How does Holland America rate vs other cruiselines?

[firstimer22]

How does Holland America rate vs other cruiselines, for example Carnival?

[TrentS]

I've been on 4 HAL cruises, and IMO HAL is pretty boring...HAL is owned by Carnival, but it's a more upscale line. HAL has an "older" following in general. If you want to party go on Royal Caribbean or Carnival, if you want a more quiet sedate cruise where pretty much everyone is in bed by 10pm then choose HAL.

[Keith1010]

If you would to get a nice sense of how the various cruise lines and cruise ships rate I would recommend picking up a copy of Ocean Cruising and Cruise Ships by Douglas Ward. It will give a nice writeup on each ship along with ratings.

 

In it you will find ratings by major area such as ship, accommodations, food, service, entertainment and the overall cruise.

 

The reason I think this is important is if you were looking for a ship with say very good entertainment over accomodation this book would help you to narrow down those areas of interest.

 

What the book will not give you is price so once you've made a list of ships/cruise lines that interest you, then you'll need to narrow down the choice based on itinerary and price.

 

If you are interested in Holland, then I would recommend looking at Celebrity, Princess and Royal Caribbaean cruise lines for a comparison. You could also read comments from others on the respective Cruise Critic cruise boards for each of those cruise lines to get a sense what others think about these cruise lines.

 

Keith

[CaribbeanBound]

If you're over 75, it's probably ranked pretty well.

 

Most folks would rank them somewhere below Celebrity, Carnival, Princess, and Royal Caribbean

[kitty9]

My cousin just got off the Westerdam and after cruising on Princess, Celebrity and Crystal, he said it was the worst cruise line he's been on. He said the food and service was sub-par and that it's a line he would not do again.

[Cotton]

I haven't sailed on a HAL ship; however, my friends just returned from a HAL cruise a few weeks ago. They have been on Carnival, Celebrity, and Costa. They are my age, 60ish, and they were 'bored' with the activities on HAL.

 

They thought, since Carnival owns HAL and 7-8 other cruiselines, they assumed all would be similiar. NOT, obviously. OK, there's one thought from a 60ish point of view. They said they will go back to Carnival for their next cruise.;)

[Longboysfan]

Each line caters to a different type of person.

The HAL as a line tends to have the 60 plus cruiser.

Food and service are very good. Food may not have a lot of spice to it but...

There are not non stop activities on HAL like other lines.

Royal Caribbean is go go go....

Celebrity is more along the lines of HAL but a bit younger crowd. 45 average.

Food and Service on Celebrity is just about the highest in the industry. CONDE NAST poll prove this out.

Rooms and shows are about equal on all lines as there are only so many different types of shows you can put on while at sea.

Rooms - well it's just in how they design them to fill up the space with the essentials.

[dhcoaster]

Not a fare question! What are you looking for in your cruise. Party, party party or service, service, service. And BTW HAL's not as boring as stated by some on this board. And disagree on Celebrity. Much older group on X Ships then HAL!

[doone]

I have to agree with the above poster, HAL is not as boring or as bad as some of you have stated. HAL, like Celebrity, IMHO, is a more traditional cruise line. I have been cruising for well over 25 years and after sailing a couple of other cruise lines, found HAL to be exactly what I am looking for. No, I am not 75 years old, I am 48 years old and have been sailing HAL since the early 1980's.

 

Remember, cruise lines have all changed to be more competitive, adding rock climbing walls, ice skating rinks, etc., etc. For me, a cruise or a vacation I like to relax, get away from the cold winters here in New England. This is where I give HAL and Celebrity the edge, for me anyways, its relaxing, but then I can be as busy as I want to, its upto me. They have made some changes, some good, some not so good, but tried to remain traditional.

 

HAL has a new style ship, the Vista Style ships which they are trying to cater to the younger crowd. HAL also has the R and S style ships, which tend to be smaller than the Vista style ships and sail longer than 7 days. Remember, the longer the cruise, the older the passenger will be, and this is true of any cruise line.

 

If you are a traditional cruiser, you will enjoy Celebrity and HAL, if you want or need something to do every minute, then perhaps Carnival or RCCL would fit your needs better.

