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I’m not sure what the rooms are lik, I’m sure they’re delightful... but take my advice, Please.

Stay in Venice proper. The traveling to and from the hotel will be laborious

I’ve been to Venice 3 times - and twice we stayed at the Luna Baglioni Hotel. It’s right next to Piazza San Marco. It’s beautiful.

There is a vaporetto station right in front and the Alilaguna boats that you can take to the cruise terminal are very close by.

You won’t be disappointed

Thank you so much for your feedback. I will definitely check it out. I'm also thrilled to hear you liked the cruise.

We booked the Italian Sojourn (Venice to Rome) cruise for July 2019 and are very excited about the cruise and trying Viking Ocean for the first time. We do not typically do pre-cruise hotel through the cruise line but have put a hold at two nights with Viking before our trip. The hotel listed the the Hotel Molino Stucky a Hilton property. We know it is on Giudecca across from Venice proper. After doing a little research, I am very undecided about whether to keep or drop this from our reservation. Does anyone know the type of room that is provided? That will help us determine if the rate provided by Viking is okay or not. We appreciate input from anyone that has done this before.

We did not do the Sel de Mer but others we met on our Oosterdam cruise raved about it and recommended it highly.

We cruised the Oosterdam to Alaska in May and the Behind the Scenes Tour was $150 pp. I don't remember the time or which day it was offered. There was also a free kitchen tour that was offered on the first sea day (which on our cruise was the first day cruising from Seattle to Juneau) at 10:30 in the morning.

Thank you Carol for doing this. The time and energy you put into this is so appreciated. I called to check on a 7 day cruise on the Eurodam for Jan 7th that my DH and I were considering. I normally always check this thread first but forgot to do so. Our PCC then told me that dining for the late seating was unavailable (which has never happened to us) and that As You Wish dining would not be available from 6:30 on. That was the red flag that there must be a group booked so I checked your thread and saw "aviation group" listed for the cruise. I did a bit more searching and found the website for this group's cruise. Reviewing the site, I suspect there will be multiple venues blocked out and this must be a large group to have that much dining space. Our PCC said only 30 cabins had been booked thus far but they also have until October 2nd to make a reservation. For us, that is enough to pass on this cruise. For my experienced friends here, I do have a question -- do these group cruises ever not happen? I guess I was wondering if the response to the group cruise is low if the group backs out or if these are almost always a done deal. I understand why HAL wants these groups because the prices being paid for the group is significantly higher than prices posted for this cruise and do not include any of the current promotional offers but I don't want parts of the ship off limits to me or be forced to dine early or in the Lido if that is not what I want to do. Without this thread, many of us would be blindly walking into cruises we would likely not otherwise choose so again, thank you.

I have posted my answers to each of the questions I am able to comment on below:

2. HA said they have a free online ship app for us to use. I wonder how it works. Many blogs recommend us turn cell phone to Airplane mode once on board so we don't get hook up to the ship cell service which could be expensive. Can this app still work if we turn to airplane mode? Can we text each other on board so we can find each other? The app does work in airplane mode with the ship's wireless internet. However, you do not have access to much -- basically things like your onboard account, dinner menu, etc. The app does not allow you to text or communicate with other passengers. That being said, if you need internet access, it was better than on previous cruises (although we are still talking ship internet so it's not like what you may be used to at home but not as horribly slow as we have encountered in the past - plus we can use it on our device in our room).

3. Is there still High Tea (Dutch High tea, or Indonesian Tea on Oosterdam? HA website talks about it, but some blogs said it was eliminated? Yes, they hosted High Tea on the Oosterdam during our cruise to Alaska in May. I took pictures of the daily program and will try to get these posted as tea times are listed.

4. Is there still dance lesson on board? Is there dancing at all? Any ballroom dancing? Not on our cruise. This was an area of disappointment for us. The only dancing on our cruise was in BB King so if you want to do any "slow" or ballroom dancing, you won't find it. We are not huge entertainment people but we noticed a marked decrease in evening entertainment on this cruise - especially music. We like BB King (although we did not enjoy the BB King group on this cruise as much as on our December cruise) but not every night.

5. If I bring my own bottle of wine to MDR, what is the corkage fee? $18 per bottle. As others have said, each adult in the cabin can bring on one bottle with no corkage fee if the bottle is consumed in the cabin. If it is consumed in any of the dining venues, the corkage fee will be applied. You are charged the corkage fee when you bring the bottles onboard and they will put stickers on the bottle so the dining room staff knows the corkage fee has been paid.

6. Do you need to tip in-room dinning service? if so, how much is appropriate? Again, as others have said, this is a personal decision. Some believe that gratuities are covered by the daily surcharge while others typically tip anywhere from $2 - $5 per room service visit -- again, this is a very individual decision. One thing I will say is that you will never be made to feel like you have to tip by the room service staff

Thank you all We really enjoyed our cruise on the Oosterdam and hope you do as well.

