind of annoying, but not the end of the world. Even after 48 hours expired, most of the service is from behind the glass anyway. The food was fabulous. Our 17-year old and our 9-year old girls enjoyed the endless supply of sushi. I frequented the pasta area. My wife loved the Indian food and all the choices were great. At this point is where I usually spend $60 for an unlimited soda card, but not having those, I bought soda gift cards on the HAL web site prior to the trip. I "splurged" and spent $100 on 4 gift cards. I guess I didn't do my math very well. I figured that would cover me and a few drinks for the kids for the week. Well, the $100 I spent bought $200 worth of soda. At $1.35 a drink, I realized I had well overspent, so I bought for the whole family on the trip and still didn't go through it all. Lesson learned. And they had lemonade, fruit punch and a orange/passionfruit/mango punch at the Lido which was really good, so I didn't often walk to the bar for a soda.

 

Muster drill was lengthy and the only time I felt crowded on the ship. After muster, we went straight to the pool. By 5 p.m., we had the pool and hot tubs of the main area all to ourselves. Granted it was a bit chilly, but it amazed me how on a ship of 2,000 pax, we could essentially have 1/4 a deck to ourselves. That was basically the theme of the cruise, never felt crowded.

 

With a group of 13, we were split into two tables next to each other at the MDH. It was minor nuisance, but we just rotated who sat with whom each night. The restaurant fare was at worst good and at it's best really good. Nothing spectacular, but never anything bad either. We sampled just about everything on the menu each night with the different tastes of our group of 13. I typically had two entrees, one of which was a protein and the other which was vegetarian that I split with my wife. Eight years ago, we traveled HAL with a picky vegetarian and it seemed as if she had something called "Hodgepodge of Escarole" just about every night as that was the only choice. This time, plenty for the vegetarian crowd. I tried to order a salad every night too with their very good balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Our servers were very attentive, but not intrusive. They didn't make much conversation with us other than our meals, which was different from a set dining time restaurant from our experience.

 

Our first full day (day 2 of the sailing) on the ship was a sea day. Again, no trouble finding a deck chair of spot in the pool or hot tub. The pool didn't seem to be salt water either. With kids, we didn't make our way to the sea view pool, but my in-laws said something about it being kind of smoky back there. Again, also noticed very little smoke smell. Back to the main pool, there was one problem. The roof was only half open. One side was stuck closed apparently. Wasn't the end of the world. There weren't a lot of kids doing stupid stuff in the pool and as a result, there were no deck stewards yelling at anyone to stop doing the stupid stuff. Kind of refreshing. At this point, we took our younger kids to Club HAL for a couple of hours. Not that impressed. It was small and the staff didn't seem all that gung ho about kids. My 6 year old chose not to go back, but my SIL's 5 and 3 year old went back a couple of times. My 9 and my 4 year old never wanted to go. I also spent some calculated time at the casino. Being it sunday, I expected to see NFL football. They didn't have any on at kickoff, which didn't ruin my time, but did one passenger. "This is a multi-million dollar company. How can they not have the NFL on TV? I WANT TO WATCH FOOTBALL." and he stormed off. If football is that necessary, don't go on a ship during the season. You have a chance of missing it. Well 15 minutes later, they had a game on! Not the one I wanted, but I didn't really care, I was having a blast at sea!

 

Day 3, Christmas Eve and Grand Turk. Announcements at 8 a.m. say we can't get into port due to high winds. The captain will make one more attempt, but we might have to miss the port. By 9 a.m., we were told the Captain made a great docking procedure and the ship was clear. The other ship, Carnival Splendor, I believe, didn't make the port, so kudos to the Captain. By 10 a.m. we were off. We did a little shopping, beach visiting and spent some time at Margaritaville. My wife and I bought souvenirs for everyone for Christmas presents for the next day. Beach area was very nice and the water was a tad chilly but very comfortable after a while. My SIL's husband and 5 year old went on a snorkeling excursion and my in-laws took a tour of the island. Despite arriving late, we had to be back on board by 2:30 p.m. We get back on and we easily find seats at Lido for lunch and head to the Screening Room for the Polar Express, of which it was essentially a private screening. That's my one concern for the ship is that there seems to be a lot of wasted space. The screening room is one. Seats for about 40, but never anyone in there. After that it was our first show of the trip to see a comedic juggler. He was somewhat funny and didn't take himself seriously, which was a refreshing change. Then it was off to dinner.

 

Day 4, Christmas Day, we wake to see us no-where near port. Thinking we'd be in San Juan by noon with a 5 p.m. return, it was apparently 1 p.m. with a 5:30 return. Later, we see us pull into port, right by El Morro and it's so neat to cruise into San Juan. We walked to El Morro, which was closed. We knew that, but my son wanted to see "the castle" and the grounds of El Morro are still very neat. It was fun to see the locals with all their new presents. Kids with new shoes, scooters, and other toys. We just hung out at the fort like a lot of the locals. My six year old did meet up with another girl she met on the ship at El Morro and ran around the fort with her for 20 minutes or so. After that, we continued to walk through Old San Juan back toward the ship. We stopped at a fountain and the kids got SOAKED running through it. They had a blast. A local ice cream guy provided treats for the kids and was the only on-land cost at San Juan racked up to be $4.50. We were back on the ship by 5 p.m., spent some time at the pool area, of which we were the only ones again. We hit the show that night, which was a magician whose sidekick was a dog. It was passable entertainment, but the dog was a nice touch. Dinner with presents, which made everyone happy and then we wound down our evening. We're in anchorage by 10 p.m. that night for St. Thomas. That night was chocoate buffet night. We walked through. Got very little. It was mostly the deserts we had seen so far.