 

There are many cruise lines out there to fit everyone's cruise expectations, you just need to do research to find which one is best for you.

[Keith1010]

I have to tell you that I have cruised extensively and my wife and I have cruised on over 10 different cruise lines; both luxury and mass market. HAL is a mass market line.

 

I am not into rock climbing or any of those other related items so I will provide comments on other areas.

 

We cruised HAL once and will never do so again.

 

The food was poor relative to other cruise lines. I am not a big fan of the food on Princess but the food on Princess was much better than what is on HAL and the food on Celebrity is top notch.

 

The entertainment on HAL is rather boring. I am not sure if you have ever seen the movie Out To Sea with Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau but the cruise director we had on HAL and the entertainment we had on HAL reminded me of what I saw in the movie. Very boring. We went to a party on the outside deck at 9:00 PM and there were maybe twenty passenger's there.

 

Service issues were poorly handled. We stayed in a suite which had several creaky noises and even after serveral complaints they did not address the issue and when we got back home and followed up with their executives they did not properly handle the issue.

 

We sent out two of my wives tops to be cleaned. They came back with entirely different colors. Again, they didn't handle this correctly when we followed up with them.

 

I thought that the ship was nice and I also thought that the appetizers that they served with drinks prior to dinner were a nice touch but that is about it.

 

In short, I have to tell you that my wife and I will never sit foot on a HAL ship. And, we are not big partiers and we are not complainers. We will overlook quite a bit and always be flexible as we go with reasonable expectations on each cruise. But, for the same money I would choose another mass market ship to sail on with Celebrity Cruise Lines being an excellent choice.

 

Keith

[doone]

Keith, I understand your frustrations. IMHO, if anyone is bored on a cruise, its their own fault, there are plenty of activities if you look. That's why there are so many different cruise lines, there is a cruise line for everyone with the activities that they would enjoy, you just have to find it.

 

Keith, could you elaborate a bit on how HAL didn't handle some of these things correctly.

 

For me, HAL is what I like, but wouldn't hesitate to sail Celebrity if the price and itinerary were right.

 

I found this thread to be very enlightning and helpful, hope others did as well.

[Keith1010]

Doone, as I mentioned we stayed in one of the Penthouse Suites. Our suite creaked most days/evenings. This was the first time that has ever happened to us so we didn't have any ear plugs with us. We were up several hours each night. When we first reported it they came to our room the next morning and said they fixed the problem. There was never any followup and the problem was never fixed and we reported it several times. They finally said they couldn't fix it. We asked for some type of reimbursement (we've never done this before and have never done it since so we are not the type of people who look for credits) but this was rediculous. They said we'd have to write to their corporate office when we got back. We did and we got a basic letter back and they gave us a $100 credit per person which was only good towards a new cruise with them. I wrote back as I thought that was wrong but they wouldn't do anything for us. We should have gotten a credit and it should have been a credit not some voucher for another cruise. And, if they were going to give us a voucher then it should have been more than $100.00 per person. After all, we stayed in their top accommodation on this cruise.

 

In terms of the dry cleaning fiaso they never showed any understanding for what they had done. They didn't apologize.

 

If it was my business, I can name several things that I would have done for the passenger many of which would be a nit in terms of cost.

 

I was very disappointed in how they handled things and again I have to say that most of the cruise was a disappointment. And, we are really not hard to please. There are times that we see people criticize trivial items on a ship and as we always say it's not like we are buying the cabin or the ship so we overlook many things that might bother others.

 

And we do look at the best of all things which is why we normally have a great time on all cruises regardless of cruise line, etc.

 

Bottom line, I normally will give others a second chance. But, I will not in this case for the reasons I mentioned.

 

Keith

[doone]

Thanks, Keith. Which ship did you sail?

 

I am sorry you won't give them another chance, but they really are a great cruise line, IMHO anyways.

 

I agree, HAL, and other cruise lines as well, certainly could handle some of their complaints differently. I learned that on a different cruise line I sailed and vowed never to return to them. I never did and now don't have to worry about it as they are now defunked, which doesn't surprise me.

 

Hope you enjoy your next cruise, whichever line you choose, Keith.