Oosterdam Customer Reviews

Wonderful crew! Nice ship, great itternary

First time with HAL. Experienced cruisers. Itinerary and food amazing. Staff excellent. Loved the way the bow deck was opened for special photo opportunities where scenery was exceptional. Highly recommend

We did the 22 day cruise, S America & Antartica. We didn't stop at 2 of the ports on the itinerary, which we didn't know of til actually cruising. One of these ports was the Faulklands, I was devastated at it was one of the highlights for me & i knew I wouldn't get there again. The 4 day Antartic Experience was amazing, we cruised all the main places, saw the intended wildlife, weather was good, so would highly recommend. The rest of the cruise I really liked on the whole however having 2 less stops meant a lot of sea days. Generally I don't mind these however i didn't find enough variation on activities & things to do. Timetable often clashed, eg I never went to see any of the movies as they were either showing too late or clashed with something else. Service was almost always great. Entertainment was generally very good. Most of the time there was somewhere to go at night for live music,but not always, however they had a venue, 'The Rolling Stones Lounge', with a resident group, and they were outstanding, singers had great voices, the Musicians were so good & they all gelled well. Food was always very good, whilst we were there we went to the steak house & The Italian, would recommend both, only critisicm was we had too much food. Food was always good & for me there was no complaints, however my Husband is coeliac, he needs a gluten free diet & that was very hard work & a learning experience. He was fed gluten several times at the start of the cruise ending up sick before we managed to find help, guidance & gluten free food. We have had much better dietary experiences on other cruiselines, Holland America still have a good way to go to improve their dietary measures for the likes of coeliacs. On the whole we enjoyed the cruise, it was expensive because of the destination, but I did a lot of research prior to booking & believe we got good value.

Embarkation was impersonal with no one there to direct inexperienced cruisers to their cabin. Dis-embarkation was an exercise in how not to do it. With the Argentine soccer team due to parade from the airport, they should have brought departures forward, instead they ran an hour late. As we arrived at the airport just in time, we heard of another coach that left before us that was stuck. I suspect that quite a few people missed their flights. Dining, food, beef superb, but by day five we recognised that they were perming ‘new’ dishes from essentially the same limited components; roast chicken with gnocchi doesn’t work. For the last three days things were a bit better. Service varied from OK to bad; two and a half hours for a three course dinner - forty five minutes for the first course to turn up. Lido service often missing, many helped themselves to juice etc. Entertainment third rate except for the group that came aboard on the last night. The obstructed views in the theatre were terrible. Large pillars - two rows and from the back rows balcony’s cut off the top quarter of the screen. By contrast the sights were great, though commentaries on board poor/inaudible. Excursions were overall quite good.

Great service and the food is decent quality. In my opinion the ship needs some modernising.