Holland America Zuiderdam

Pros: Service,attentive,friendly. Food, very good "Signature of Excellence" working hard on it
Cons: Ship's photography, far too expensive Ash Trays, covered that

I'm going to keep my comments about the ship fairly general, in that each person's experience can be quite different and one or two experiences with a staff member can color the experience. It has been a while since I last sailed Holland America, so ...

Pros: Excellent service, plenty to do, beautifully appointed
Cons: Cabins at the stern, some aspects of the decor

We sailed for seven days on the MS Zuiderdam's second voyage, starting December 21 2002, on an Eastern Caribbean itinerary that took us to Puerto Rico, the US Virgin Islands, and Half Moon Cay. Overall we had a marvellous time. This was our second...

Pros: Food quality, stateroom amenities, certain more "classy" lounges
Cons: gaudy Carnival-style interior decorating, poor entertainment

M/S ZUIDERDAM: THE DEFINITIVE REVIEW Note: Ratings assigned as follows for services listed at the end of the review: POOR – Far below expectations and not acceptable. BELOW AVERAGE – Did not meet expectations, slightly disappointing ...

Pros: Impeccable service, great food, & drinks!
Cons: Entertainment, lack of activities.

Having read so many different reviews of this ship, I was very interested to see what it would be like. To tell you a little bit about us, this was our 10th cruise. Although we are in our late 20’s, we are business owners, and tend to be comparable to ...

Pros: Vancouver Airport / City of Vancouver / Cruise ship Terminal and it's friendly staff.
Cons: This ship was worse than the Titanic going down.Read review to learn more

Ms Zuiderdam- Holland America cruise line- 7 day cruise thru Alaska Glacier Bay Tracy Arm August 2007. -A MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT - I am a 46 year old man who after cruising for years on other cruise lines throughout the world decided to take my ...

Pros: Overall value, variety of food, quality shows, ports of call, amazing private island.
Cons: "Enlightening" decoration, some unfriendly service staff, dining lounge noise/vibration.

This is our very first cruise and it has been a positive experience. We've traveled quite extensively but never tried cruise before. Here are my comments about Zuiderdam. DATE/PORTS June 21-28, 2003, departed from Fort Lauderdale, visited Half Moon ...

Pros: The nora virus - if you like that sorta thing ...
Cons: Nora virus outbreak - what else can be said?

This review is based on the fact that our cruise with Holland America scheduled for 12/30/05 – 1/7/06 aboard Ms. Zuiderdam was abruptly cut short due to an outbreak of illnesses among passengers and crew members. We later found this to likely be the ...

Pros: Service, Food, itinerary, large cabins, private island
Cons: Room service food, expensive spa, slow wine service

Leading up to our April 2005 Zuiderdam cruise, we were getting worried about all of the negative comments being posted on the cruise message boards. Then about 3 or 4 weeks before we left the comments began to gradually improve. Perhaps HAL had paid ...

Pros: Service
Cons: Not enough activities for at-sea days

General Information Since many reviews have been written, I will try to avoid redundancy. This is definitely a younger crowd (Caribbean) vs. Alaska and Europe. After receiving poor service aboard a Princess cruise last year, we were anticipating that ...

Pros: Exemplary service, great food, nice suite, excellent decor, great entertainment and Half Moon Cay.
Cons: None

Sorry for the late post. We sailed on the Zuiderdam, Eastern Caribbean, during the last week of February 2007. Absolutely not the fault of Holland America, but we arrived on board without our luggage. Virtually every Holland America employee we met, ...

Pros: Room size, activities staff, entertainment.
Cons: Customer service, pulled in all lounges and closed pool at 6pm, food was mediocre.

We dealt with some of the issues on our cruise 1/06 from the start with understanding. We arrive the day of to find out that over 300 people came down with a flu like virus on the cruise that disembarked 3 hours before we boarded. They said that there ...

Pros: The ports were excellent choices. they have a private island that is awesome.
Cons: There was a health inspection one that held up the lunch by 30 minutes

We found the trip on March 8 to 15 an excellent cruise. The food,service and ship were excellent. They were very careful to keep everything sanitary. The staff were particularly great with handicap guests. The entertainment was excellent every night. They offer the same menu every night in the informal Lido restaurant on the top deck. This was a great choice for us when we wanted to catch the early show. We found their system for embarking was an excellent system, and we were surprisingly happy. We can not wait to return to take another trip with this cruise line.

Pros: Rooms, food, service, Alaska
Cons: Pinnacle Grill

Alaska was great. The Zuiderdam was great. Only a few complaints. The cabin steward was obviously overloaded and took all day to clean the cabins he was assigned. I wanted to relax and read in my room and complained to him about not getting the room clean. After that he cleaned my room first.

We paid extra to have dinner in the Pinnacle Grill one night. The food was great but it was the worst service I have ever experienced. The waitress was rude and the service extremely slow. The chef came around to the tables after most people were through eating and asked how our dinner was. We told him we didn't know since we still hadn't received it. He left and our dinner came shortly thereafter. We then waited another 30 minutes with no sign of our waitress. We had not received dessert or signed for our wine purchase. We considered leaving without them but finally sent one of the coffee servers to look for our waitress. Eat in the main dining room where the service and the food is exceptional. I DO NOT RECOMMEND THE PINNACLE.

Pros: Almost everything- Specially the entertainment.
Cons: Food on the Vista - mediocre.

We traveled a family of 5 (45,40, 16, 12 and 9) plus grandma (74). We all had a great time.
What we liked more was the entertainment. Don't miss any of the shows.
Bring a sweater; it is chilly - in the dining room and the shows.
The food was O.k. On the formal Vista dining room it was mediocre, and tiny portions. We liked the informal Lido best, but of course, we only ate here for lunch.
Half moon is beautiful.
We never encountered the foul smell we read about on other reviews. We did experience, however, some shaking. But nothing to it.
We wanted to do the stingray excursion on Grand Cayman, but it was sold out. Just outside the pier we got into a MUCH cheaper excursion. IT WAS GREAT! Don't miss it.

If you are sleepy on the morning of disembarkation, go lay down on the Vista Lounge.

Pros: Room size was great,beds are great.
Cons: Staff, food, no enforcement of kids in pool/spa during "adult time".

Overall a good cruise, although we had a better experience on a Royal Caribbean Cruise the year before. Good things: We had a excellent room, balcony was amazing. Some of the workers were really accomodating, some were not.
The food was overall just okay, there was a distinct difference in quality between dining areas, if you did not go to eat at peak times then food was cold, stale or just not there at all. Staff was mostly from phillipines and indonesia and the language barrier prevented proper communication for things. Take the top comforter off as they leave on from cruise to cruise.