I am writing to you about the recent problems my husband and I experienced on a back to back cruise aboard the Holland America's ship, Rotterdam. The date of the cruise was March 20th to April 3rd. We had purchased the “Have it All” package to use on board.
We were assigned an inside cabin on the eleventh floor. The room was very small, but adequate. Upon waking on Monday morning, I found my arms were covered in flea bites. I went down to the Guest Relations Desk to report it and they were amazing. The Guest Relations staffmember (Ella), immediately assigned us a new cabin and arranged for our clothes and suitcases to be cleaned. She also informed us that we would most likely have to move again on the second half of our cruise as the room may have been booked. Therefore on Sunday, as the room was indeed booked, we were moved again.
On Monday, my husband and I woke up with an awful bout of coughing. We informed the Health Center on board the ship and they sent a nurse to give us a Covidtest. These came back as negative and the doctor diagnosed us both with bronchitis. We where then asked to stay overnight in quarantine, in two separate rooms. We did not have a problem doing this, but it was made more traumatic as we had to move to yet another room. The nurse re-tested for Covid the next morning which again, was negative.
Aside from the health problems, we also experiencedproblems with the dining room. We had been assigned anytime dining and were told we would be able to change this on board, but this never happened as we were told it was unavailable. We tried a few times to book a time to eat, but it was constantly full. When we did eventually get to eat in the dining room, we found the food choices were very poor in comparison to our previous Holland America cruises. In fact on one night, we were offered three options of a spaghetti dinner!
We had two free dining options. Those being theCanaletto and Rudi’s Sel de Mer. The Canaletto was awful as the food was terrible but in contrast, Rudi’s was the best meal of the cruise and the service was wonderful.
Another problem we experienced was with the entertainment in the theater, which was bad to marginal when compared to other cruises we have been on. We had also booked two tours and they were both cancelled.
In summary, to say we were disappointed with this cruise wouldn’t be enough. We were so looking forward to our holiday as the past year has been a particularly hard one for us. I have been through three operations in the previous eight months (two shoulder replacements and a hip replacement). We were both looking forward and needing to get away and relax, but unfortunately, with this cruise, it did not happen. This was not totally the fault of Holland America but I became so stressed with my bites being both so very itchy, unpleasant and embarrassing to look at, and all the extra packing and unpacking I had to do with every room move.
In view of the above, my husband and I are now asking Holland America to provide an agreeable outcome for all the stress and inconvenience that we have suffered.