crimlarks

We've been on the Volendam twice; the first time we had a Lanai room, which was very nice. This last time we had a partially obstructed ocean view room. Both were on deck 3, lower promenade. I like having a room on the promenade deck so I can just leave the room and go walk on the desk.

We sailed on the Volendam on their 94 day Grand Australia & New Zealand cruise. We loved the Volendam, and are booked on the same 42 day cruise you have booked, and the Pole-to-Pole cruise starting in January 2025 (133 days.) I wouldn't be worried about it being like the Koningsdam. The crew was fantastic on our 94 day cruise. We had set time early dining, but decided not to do that on these upcoming cruises, as we thought the 5 PM early dining was too early. We had breakfast in the MDR on the first morning of the cruise, and met several other nice couples that we got to know as the cruise went along. The rest of the time we had breakfast in the Lido buffet. Great omelets, eggs benedict and blueberry pancakes! And always made when you order - never sitting in a warming tray. We love this older, smaller ship - or as the captain would say every day at dinner time when he gave the daily update "the beautiful, elegant Volendam". Love that.

My wife and I did a 29 day cruise on the Island Princess April-May this year. We wore masks any time we were out of our room, except, obviously, when eating. Fortunately we didn't get Covid. We will be doing 45 days of cruising in the Caribbean on Holland America and Princess starting on Nov. 19th. We'll be wearing masks all the time again. Hopefully that will keep us from getting it, especially Connie, as she is immune compromised. We're both fully vaxxed and boosted. We wear N95 masks on board. We're both 70. It's too bad the cruise lines dropped testing. 800 people is just too damn many. Steve

We wished the Promenade deck went all around too - and having the exercise room where it is, with no windows, is less than optimal, I think. I skipped using it on this cruise, so we got our exercise by doing stairs rather than the elevator almost all the time, and walking on the Promenade deck. But if we don't cancel the 2024 World Cruise I'll probably want to use the exercise room some to help burn off all the calories consumed and to keep my muscles in at least halfway decent shape. The newest Princess ship we've sailed on was the Regal Princess in 2019, on a transatlantic/Baltic cruise. We liked that ship, especially Vines, the International Cafe and Alfredo's.

No Patisserie any longer - I'm guessing Good Spirits or the bar by the casino would be open late, and they both have coffee service

We're signed up for the 2024 World Cruise on the Island Princess. I'm not sure if I'd want to be on the Island Princess for 111 days. We'll see. At least we have plenty of time to decide if we want to cancel. Might opt for multiple shorter segments to different locations and on different ships instead. The Island Princess is definitely showing its age - not sure how good it will be in 2 years. But that's just our take. The crew was fantastic, and the food was better than we've had on other Princess cruises. Sometimes the Princess food is just meh - but that was rarely the case here. Sure, there were some items that we wouldn't order again, but overall we were happy with the food and the crew in the dining room and buffet.

The shows: the 3 show that the Island Princess singers and dancers did were excellent: "Do You Wanna Dance", "Encore" and "On the Bayou". We went to each twice (once on each segment) and thoroughly enjoyed them. The other entertainment was about what you'd expect on a cruise ship - some quite good, some not so much, but overall we liked the shows we went to.

We didn't have any of the other issues described here - no problems with the AC, the safe worked fine, no issues with water pressure or temp. The big difference between the first segment (FLL - LA) and the second (LA - FLL) was the fact that the cruise was only about 50% full on the first and 80% on the second. So more crowding. But overall we'd give a thumbs up to the cruise and especially the crew who were fantastic. Our regular waiter in the MDR, was great. We ran into him working in the buffet during the day on the second segment and he talked about how short staffed they were and could barely keep up in the MDR. I'm sure when the cruise was only 50% full it was fine, but sounded really stressful for the MDR staff once they had higher capacity crowds. Loved the pizza on the Lido deck - had that several times, and the Grill up on 15 had great hamburgers, shredded pork and coleslaw sandwiches and fries. Man the fries were good - we just got a basket of those one day and split it.

Well, we just got off the Island Princess after 29 days on board, and B2B Panama Canal cruises. Yes, the MDR dining reservations got messed up - we supposedly had the same 2 person table for all 29 days, but after the turnaround in LA we still had a reservation for a 2 person table every night, but it wasn't the same each night. After 2 nights of that we decided to just eat in the buffet for the rest of the trip. Which was probably better because believe it or not we actually ate less eating there. We both gained weight on the Fort Lauderdale to LA portion of the cruise, and didn't want that trend to continue for another 15 days. The first 2 nights in the main dining room were total chaos, with HUGE lines waiting to get in (and this was at our 5:40 PM seating - when we got out after eating it was even worse.) When we got seated in a 2 person table that was over in a little corner next to a 6 person table (felt like we had been bad children and were being made to sit in the corner) we decided no more MDR for this trip. In the end we were glad we went with eating in the buffet for the rest of the trip.