Review of My Maasdam Cruise, November 6, 2009

[Y's Owl]

On Friday November 20, I completed a 14 day southern Caribbean/Panama Canal cruise on my beloved Maasdam. It has been over 13 years since I last sailed on this vessel, so I was anxious to see how the old lady was holding up over the years. I liked the improvements made since my last sailing. The soft goods look much better than the original. The dining room chairs seem more comfortable. Having the room numbers on a paper holder was a great idea. It’s much better than the old shove them under the door method used on my first cruise. The new beds are great! I didn’t find a good opportunity to use the new spa, but I did tour it and it looked great. Although, I miss not having a steam bath in the men’s locker room.

On the morning of November 6, 2009, after checking out of our hotel we flew by the Port Everglades complex to see our ship while it was unloading the previous cruise passengers. It’s one of the fleet’s small ships, but it still looked big enough to my eyes. As the cruise went on and we encountered other mega ships at our ports of call, I was glad to be getting back on our own little yacht. After we did our pre-cruise errands, we dropped off our rental car right at the gate of the Cruise Terminal and they drove us to our ship.

We were met at the curb by HAL baggage handlers at around 11 AM who took our bags for us. We decided to let them take our carry on bags too so we didn’t have to carry anything with us while our cabin was getting made ready. Since we were there pretty early, the lines were very short. I had saved my Mariner buttons from my last cruise, so everywhere I went in the terminal, I was greeted with a “welcome back, sir” each time I encountered another employee. We only had to wait about 5 minutes in the picture queue before getting on the ship.

Once onboard, I took my travel mate on a quick flight around the ship. The ship’s personnel tried to steer us up to the Lido dining room, but I told them I was going to the Main Dining Room for the Mariner’s Embarkation Lunch. It was a very nice lunch indeed with Shrimp cocktail, Pepper Pot soup, and your choice of several entrees suitable for a dinner course. There were only about 30 of us who did this lunch while I was in the MDR. There could have been more as the ship filled up over the next few hours. At about 1:15 PM, there was an announcement by the cruise director welcoming us on board and telling us that our rooms were ready for occupancy. That was our queue to swoop on down to my cabin number 597 on the Main deck amidships, starboard. The room was pretty much as I had remembered it from my 1996 Europe cruise and my room on the Volendam in 2002. Only the mattresses were thicker, the TV’s flatter, and the draperies and bed coverings more tastefully done.

Once we were unpacked, we flew up to the Crow’s nest to watch the ship leave the harbor. I settled into one of those big lounge chairs at the front of the nest. I had seen them on the Volendam and liked them, so I was glad they had added this too to the Maasdam. Our beverage steward got to make the first swipe on our virgin cruise cards racking up the first of many drinks to be had all over the ship in the next two weeks. As the ship was easing its way out of the berth backwards we could see the white caps on the waves in the ocean on the other side of Lloyd State Park. A nasty hurricane was developing on the other side of Cuba and it was disrupting weather patterns throughout the region. As soon as the ship hit the ocean heading out of the channel, you could feel the ship start to rock and roll. Unfortunately the rocking and rolling lasted for the next 2.5 days which meant that our stop at Half Moon Cay had to be cancelled. Two times I have been scheduled to visit this island on HAL cruises and both times I have had them cancelled due to rough weather. Maybe someday there will be an actual cruise ship dock made there so you don’t have to rely on tenders to get onshore. Other than the wind, it wasn’t too bad outside for a day on the beach. But there was no safe way to get there. The captain came on public address system and delivered the bad news and pretty quickly there was notice in our cabin telling us we would receive a credit for the port taxes that did not have to get paid because of the cancellation. We also took off immediately for our next stop in St. Croix which had now been extended to a full day, rather than an afternoon.

So instead of starting off our cruise with the first day at Half Moon Cay, we instead have a two day-at-sea trip which allowed us all to get used to the ship. Because of the rocking and rolling, the ship’s swimming pools had to be closed and drained. But that didn’t seem to stop the sun worshipers on the Lido deck. The breezes were kind of refreshing, so I often perched on the aft deck above the sea view pool making plenty of more swipes on the room card for liquid libations.

