Chlomo23

Ha, my thoughts exactly. I don't mind atmospheric stuff throughout the day or inside, but it was just so jarring to me to be outside at midnight on my Celebrity ship and not have anywhere that wasn't playing early 2000s easy listening. I'll take the quiet promenade, better than nothing!

Does Holland America pump in canned music in all the public areas of their ships at all times? Specifically the Volendam? The last cruise I was on was Celebrity and this drove me nuts. It was impossible to find a truly quiet area of the ship. Even 2AM outdoors with no one else around -2008 Taylor Swift playing. Thanks in advance!

We're flying in the day before and planning to stay at a hotel within walking distance, so hopefully that part should be smooth for us!

How were the lineups, do you remember how long it took from arriving at the port to being on board the ship? It looks like from the port schedule that it's usually only one ship in the port at a time, so I can't imagine it's too busy. I think we got lucky with Vancouver that we were on board within 45 minutes, but I heard from other people on our cruise that they were waiting upwards of 3 hours to board.

I'm sailing out of the Port of Montreal next July (on HALs Volendam) and I'm wondering what the process is like at their cruise terminal. My researching online has brought up not much information, unfortunately. Does anyone have any first hand experience? Is it generally busy or convoluted? I've only ever cruised out of Vancouver before, which from my view was a pretty hectic and busy boarding procedure (we had 4 ships in dock at the same time). There was a lot of lining up to line up. Thanks in advance to anyone who can impart any knowledge, hahaha