I didn't think to take pictures of the drink menus but we just returned from a cruise to Alaska on the Oosterdam and it seemed that the drink prices went up a bit proportionally to the new $9/drink limit for the signature drink packages. If you drink basic cocktails, you will be fine with the SBP. For example, when we cruised last December, a Gin & Tonic (with Tanquery) was $6.95; on this cruise, the same drink was $7.50. If you like specialty cocktails or a greater wine selection, then you may want to consider the Elite Beverage Package. That being said, I was okay with the Chardonnay and Shiraz that were included with the SBP. I honestly did not think the wines won the EBP were worth the price difference -- they had several that started right above the $9 price point (which for us was a moot point anyway because we received the SBP as part of our fare and were unable to upgrade to the EBP as others have done). I looked at the last bar menu posted by Roger Jett (from 12/2016) - http://www.rogerjett-photography.com/here/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Bar-Menu.pdf - and, based on our experience, what was under $8 on this menu (which was the limit for the SBP in December) was under $9 on pour cruise. If you want special mixed drinks (e.g. some fancy martinis, margaritas. etc.), higher end alcohol brands (things over the $8 limit on this menu), or more wine selection, you will need the EBP. I think for the EBP to ever be worth it for us, they would have to enhance the wine selection more than what is there right now.

Apparently the ability to upgrade the SBP to Elite really depends on the ship. We were on the Oosterdam last week and given the advice received from others, attempted to upgrade our package (at multiple places and locations). We were not allowed to do so since it was included as part of the fare. On our trip, the SBP covered drinks up to $9. That being said, it was our experience that the price of drinks also increased since our last cruise in December so the value was, in effect, that same. We like to have wine with dinner and many of the wines were now $9.25-$9.75 - over the SBP limit. The Pinot Grigio, Chardonnay and Shiraz that were below the $9 price point were good enough for us on this cruise as the wines listed above the threshold would not be, in my opinion, worth the extra cost for the EBP. If you like specialty martinis you should know that most of these are above the $9 threshold as are a variety of other drinks -- more than I recall on our last cruise. My concern is that this will continue in order to try and "force" people up to the EBP.

I agree with most of what has been said except for one thing: we were told that you can only bring on wine at your embarkation port (whether it be your one free bottle per person or additional bottles for corkage). We assumed that you could purchase wine at a port and bring it on board (and pay the corkage). We were told on our December cruise that this is not allowed unless you are bring back wine purchased on a Holland America shore excursion. We had purchased a couple of bottles when we were in Key West on our December cruise because we didn't have time to do it before leaving Tampa and encountered this issue when we came back to the ship. I raised a bit of a stink because I had never heard of this and did not see any information stating this was the procedure so they allowed us to bring the wine on board. However, I just wanted to let you know that trying to bring a bottle (or two) on from a port may not work (or who knows may vary from ship to ship).

Wine by the glass is typically about 5 ounces.

Maybe it just happened to be the composition of folks on our cruise. That being said, the slacks, skirts, capris, dresses, etc. were nice and not ratty in any way.

On our cruise most people were dressed casually for dinner, with the exception of the Gala nights. Women typically wore slacks, capris, sundresses, skirts, etc.

I had a mushroom risotto on gala night that was very good.

I am in the U.S. and while the Princess offer was listed, sadly, the one for Holland America was not. I have seen this in the past with AMEX and when I contacted their customer service to ask about this, I was told that not all people receive the same offers, and if a customer has multiple cards, not all individuals receive the same offer. Also, something to be very careful about with AMEX offers is that they only apply to the primary cardholder. If, for example, a husband and wife share the same card (even with different account #s) and you do not pay for the offer using the primary cardholder's account, you will not receive the benefit. We found this out the hard way when I made a purchase using my account number instead of my husband's (he is the primary and I am the secondary on this account).

We cruised from Tampa last month. We arrived a day early and stayed at the Renaissance Tampa International Plaza Hotel (a Marriott property). The hotel was very nice. There is free shuttle service from the airport plus the hotel is attached to a large shopping and dining area, the international plaza, which is akin to an indoor/outdoor mall. It was nice to simply walk out of the hotel and have a variety of options for dinner. The port is about 10 - 15 minute cab ride to the hotel and the taxi fare is a fixed rate of $25 (it is also the same rate for the return ride to the airport from the port).

There were no petit fours when we dined in the Pinnacle Grill two weeks ago on the Veendam - only a few truffles were served right before the dessert course.

We were just in the Pinnacle Grill last week on the Veendam. Crab legs were available (and appeared to be a part of the regular menu) and there was no upcharge for them. We had them on our 2nd night at the Pinnacle Grill and they were very good (although I would have preferred regular drawn butter to the garlic version they provided). The serving size was huge.

We just returned from a 7 day on the Veendam and there was a Mariner's lunch in the MDR on embarkation day. There was also a Mariner's lunch with the captain on our first sea day. They may be phasing them out on embarkation day but there does not seem to be any inconsistency across the line.