Westerdam Holiday Cruise Experience

[Ventura]

My family and I just returned home from our vacation which included the holiday sailing of the Westerdam (Dec 24-31). This cruise was to be a special celebration of my parent’s 50th Wedding Anniversary. There were 14 of us and the anticipation surrounding this milestone event and all the planning we did as a family caused my fun loving brother to dub the cruise “Aggravation of the Seas”. Little did we know that his prediction would come true in other ways. I suppose the biggest disappointment was HAL’s inability to accommodate our group for a special anniversary celebration in the Pinnacle despite my correspondence prior to departure through guest services and group bookings. Although we agreed to be flexible, I specifically mentioned that we could not do the dinner on the evening we were in Tortola – the ship arrives at 2:00 p.m. and departs at 10:00 p.m. Several members of our group had already made arrangements for excursions. The first thing I did upon boarding was to check with the Pinnacle and our reservation was slotted for 6:00 p.m. on the Tortola day. We could not be accommodated any other day (impossible to find a place for 14 people) and despite being on a waitlist the entire cruise, a reservation never materialized.

As part of our group booking, our travel agent had advised us that we would be receiving additional perks from HAL including complimentary soda cards, Pinnacle dining certificates and a voucher for a group photo. Initially only two of the 7 cabins received confirmation of these extra’s, and in checking with the front desk, we were told that the other cabins were not entitled. It took several days to get through to the right people (things were shut down over Christmas), but eventually we were advised, that yes, all cabins should have received the gift cards. Even by the end of the week, we were still trying to sort things out, and I know that one or two cabins never did get their photo vouchers. By this point the Pinnacle vouchers were useless, so we turned them back in to receive an $18.00 credit on our shipboard account (on a $30 value).

My parents are long-time HAL cruisers, and it was their enthusiasm for the line that persuaded us to book with this line. My family (husband and two older teenagers) cruised the two previous Christmas holiday sailings with Carnival. There is no question that the Westerdam is a wonderful ship. We found size-wise that the Westerdam was ideal and we loved the layout -- especially the Promenade deck. We were fortunate to have spectacular weather, and although the pool areas were congested, we did not find a problem with chair hogs. In fact, people went out of their way to let you know when they were vacating a chair. I’m sure the make-up of this particular sailing was not indicative of a typical HAL cruise. There were many families and large groups. I found people very friendly and the children on the cruise seemed to be well behaved –something that was a bit of an issue on Carnival. Activities were plentiful and we enjoyed participating in several contests and games.

However, where we found HAL lacking were in areas of service, which I for one expected HAL to excel at. As a group of 14, we were assigned to adjacent tables of 8 and 6 on the 8:30 seating. We rotated our seating each night so that we sat with different members of our group. We had a different server assigned to each table, so it was difficult for us to get to know the server, and for the server to get to know us. Some nights one table was so far ahead (or behind) the other, that we were rushing to finish in time to catch the evening show. Many times orders were missed and this only slowed down the whole process as they had to make an extra trip back to the kitchen before continuing on with the rest of the meal. Several times I ordered cappuccino with dessert, and it never arrived. The evening that Crepes Suzette was offered, the server brought out the other desserts, but waited another 20 minutes before letting us know that they had run out of Crepes. By this point it was too late to order anything else. Even our attempts to move our anniversary celebration to the dining room failed as a cake we requested arrived well after our desserts had been served, and most of our group had left for the show. On our previous cruises, we had always been able to establish wonderful relationships with our servers, and there was always a friendly exchange of banter between us. We appreciate that it’s sometimes difficult for the staff to be away from their families over the holiday period, and we always try to do our part in making the staff feel how welcome their service is. All we received from HAL staff was attitude. We watched their eyes roll when we weren’t quite ready to order after reviewing the menu for all of two minutes. There was never a “how was your day”, or an attempt to get to know our group. We found the staff mechanical and uncaring, and as hard as we tried to bring out a smile or friendly response, it just never happened. We did use the dining room for many of our breakfast and lunches and found friendlier servers at these times.

With our cabin steward we seemed to have more of a language problem. He kept our cabin spotless and faithfully refilled our ice bucket each day but could not explain how we received a pitcher of water. Our boys stayed in a cabin across the hall. They never received a towel creature, and their turn down chocolate was recycled. On the second formal evening, I was preparing for my shower, and was having difficulty lifting the mechanism to divert the water to the shower head. After my husband couldn’t get it to work as well, we called our cabin steward who contacted the ship’s plumber. We could not get a definitive answer as to when it would be fixed, We were meeting the rest of the family for pictures, and obviously could not get ready without a working shower. The steward told me ten minutes, which stretched into 45 minutes, and then another 15 minutes to repair the problem. It was just frustrating, because I would have gone up to the spa had I known it would take so long to get the shower fixed.

We loved the ports of call, and specifically chose this cruise for the itinerary. We were thrilled to have Half-Moon Cay as our final stop and were rewarded with a picture perfect day. My son was especially excited because we had promised him he could take out a sailboat and he had rounded up a bunch of friends he had met on the cruise to take out. When we arrived at the Watersports hut, we learned that only two hobie cats were operational (the others were down for repair) and none of the Sunfish were working. There was no sign up sheet. You had to wait around for someone to come back in and then hope that no one else beat you to the desk to say they were next. When I asked the staff member on the beach why there wasn’t a better system, he told me he had tried suggesting it to his boss several times, but there seemed to be no interest in changing the way it was done. My son waited around from 10:30 a.m. to 12:30 before he was finally able to get a boat. No information about ability was exchanged (fortunately my son has been sailing for years at summer camp and seems to know what he’s doing). The boat taken out prior to him appeared to be experiencing difficulty and was beyond the point and quite far out. A rescue boat had to be sent out and the sailboat was towed back in. After my son and his group returned, no more boats were allowed out.

Unfortunately for us, despite the many positive aspects of the cruise, we cannot give a first class rating to a first class ship. We shouldn’t have had to spend out holiday dealing with problems and frustrations – something we had never experienced on any other cruise before. I know my parents were truly disappointed by comparison to other HAL cruises they’ve taken and feel that the level of service was not on par. Despite all of this, our first experience of cruising as a family was a memorable one, and it was a wonderful way to be together to acknowledge a special event.