Nieuw Statendam 12/27/23 - 1/7/24 Comments

[OmarOak]

My thoughts after our recent Eastern Caribbean cruise:

 

This was a completely full ship and had a large Church group onboard. It never felt too crowded and HAL did a good job of setting up the Church group's activities so they did not interfere with other passengers. I had one minority annoying experience with a group member being invasively friendly and proselytizing. I eventually deflected them by telling the I was "not on their team" and am Wiccan (not true but remarkably effective). 

 

Cabin - The Cabin (6094) was in good condition and the stewards did a great job keeping it clean and working around our somewhat erratic schedule.

 

Lido - We had many of our Lunches and all of our Breakfasts in the Lido, plus Dinner on the night before disembarking. On a completely full ship we never had any difficulty getting a table of our choosing. Breakfast were mixed. HAL has definitely downgraded the quality of their sausages substantially. Service was ok. Behind the counter personnel were great. Lunch was good but the offerings were painfully repetitive. Dinner was good - many Lunch items plus most of the items on the Dining Room menu from that evening.

 

Dining Room - We had three Dinners in the dining and had two of the Morimoto dishes - the Black Cod was excellent and worth the tariff; the Lobster, not so much. The Lobster dish was so heavily sauced that you couldn't discern that the protein was Lobster. We had great service and as anytime dining walk-ins, we were able to get our preferred table (292 a 2 person table on the railing of the second level). Excellent service.

 

Sel de Mer - We ate in Sel de Mer 3 times, including New Years Eve. Consistently excellent food and strong service though one evening was slow and turned into a 3 hour meal.

 

Pinnacle Grill - We ate in Pinnacle twice. The food was quite good but the service was weak and perfunctory.

 

Tamarind - We ate there once and it was excellent as usual. We would have liked to return but they were consistently booked other than 5:00 and 9:00 seatings (too early; too late).

 

Nami Sushi - The low point of the cruise - the Sushi was terrible. It was waterlogged as if it had been defrosted improperly and all tasted the same. Mushy texture. YUCH.

 

We were disappointed that despite this being an 11 day cruise, neither the Rijstaffel nor a Morimoto Pop-up was offered.

 

Dive In and Dutch Cafe were great. The service team in the Dutch Cafe for early coffee was outstanding. 

 

Music on board was disappointing versus prior HAL Cruises. The BB King band was a few steps down from bands on prior cruises and the music selections were more of a mix of styles than than those on past cruises. The Rolling Stone band was good but sort of soul-less - more of a "live jukebox" than a performing band. It felt like they were going through the motions. The female singer was very good within her range but couldn't hit the high notes. The Billboard duo was awful. We very much missed having classical music (Lincoln Center Stage) on board.

 

The remodeled casino was nice and remarkably smoke free. 

 

Laundry service was great.

 

We had port days on 12/31 and 1/1 (Antigua and St. Lucia, respectively) which were a waste as the towns were effectively shut down due to the Holiday. Dominica was a wasted port day. One of the supposed highlights, a Botanical Garden, was very underwhelming. 

 

In sum, a great trip on a very nice ship but probably our first and last Holiday Cruise.

[QuattroRomeo]

Thanks for your comments! It's a shame about the Morimoto lobster though. I had it in December on Rotterdam and it was very good- in fact I wished there could have been more sauce because it was so tasty! Glad to hear that the cod was good. I. had the XO halibut and it was very nice also.