On our second day at sea, we had our Cruise Critics Roll Call. The Massdam put on a very nice event for us with Mimosas, Wine, and other free drinks, which gave my room card a break. About 20 of us attended and got the opportunity to put faces together with our screen names and real names. Indeed for the rest of the cruise we all kept running into each other and when we did, it was like running into an old friend. The ship sent us three officers: the Hotel Manager, Guest Relations Manager and the Beverage Service Manager; to greet us on an informal basis. For the rest of the cruise, every time we saw those officers, we received a special hello. It was obvious they cared about how we perceived our trip, as they offered and did have a follow up meeting at the end of the cruise to wrap things up.

On this night we got to see our first show in the theatre. Because of the rough weather, the Las Vegas style show had to be postponed, so we were treated to a musical show of 50’s and 60’s tunes sung by the Massdam singers which I have since jokingly called, the Four Sopranos. Let me be kind and say, the galley wasn’t the only room with cheese on this ship. It was nonetheless, very nicely performed and staged. I wasn’t quite sure though if it was being lip-synced or not. It just sounded and looked so well rehearsed. It was a good imitation of Laurence Welk from that time period. So I am certain there were plenty of nostalgic folks in the audience who enjoyed it.

In the early morning hours prior to our arrival in St. Croix, the weather cleared up. There were of course, brief passing showers that often presented us with beautiful rainbows. It was actually a pleasant sort of rain. They were very brief, and very fine drops that hardly got you wet at all for very long.

Most of the shore excursions had been rescheduled to earlier times because of our early arrival, but for some reason, ours was not one of them. That allowed us the morning to get to walk around town and lose the sea legs for a bit. Our excursion was called a 4x4 off-road adventure and swim. It certainly lived up to its billing as being an adventure. It was a rather good one actually, but a bit scary.

The folks from Tan Tan Tours were about 20 minutes late getting to the dock to pick us up. Suddenly we saw a parade of old jeeps heading towards the gangway. Frodo and I were paired up with a couple from Northern England and assigned to an old white Willis’ Jeep that had no rear view mirrors, no windshield wipers and no working seat belts. Our jeep had trouble starting because the driver had flooded the carborator. I guess he was used to electronic ignition. A couple of the other jeeps also had their troubles starting, so they carried along extra batteries. Once we were on the road, it was great. We went down roads you would not ever dare to go down on your own. Some of them had been washed out by rains, but that did not stop our vehicles. We climbed to the very highest point of the island and were able to see our ship in the distance. Then we flew down the hills and over to the northern side of the island to a tidal pool that had once been used to baptize slaves who worked in the sugar plantations. To get there we parked on a rocky beach and then proceeded to climb and crawl along the rocks jutting out into the sea. There was no dry way to get there, and you didn’t dare do it barefooted. The rocks had sharp edges, and you had to climb up about 5 or 6 feet at times to get where you needed to go. There were no safety ropes or handles. But once you got to the pool it was worth it. The water was great and the fish in the pool were terrific. We did a short swim and then it was time to return to the ship. One of the jeeps would not start, so a replacement jeep was brought in to ferry us all back up the same rugged roads back to the ship.

Once back on ship, we had another one of Rachel and the HAL Cats wonderful sail away parties on the aft deck. This old owl had a hoot of a time remembering the words to the songs and tweeting some of the back up singer parts. Frodo and I made it an early night after dinner to rest up for our next stop in Dominica. Our dinner assignment was a fixed seating at 7:45 PM and we were lucky enough to have a table for two. I chose that option out of old habit and was successful getting the spot even though I had been wait listed for that when I booked the cruise. One of the advantages of that is we really get to know our dining room stewards who were in our case Ketut and Ariyana of the Bali region of Indonesia. They were a joy to have both there and when we saw them in the daytime in the Lido Café. We especially liked their advice on what the earlier diners had liked on the day’s menu. Some of the items we encountered were Prime Rib, Lobster Tails, Filet Mignon, Roast Pork Tenderloins, Duck, Quail, Strip Steak, and Crab Legs.

