A review in brief (9-4-21 Nieuw Amsterdam to Alaska)

[atexsix]

A rather late in the day posting but I wanted to pop in and say hello and once again thank everyone for their thoughts and concerns.  I'm recovering from my illness fairly well, still not quite 100%, but a huge improvement.  This allowed me to finally get the unpacking and laundry done this past weekend.  We also took care of the cruise bills today.  Our onboard spending was far less than usual, mainly because we both felt so awful, rough seas and otherwise.  I have not yet submitted the HAL review.  I have mixed feelings about it since much of my opinion can be directly attributed to how I was feeling and not HAL or the crew's performance.  But in brief, we didn't have as good of a time as we would have liked.  And I'd go so far as to say it was almost not worth the time and money. 

 

We keep coming back to the same two issues: the lead up of the testing requirements which weren't fun at all and too stressful for us, no need to rehash all of that.  The second issue was the food, particularly the MDR.  It was a huge disappointment and we only dined in there two nights with a 3rd in our stateroom but we ordered off the menu, that was just as bad.  The menus were just so bland, boring, and sparse.  Not once could we get white meat chicken for Dad, outside of the Dive-In I'm not sure white meat of any kind could be found anywhere on the ship.  Then there were the constant interruptions to upsell (water in a can, surf and turf, and drink packages), worse of all were the magic tricks, I mean really?!  I suppose some people find that sort of thing endearing, but we didn't care for it, nor did we ask for it, frankly it was another intrusion into our dining time, which wasn't great to begin with.  I ordered the Pinnacle for room service twice and it was outstanding!  It was one of the few bright spots in the food category.  We did not eat in the other specialty restaurants.  The Lido was so so.  We only had lunch and snacks there; the desserts were excellent, and Dad loved his daily ice cream.  I wasn't all that impressed with the food options.  The Dive-In was disappointing too, the burgers were dry either from overcooking or because they changed meat suppliers, nothing like in the past when you were guaranteed to get a big juicy burger on a gourmet bun.  I tried telling them not to overcook but they didn't get it, I'm sure they were following a set of cooking guidelines and that was that.  We got desperate on Friday when Dad abstains from meat for religious reasons and ordered the kids room service, another disappointment, we were assured they could substitute grape jelly for the strawberry on the PB&J's but it wasn't meant to be.  I had no appetite by this point due to my infection, the most I could choke down was the fruit which I have to say was presented very well.  

 

Overall we felt that the desire for the crew to go the extra mile to please their passengers palates was just not there.  Most of the time we were hungry or ate junk food, and people should never walk off a cruise ship hungry, I mean something is wrong if that is happening.  I don't want to get anymore into it, volumes have already been written about it.  But now you have some idea on what we experienced.

 

Hope you are all healthy and doing well!

 

~Bruno

[dobiemom]

Bruno! Glad to see you posting. 🙂