robotpony

I'm pretty sure it's half of the Viking Passage cruise. We didn't have 35 days open in 2024, so 18 will have to do.

I am also curious about Seabourn, but when I reviewed fully loaded prices last month HAL was close to half the price per day per person (comparing inside cabins, loaded drink packages, etc.). I haven't looked at all room classes, so I'm not sure the costs scale to suites.

On the last leg of our 2022 Caribbean cruise we saw a future cruise talk, something like the top 10 unique cruises. We fell in love with the idea of the Voyage Of The Vikings, but sadly the 2023 dates did not work for us. Instead we booked a 2024 Solar Eclipse cruise to the Mexican Riviera, which will be our first smaller ship trip. Last week we noticed that 2024/Europe had opened up and we rushed to book the Netherlands → Ireland → Iceland → Greenland → Canada → Boston tour, so we booked it as quickly as we could and passed it on to our TA. For anyone new to Holland America I believe this is one of their strongest suits: unique and interesting itineraries that few other lines can match. The Vikings cruise is one where very little of the ship itself matters, as most of the time will be spent exploring and watching the unique coastlines pass by. I look forward to the EXC talks and ports on that cruise, as well as the cooler climate beauty. It should be a nice contrast to the other warmer cruises we've been on (and slightly less commercial than Alaska).

Yes, my mistake!

Most of the people we've met who cruise learned about their ships the hard way (by trying different sizes and lines over the years); reading isn't always the obvious choice for some. As a bit of a nerd, I do my research and build my spreadsheets and notes, sometimes to a fault. For what it's worth, we've booked 3/5 of our next cruises on the smaller Zuiderdam and Veendam based on the lovely descriptions and trip logs posted here. We look forward to smaller ports, smaller crowds, and more time spent relaxing in a less chaotic environment. The Pinnacle class ships are beautiful, but when they're busy it can be a bit much. I can't imagine the larger ships on other lines at full capacity!

The entertainment is definitely a matter of taste! The entertainment focuses on live music, dance, BBC Earth, Comedians, learning talks, and trivia/bingo. For us, the music can be fantastic or mediocre (depending on the band), but when it's good it can be very good. There are 4-5 different musical groups (rock, blues/R&B, strings, and a few types of piano bars). My partner and her best friend are both dancers and highly recommend the HA dance troupe (on the cruises we've been on at least). I can say that even I was entertained by the programs, and have seen a few multiple times. Production quality on the larger class ships can be fantastic, if you like dance at all. My favourite things (other than the music) are the various talks and BBC Earth/string quartet presentations, as I'm a bit of a nerd. As a musician, I also enjoy BB King's and the Rolling Stone room, as well as the "duelling" pianos, of course depending on the artists. On our last cruise, the Rolling Stone Room band was absolutely fantastic (and the previous one, BB Kings was especially great). Even in 14 days, we did not get bored of the music or talks. The bingo and trivia are fun, but pretty low key. We like to read, relax, and wander around ports as well (so some downtime if fine for us). I can imagine some would prefer the larger stage and game shows.

The Retreat cabanas have food service from the Lido, Dive In, and pizza place. There are a few shared tables in the area, and side tables right in each cabana.

We were chatting with the Rolling Stone room band on the NS last month and they mentioned that they have a rotating set of more than 100 songs, and that they were adding 2-3 a week (with a goal of ~200 songs). For that 14 days, there were some classics repeated but every show was about 50% "new" music. It feels a lot the same as it's still the same band, but there was some good variety too.

We had one of these larger inside cabins on the NS in November, which our TA had selected for us. It was more square than long so it was easier to navigate than the veranda room we had in the summer (and only slightly smaller).

Great tip! Our next trip is a 18 day Hawaii cruise that I'm pretty sure isn't a B2B. The upside of the B2B was that we met some new people and got to visit Half Moon Cay twice. Fort Lauderdale was fine, but a bear of a port to get in and out of even on an excursion.

On our last back-to-back in the Caribbean we had the choice of waiting in the Main Stage or disembarking until a given time (11:30AM I think). We had an excursion (Everglades boat tour) so we disembarked, returning just around 2PM. On our return we had cards to show throughout the port building, allowing us to skip the lines (though we did have to do the face scan at customs). Re-embarking took at most 20 minutes. This was our first B2B, and it was a bit weird to meet a whole new set of people. The entire rhythm of the ship was different between those two groups!

FWIW, I measured it on our November (NS) cruise and this is accurate for both the Rolling Stone and BB King rooms. Levels occasionally hit 102dB, but the average was well within the mid 90s every night we were there. This is slightly below average for live shows in small venues, at least in my experience.

Will all the fuss about this dish I'm going to have to try it on my next HAL cruise 😆

They do it very well, too. We make creme brulé at home as a treat, but the balance of the Pinnacle's short + wide dish, and the lightly seasoned custard is fantastic.

They had pickle ball, table tennis, and corn hole tourneys on the NS in November/December, listed in the Navigator app. There were also some crafts, and there was daily trivia (on sea days at least). We tried not to be too busy, and yet there was always something else to do or watch.

I have to assume it was caused by their incompetence more than anything, as they have been training so many new staff. They have always seemed happy to take our money for both myself and my wife. Last trip we both had our toenails done in Half-moon-cay-blue!

