paulvdb1

Better wines by the glass - $30USD plus gratuity - so over $50AUD for a glass of wine. This ship astounds with it's expensive options.

Nope - you will be among the youngest on board. "Princess" is how I imagine Princess cruises to be - filled with retirees. I'd say that 90% of the people on my edge cruise were 60-90. Probably around 20 kids, maybe another 20 under 40's. I'd have liked to cruise with some younger passengers - which might have been the case on Resilient Lady

Having just got off Edge I think I'd have liked Resilient Lady more - but that always depends on what you want out of a ship. I think Edge seemed to really target naive rich Americans happy to pay ridiculous prices for all the addons. I picked none of the addons and survived OK. Lots of Princess aged passengers so sometimes old people doing silly things in narrow walkways but I was expecting some of that. Ship is quite good, crew very good, entertainment mostly spectacular, regular dining rooms good to very good, bistro generally quite good, app is terrible. I'd have liked to have had a soft drink package but crazy pricing - so brought my own on board. I'd have liked to try fancier restaurants, but left that to the NZ towns. A few tours would have been nice but MUCH cheaper to book on land.

Yep. Even more so for those not carrying USD. I just got off Eden today and saw lots of people paying the comical drink prices and off-the-planet trip prices. I didn't however see lots of people in those restaurants. Their prices are higher than many land based restaurants with awarded chefs. I think this has been a huge mistake by Celebrity. I shouldn't have to pay $AUD100+ per person to get slightly more expensive ingredients, that used to be included in the regular dining room.

I couldn't watch any of the One Step shows. They were hopeless on our cruise. I had hoped we would have had some real theatre productions but - NOTHING! HAL don't have any interest in paying for performers. I ended up seeing zero of the evening shows - a first for me. The BBS Earth film was tolerable due to the LCS performers, whom I was more interested in. The "dueling" pianists were really average as well. Even though I am not a pianist I am still enough of a muso to know that their playing was rubbish. The Rock performers probably would have been good if they could pick their own songs. They looked bored, and I was bored. They didn't even attempt to add in any local songs for our region. Lots of rock songs that may have been popular somewhere else. ...and to add insult to injury the BB Kings concept was killed a few weeks before we cruised. Same musos but likely something they would have performed better. As a person who enjoys entertainment on a cruise, I just can't see any reason to go on a HAL cruise anymore. One was enough (and it was EYE WATERINGLY EXPENSIVE - NYE cruise does that).

hmm. we were probably on around the same cruise. I thought LCS was the one redeeming feature on Noordam. There was a packed crowd for EVERY single one of their performances. I had to get in at least 15min before to get a seat. It was also in a pretty good location. I had heard just afterwards that the company decided that LCS having their own dedicated location didn't earn them any money (no bar) so it was scrapped for simplistic dollar reasons. Problem is that if this was a unique selling feature for the line (which it was) then why would future cruisers pick Holland America? I managed to listen to all of their performances and it seemed like a really good program - with quite a bit of very high quality music and playing. It seemed like these guys got to choose their music - unlike the rock guys who had to play the same old rubbish every night.

Hi Terry Is this summary and hype merited? - yes / no / depends For the reasonably fit, the city is walkable from end to end. The light rail through the middle also helps. As a local I still enjoy day visits to Sydney and am still finding new things that have opened post-covid. It's a moderately tourist friendly city although prices for many things are tourist-gouging. The botanic gardens are absolutely worth a half day visit (plus old government house). The art galleries are worth a visit (but not the gallery at The Rocks). Chinatown is gradually shutting down as there's too much competition from Darling Quarter/Darling Harbour, which are worth visiting to eat at. Also worth a quick pop-in to the Museum of Sydney and the Australian Museum. If you have time you really want to do a ferry ride to Manly or Taronga Zoo - as both worth a visit. Note MANY of these items are free so don't book expensive tours to visit free stuff. Probably worth booking hop-on/hop-off bus tickets in Sydney. Some stuff in Sydney is generic for any city but I've seen stuff hyped in other cities that is less impressive.

