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Overall Experience: We’d definitely go on another Holland America cruise. We enjoyed the civilized, yet not stuffy, onboard atmosphere. We liked our room, the food, the onboard ship activities, and the excursions offered.
Age of Passengers: Quite mixed. There were many families with small children and/or teenagers. There were middle-aged couples. And there were some people 70 or older. Most passengers were North American although there were some from Asia and Eastern Europe.
Room: My husband and I had a verandah room, which has a balcony. We got a great price so we were prepared to “grin and bear it” when we found out that our cabin was under “The Retreat Deck”. I had read a couple of helpful cruise.com reviews of the Rotterdam so was prepared for this possibility. However, it turned out not to be an issue. After the first couple days of the cruise, the weather was quite cool (mid 50’s) so The Retreat was pretty empty and we didn’t hear any noise! Our room stewards were great. They quickly adapted to our leaving our room on the late side most mornings—around 10am. Our only disappointment was realizing that other rooms near ours were getting “towel animals” made for them on nights that we were not.
Crew: The room stewards and dining room as well as buffet staff were mainly Indonesian and Filipino. Almost all were very friendly and eager to help. I found out at a crew Q & A session that Holland America has cruise ship training schools in these countries. I found the travel guide who was from Wasila, Alaska, to be very helpful and informative. The front desk and excursion staff were very knowledgeable and efficient.
Activities/Excursions: I really liked the opportunities to learn about the cities that we traveled to and that members of Native American tribes came on board to share some of their history and culture with us. Favorite excursions were the Ketchikan motorcycle trip, and the dog sledding on dirt paths (how the dogs are trained in the summer). Friends said that the float plane over the glaciers in Juneau as well as the Sitka wildlife excursion, which included a trip to a bear preserve, were terrific as well. The Juneau whale-watching trip was disappointing, as we didn’t get to see much of any whale. Additionally, I did notice that the teenagers on board seemed to very engrossed in various activities such as a scavenger hunt.
Food: While we signed up for the open-seating option for dinner, we quickly moved to the fixed 8pm seating. This is because there were so many people showing up around 7:30pm for the open-seating that it was a little chaotic with long waits. We ended up enjoying the fixed seating as we had the same terrific waiter every night. The food quality in the dining room and at the Lido buffet was very good. We also tried the Pinnacle Grill one night, which was definitely worth the extra $20 per person.
Entertainment: We really liked the piano player Charles. He really engaged his audience, whether it was joking with his regulars, asking the audience music trivia questions, or having sing alongs to Billy Joel songs. The string quartet was enjoyable. The live show every night had reasonable performers. The m
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