 

Day 5, St. Thomas. I realize we're tendering and not docking, so we wait for open tender. That started at about 10 a.m. We wanted to go to St. John, which we've done before in an 8 a.m.-5 p.m. window, but the tender got us started slower. My sister-in-law's family wanted to do Maeggans' Bay. Whit 9 ships in port, I was worried about crowding. Then some other struggles didn't allow us to get off until about 11 a.m. so we realized St. John would be tough on our own. We opted for Emerald beach, which was busy but not crowded. Other half went to Maeggans, which was very packed apparently. We spend about 3 hours there, make our way back to the ship while my wife, her mother, and our 17 year old stay in the straw market to later join us on the ship. My father in law takes my 4 year old boy to the screening room to watch Spiderman while I take the girls to the again uncrowded pool. We did go to the show that night, which was an odd mix of songs from different eras. We didn't get the point or the theme, but it provided us with some entertainment.

 

Day 6, sea day. We slept in and got a slow start to our day, but we thought we should have gotten started earlier to get a spot by the pool. After lunch, we head to the pool, but how wrong we were. Plenty of space. Not crowded. Only about 20 kids in the pool and always spots in the hot tubs. Amazed! I'm learning to really like these smaller ships. The rest of the day was uneventful. Relaxing. The way cruise ship life is meant to be!

 

Day 7 brings us to Half Moon Cay. We get the all clear at 9:30 or so, which seems to be late, but no matter to us. We're off in time for the lunch, which was not spectacular. The beach is nice. We rarely do beaches on cruises because we do not like sand. The kids do, but we don't. Well, this was our 3rd beach visit on a ship, which had to be a record for us. The water was cold, so we headed back around 2. Our 17 year old stayed with my sister-in-law's family and was happy to have the extended time. We spent the rest of the time at the pool, again uncrowded with just one other family there. My wife, son and middle daughter went to the room about 6, with my 9 year old and I planning to wait until 7 to get ready for dinner. However, there was some 10-ish year old boy creepily following my daughter around so she asked to be done early. During the later afternoon, we met a nice couple from California, originally from Romania. They were doing B2B cruises. So nice for them!

 

Our cruise came to an end the next morning. Getting everyone moving was a chore after a week of sleeping, endulgance and general happiness. We spent one final morning in Lido. We headed off the ship at 8:45 a.m. and had our luggage collected and through customs by 9:30. Very easy disembarkation. Not the fastest, but FAAAAAAAR from the worst. Much better than I was expecting. I called for our shuttle to the PBI airport, which arrived 20 minutes later. Our flight wasn't until 4 p.m. so it was a long time in PBI, which is a very nice little airport. It was our first time there. We got back home at about 11 p.m. Saturday nght, I started future cruise planning on Sunday, which was postponned on Monday as our house was burglarized and a bunch of our stuff taken. Happy new year. We weren't home. Had our dog with us and they mangled our back window to get in. Not a great return.

 

In short, the trip was fantastic. I really enjoyed the smaller ship feeling. Never had to deal with crowds, finding tables even for 13 at Lido or unruly passengers. I highly recommend the Eurodam.

 

The one thing we did have to deal with however was my 4-year-old, in a very cute way, bought into the marketing and kept referring to it as a "Dam Ship." He'd then look at me with the "I didn't do anything wrong" eyes and emphatically say, "It's called Eurodam Ship! I can say that."

 

Being our 17th cruise, 2nd on HAL and having been on 6 lines, we enjoy each cruise and each ship for different reasons. On Disney, it's the shows. On NCL, we use freestyle dining to our advantage. On this voyage, it was the lack of crowding that we enjoyed the most. It was a very relaxing, peaceful and enjoyable week on the Eurodam.

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localady

localady

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Great review! I appreciate your upbeat attitude and wealth of knowledge/experience with other cruise lines. Your observations of the contrasting experiences is helpful. It sounds like you are a family that has a good time and doesn't sweat the small stuff! Glad you had a great family holiday. :D

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lvz2cruz

lvz2cruz

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Funny you mention the lack of anyone in the screening room. Our recent cruises never had free spots and I wished it was larger!

 

Just shows every cruise is different. Thanks for the review.

 

Our cruises have been the same as your experience. Often we get there 10 minutes prior and it is full.

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LasseKjus

LasseKjus

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We were on the same cruise and enjoyed it as well. We were totally spoiled with our Lido Cabana and will do that again. A really nice and restful cruise.

 

How did you get a Lido cabana? Not that we wanted one, but it was an interesting idea. We tried for a cabana at Margaritaville, figuring it would be hot and the time out of the sun would be nice. We ultimately didn't get one, nor need one.

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Sanlin

Sanlin

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To reserve the cabana beforehand you need to call ship's services. I reserved ahead of the cruise to be sure we'd all have a meeting place and seats in the shade. Little did I know how spoiled we'd become by the service!!!

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