Lars_NY

I just got off the Veendam today from a 7-day Montreal to Boston itinerary. It was my first cruise as an "adult" after taking several cruises as a teenager with my family while still living at home. I have to say that my wife and I were blown away by the level of service, food, attention to detail, and entertainment onboard the Veendam. We saw no issues at all and our OV mid-ship cabin was consistently the right temperature (we had 30 degree F days in Nova Scotia and 50/60 degree days others) and had no plumbing issues at all.

Being one of the few "youngsters" onboard (we are in our 30s), we seemingly stood out from the rest so quite a few of the more "seasoned" passengers chatted us up. While I didn't directly ask them their impressions of the ship, I got the sense that many were very happy with the particulars of the Veendam. You know how you can talk to someone and just get the sense of their overall enjoyment of something? That's the feeling I got time and time again on the Veendam. Additionally, I did not overhear any mention of plumbing, electrical, or heating/cooling issues at all.

While the case can be made that I have nothing to reference my experience onboard the Veendam with, since it was my first cruise, and I would I agree with that in part, but I did go into my first cruise experience with very high expectations. My wife and I travel quite a bit and have experienced luxury hotels and resorts and I have to say the Veendam exceeded all of those. Surely luxury hotels and resorts offer more to do, nicer and more spacious rooms, however when looking at the complete package of what they provide over what I got on the Veendam, it isn't even a contest. As others have stated in this thread, it is really up to personal preference and one's willingness to accept that while the Veendam isn't perfect, you'd be extremely hard pressed to find a ship that is.

Just my $.02

Hi, this is off the topic but I see you are celebrating your anniversary. Have you thought about having a "renewal of vows" ceremony. We had one 3 years ago and it was great.

Thank you for the tip! This is something that I hadn't thought of but might be a nice surprise for my wife. I'll contact HAL and see what is available. Thanks again!

Greetings all! First time poster, long time reader. My wife and I will be sailing on Veendam in May and I had a question that I hoped to get answered. I see talk of being able to watch movies in the room but wasn't sure how that worked. Are they DVD's that you check out from somewhere or are they on-demand, much like the in-flight-entertainment of an airplane?

I anticipate that we will be a tad younger than most on the ship (we are in our early 30s) but specifically chose HA because we are not looking for a "party boat." We are celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary on the ship and are leaving our 4 young kids (1 y/o to 8 y/o) with grandparents. The reason I tell you all this is I'm sure there will be people that say we should get out and see the ship, instead of sitting our our stateroom. And while we fully intend to do that, there might be times where we just want to relax and unwind by ourselves with a movie.

Also, if the movies are on DVD, we might bring our portable DVD player rather than use the stateroom TV, but I hate to bring it if we wont use it.

Thanks in advance for all your help!