Thoughtful and thorough review, thank you! We found that taking the stairs was always faster, if you're able to do so. You get the bonus of having nicely toned legs by the end of a longer cruise 🤣 We found the same sentiment on our last cruise and at times it was tiring. Other than a few service glitches, we found the food choices pretty great. Speciality restaurants were great to excellent, and Lido/MDR were good to excellent depending. Not perfect, but compared to our 5 star hotel experiences it compared favourably but at a much more modest cost. There is some less great food available too, but we found quality was fairly predictable. Your take on the MDR matches our experience too. Service was inconsistent, a few times quite poor. Food varied, portion sized worked for us (but we're small eaters). When service was great, it was a fun experience (but that was not the norm). Lido for us was a surprise this last trip: we found some amazing dishes (previously it was good, but not great). I think you need to experiment a bit to find what each particular cruise is doing great. I had a few south East Asian curries that were on par with the best available in our area here. That would be disappointing: these EXC talks are some of our favourite moments. Normally there should be 4-5 per week (between the BBC Earth presentations, ship talk, future travel talks, and local EXC topics). I highly recommend the future travel talks if you're looking for unique itineraries! On the NS we did get our tiles and a gift, and we were offered turn down if we wanted. We declined the turn down, and still they tidied our room in the afternoons (and left towel animals and chocolates). We had robes in our room (a cheap inside cabin even). We did notice the lack of snacks in the Piano Bar this time, but honestly the snacks were pretty limited and were not served. On our last Alaska tour, watching people grab foods with their hands instead of tongs convinced us to avoid that snack bar. The Lido was open from 10:30-11:30 I think, and we received snacks in the Blues lounge a few times, and in our cabana daily. We were also very impressed by Distant Lands on the NS and Koningsdam. We did enjoy Tamerind, however, and Nami, but we used our HIA credits for it. One tip for tendering more quickly: if you book an excursion you can skip the line and get the first tender. Also I believe Club Orange, or Mariners (4 star?) can skip the lines. We did HMC twice on our last cruise (2 days apart), and tendering was smooth and quick both days. I'm sure it would be worse if you didn't get a good time slot, and it might feel chaotic and off-putting. We adored HMC, and really enjoyed the lunch on the island. We floated in the ocean until we turned into salty prunes, and did the horse experience. Our take on HMC is that it felt like the fantasy version of white sands and blue waters, where hints of the real world are pretty far removed. Occasionally, this is exactly what we need. We have found a wide variance between cruises with the bands. We had a NS cruise in the summer where the Blues band was fantastic, though in November it was just good. The Rolling Stone room was tepid in the summer, but amazing in November. We've seen the duelling pianos at both extremes as well. The quartets seem more consistent, but they seemed to draw a smaller crowd. This is the best advice I've seen for cruisers in a while! Rolling with it opens up a lot of fun you might otherwise miss. Changing it up is important. Try an excursion you wouldn't normally love, you may find you learn something about yourself! Some of our best cruising moments just happen, things like meeting the music director at a bar and talking about keyboards, or hearing a staff member's plans for their next few cruises, or meeting folks you wouldn't normally get a chance to talk to. We used to avoid the Lido, for example, as our first experience with it ever was chaotic and disappointing. We learned that the Lido on embarkation day is just a silly idea, and that it has huge potential if you try it more. On embarkation day, we now try something like Nami (which most people don't find until later in the week). You can find quiet or loud spaces by learning the ebb and flow of the ship, and we have a lot more fun when we can be in the right places for our moods.

We keep a set of shared Google Drive folders for each cruise, with PDFs, Google docs and sheets, and screenshots of tickets and things from apps. I usually make our itinerary as a spreadsheet that we print out and magnet to our stateroom door. I also do some budgeting and destination notes, to keep all the things we want to do sorted and planned, and I track our various travel rewards points separately so we remember what extras are available where. We also keep a physical folder with some of these items as our TA is a bit old school and loves to print things out for us 🤣, but truthfully this has saved us a few times when boarding systems are down or our phones aren't cooperating.

We're booked on this cruise for 2023 as well! Holland America gave away a number of cruises on our 2022 Alaska cruise, and we snagged this itinerary as one of our bucket list trips. We're hoping to fly Iceland Air to spend a few days in Iceland, then a few in Copenhagen (and a few more in Rome after the cruise). Waiting on our TA to get us details there, but already excited to be back on the NS in September!

One of recent HA cruises was fully booked, so sharing tables in the MDR was strongly encouraged. The overall experience was positive for us, even though there were a few points of conversation that we let sit with awkward silence. Things like politics are so different between countries and states, and my opinions are generally unimportant on those matters. I'd rather meet new people than avoid a few awkward moments, as despite our differences I'm always curious about everyone's stories.

This is what a few servers told us as well, though I can't imagine how much storage or labour would be involved in keeping that all organized and available for handling customer complaints and queries. Servers were careful to not complain about the extra work, though it seemed pretty clearly a burden.

We did this on our last trip, but we cycled between each of our cards over the day. We joked with each other when picking a card, "I've got it ...", "No, I've got it!".

I'm glad they're using them up, too. One of my favourite new desserts from our last cruise was a banana crisp (and ice cream). I had never considered using bananas in a crisp, and the result fantastic. The bananas on the bottom of the dessert were crispy, almost like a caramel, and the bits on top were tasty.

Our TA didn't know of a way to fix the flights, but the problem may have been that the supported carriers didn't have better flights in that price range? Or maybe our TA just didn't know it could be done. Either way, we'll be finding and booking ourselves in the future.

For what it's worth ... On our last voyage we received a complimentary bag, candy on our bed daily, and turndown service if desired. There was a Lido spread from 10:30 through 11:30 most sea days. Not quite midnight, but still fairly popular in November. Food selection in the Lido did include curries and other Asian foods, and they were excellent. Generally, the portions and food selections were good to excellent. I'm always happy for better, but our last few cruises were not wanting for quality or quantity.