Taking into account value for money, If we had paid $100 a night I'd shut my mouth and just order some extra dishes to replace the not so good. In my case (Christmas cruise - which is always expensive) we were looking at around $250 a night. Inherently, when you are paying more you have higher expectations. I also had been told that HAL were much more serious about food - which simply wasn't true. I think one of the key issues is the the head chefs are not 100% sure about the food they are cooking - without being racist, it's simply not the food they themselves would normally eat. I think the MDR food was generally good - I didn't send stuff back - but it was a laugh to see what we would end up with. Very unusual items together, nothing matched how the menu described the item, foods that missed all the key items normally in that dish. I just ordered extras of a lot of dishes, which increases the waste. MDR deserts range from what-on-earth to quite good. Again I ordered extra, often. Try the licorice icecream and the coffee icecream. Had lots of what Americans call a crisp and Aussies call a crumble. Banana / Blackberry options were great but then strawberry was a few strawberries in topping !! so inconsistent. Breakfast was well cooked but very simplistic. If you like deepfried bacon, eggs, hash browns every day then you would love this cruise. I sort of wanted a bit more variety but no variation at all Dive-in was great until they ran out of their fancy chips/fries. went back to generic store-bought fries half way through the cruise. Mexican section OK Didn't risk the pizza. It looked soggy and uninspiring Tried Lido market at lunch and simply not enough variety for 16 days - same stuff every day. It's easy to be snobby but I would loved to see more Asian dishes (we eat a lot more asian food in Australia than I think the US eats). When Lido tried to make Australian items they were REALLY wrong - nearly comical and unfortunately inedible. This reflects again on head chefs who simply don't know the foods they were cooking. The few asian dishes were often not quite right as well. Would have been better if they had cooked more indian dishes.

hmm that's weird. On Noordam the Trivia was in Billboard and all the issues re too few seats for too many people - would have been better in a bigger location. Crows Nest on level 10 was never busy but had it's own pace of people playing games or sitting at the bar. The exploration lounge was wasted space and the exploration cafe seemed to only work for 10-20 people at a time, it should have been much better set up.

On Noordam we had the unusual issue of the rear pool being bath temperature, so great for short visit but not so great for cooling off. The Lido pool was cooler and busier. The rear pool does have a chair lift device for the less able but yes otherwise just the ladder. I was impressed at the pool depth of over 2m in the rear pool - I haven't seen that in other brands.

9:30 is too late for the type of crowd that like LCS. On Noordam it was often in the afternoon then 6 and 8. They're just using the management model to kill things - change the location and time, take away the more personal nature of the performance. No-one turns up, then they say "no-one like LCS any more so we've eliminated an unpopular option" On Noordam we had 100 at every show that I went to (out of 1700 passenger cruise). That was more than Rolling Stone / Billboard / World Stage for just about any of their events. World Stage in HAL is abysmal. I think the management types have just said we need $x per m2 out of every section of the ship and are killing anything free. If that continues then why would anyone travel HAL or any cruise ship if they are all doing it.

I'm quite stumped by your post. Having just come off Noordam where the LCS performers were by far the best on the ship, and certainly no funeral music. HAL is losing their differentiation to other ships

Hi - lots to answer here Australia nearly always gets the oldest ships. Sometimes that means that they are well sorted, sometimes falling apart. HAL seems to suggest that their food is premium, or their customers do. Some of it is, and much of it isn't. Certainly post covid is nothing like pre-covid HAL definitely is an old person's cruise line. I don't know if Princess is better or same - but the two seem to have the most older customers in Australia. The ship accommodates these customers well but lacks for families and more energetic people HAL don't seem to have premium experiences in Australia, but that only gets delivered by the superpremium lines anyway - so realistically they are competing with all of the middle of the road cruise lines P&O Australia is our budget cruise line but right now many mid-level companies are targeting a similar price out of season. I have travelled P&O for a specific cruise and it was very basic - but well known in advance.

hmmm. same menu on all their ships. Had PG last week on Noordam and generally very good service. I made the mistake of ordering the 15oz ribeye - lots of meat but LOTs of gristle the remove. My wife had the Filet Mignon and it was perfect. The Baked Alaska was good but family-sized. I only got through a 3rd. My daughter had the candied bacon and it was perfect. My lobster bisque was very ordinary. HAL do this thing with a bunch of scraps on the bottom of the bowl with soup poured over - no decent chunks of anything. Must be for the clientele they attract.

The Navigator app gets gradually more detailed in the week prior to travel. The Itinerary and Events section then updates to say either casual or dressy for each day. As noted by others day 1 is casual. That said, casual means long pants for men in MDR/restaurants.