What happens when ships go to dry dock.

[OceanTraveller4ever]

I will be sailing on the Zuiderdam just before it goes to dry dock. I know that the hull is rusted at places, and some carpets are frayed..etc.

 

Does anyone know details of what a dry dock refurbishment entails.....

How long will it take, what will they do...

 

Still excited at sailing a ship jut before the face-lift ha ha.

[nana51]

I know they replace carpeting, furniture and spruce things up. What else I'm not sure.

[ETinCA]

It's also getting the cabanas above the lido deck.

[catl331]

They also do more outside washing and painting as many ports do not allow these procedures while in port. I guess they have the cabana retrofit down pat now and can do it in a wk. Often on this site, cruisers warn each other about taking a cruise right after these repair stops. New repairs need to be totally finished and carpet layers are often seen working at night to the next port. Freeport, Bahamas, is usually where they get this type of work done.

[rajkr74]

We are sailing on the Zuiderdam on 4-14-15 just after she comes out of dry dock for 2 weeks .....:rolleyes: Not sure what to expect? They will be adding additional cabins on the Observation deck aft of the Crows Nest. The same setup that was added to the Noordam. It appears these cabins will not be available until the 5-6-15 sailing which may mean they will be "under construction" while we sail on her for our 22 day cruise????

 

Our cruise is very port intensive so we will be out touring so do not expect much disruption since we will not be onboard much. Hope all of the deferred maintenance items are taken care of in this dry-dock. :)

[0bnxshs]

We are sailing on the Zuiderdam on 4-14-15 just after she comes out of dry dock for 2 weeks .....:rolleyes: Not sure what to expect? They will be adding additional cabins on the Observation deck aft of the Crows Nest. The same setup that was added to the Noordam. It appears these cabins will not be available until the 5-6-15 sailing which may mean they will be "under construction" while we sail on her for our 22 day cruise????

 

Our cruise is very port intensive so we will be out touring so do not expect much disruption since we will not be onboard much. Hope all of the deferred maintenance items are taken care of in this dry-dock. :)

 

We took a post re-fit cruise, in 2011, on Celebrity Infinity and that experience taught us to never do another such cruise again. They too had added cabins to the ship, above the buffet, during the re-fit and work went on into the late hours of the evening with tile sawing, pounding and the strong smell of paint making evenings anywhere on the stern impossible to enjoy. Carpets where still being replaced, all the artwork around the ship was still stored (or hadn't been replaced yet), there was lots of plumbing work throughout the ship still being accomplished. Also, the crew seemed almost confused about the ship; we had to call to get our room serviced, not once but daily, in the late afternoons so we could prepare for the evening with showers, shaving, etc. It was as if they didn't know our cabin existed. All in all, and while it may be unfair to judge the line by this one cruise, the whole experience soured us on Celebrity and we haven't been back.

 

I don't mean to scare you off your cruise, but at least you should be aware that things may not be back to normal on Zuiderdam as she returns to service. I do hope and have read that our experience was unusual and that other's haven't had such a poor time (and ours was a re-positioning cruise as well and was quite port intensive as it went from Ft Lauderdale to Santiago, Chile). Hopefully HAL does a better job of managing re-fits, but we don't ever intend to find out.

[Randyk47]

We've never been on a ship that was just out of dry dock though I've heard here it can sometimes be problematic. We were on the Maasdam on her last cruise before a dry dock a few years ago and have to say we'd probably not do that again. It was a 10-day cruise and 8 of the days were super. The last two days were not so super as they had brought small crews on board at one of the last ports to start prep work. By the last full day of the cruise there were several areas missing furniture or taped off or in some state of dismantling. The other distractor was they obviously were trying to reduce the ship's provisions and we ran out of several things, like butter :confused::eek:, by the end of the cruise.

[Sir PMP]

I will be sailing on the Zuiderdam just before it goes to dry dock. I know that the hull is rusted at places, and some carpets are frayed..etc.

 

Does anyone know details of what a dry dock refurbishment entails.....

How long will it take, what will they do...

 

Still excited at sailing a ship jut before the face-lift ha ha.

 

They change the soap and other minor things...