The next day in Dominica we were booked on the island tour and Emerald Pool stop. This pool is where parts of the movie series “Pirates of the Caribbean” were filmed. Supposedly if you swim into the falls at the pool, you become five years younger. I can proudly report that I did and I am not. The tour was nice, but nothing could top the adventure we had in St. Croix. When we got done the tour we had a short amount of time to perform our first International Geocache find in an internet café near the cruise pier. When we got there, the place was getting ready to close for the day, but they let us in long enough to sign the log book for the Geocache.

Our next island came the next day. This would be a unique one for us because it involved our ship being at two different ports in St. Lucia that day. We left it in the morning and returned to it at a different port on the other side of the island following our inland bus tour. In both Dominica and St. Lucia, I excelled in finding local beers to “taste” while flying through various planned stops. There was always a local vendor or two hawking their brews and putting one in my talons for two or three greenbacks. It’s a good thing I wasn’t driving. On this tour we got to see a still steaming volcano which was heating various old spa pools. We also got to visit a historical Sugar Mill plantation and got to sample Coconut Milk, Coca beans right out of their pods, and sugar juice squeezed out of the stalk by small horse wanting to eat the stalk. It was a very interesting educational tour.

After a sea day we arrived at the island of my birth, Aruba. My late parents had met, got married and had me while working at the old Lago Oil refinery on the eastern end of the island. In 1993, my parents went with me on a trip there and showed me the island. So for this stop I decided to retrace some of those steps with my Geocaching partner and see if we could pick up some geocaches on the island. I had arranged for the rental of a Jeep so I would drive on the back roads of the island where most of the caches would be. I was a bit disappointed when I went to call the car rental folks on the phone when I got there because they did not have record of my reservation. The did not have a Jeep for me, but for the same price they let me have a Toyota RAV 4 SUV which was even better than I had planned to use. At least it was air conditioned vs. the open air Jeep Wrangler I would have had. Sometimes things just work out.

After getting picked up at the cruise terminal by the Budget Rent A Car folks, we went to their office near the airport to complete the paperwork and then headed off to visit the island in a counter clockwise course. First stop was Sero Colorado, where the American Colony for Lago oil used to be located. The few remaining buildings were in even worse shape than in 1993. I am glad my parents were not alive to see how much worse that part of the island had become. The first Geocache was located in the rocks on Colorado point, but when we got close to it and realized it was perched on a narrow rock ledge, 30 feet or so above the roaring ocean pounding the rocks below, we moved along to more land based hides. We found a few in the Arikok national park which we sort of entered through the back door. After we visited the visitors center there and had a soda (no beer this trip, the owl was driving) we exited through the main entrance and noticed there was a man there to collect an admission fee for anyone entering through that gate. We got a freebe there. We moved on to the Alta Vista Chapel and the California lighthouse so we had now covered the entire length of the island in a counter clockwise fashion. We returned our rented wheels and flew back to the ship.

We had another day at sea, with another time change to get us to the Central Time used in Panama. I had the TV set to the bow camera so I could be certain to see our early morning approach of the canal at about 4:30. I woke up about then and saw the faint lights of the harbor on my screen. I knew it was time to swoop up on deck and get a good perch. I was the first person on the bow that morning fumbling my way around in the dark to get to the bow position a’ la Leonardo DeCaprio on Titanic. For the next two and a half hours I stood transfixed at the opening of the canal watching this amazing piece of engineering do its thing. I had seen it before, but then it was an afternoon crossing in the heat of the day which meant I stayed in the air conditioning. In the early morning, it was very pleasant, so outdoors was a much better place to be to watch this transit. I didn’t pick a shore excursion for this stop, choosing to take it all in on the ship. But others did and seemed to have enjoyed their trips. Some of them were on the dock watching our ship go back through to the Caribbean as part of their excursions. We spent the rest of the day enjoying our ship by the pool and giving the room card more swipes.

The next day we were in Puerto Limon, Costa Rica where we had booked an Offroad Adventure tour. We had done so well in St. Croix, we figured why not try another in Costa Rica. When we got of the ship, our vehicle was waiting for us. It was a custom made truck/bus made for off road travel. Indeed it was custom made using an old Soviet missile launcher and a new GMC truck cab. Our tour guide took us on a custom nature tour of the mountains surrounding the port. We got to see some of my cousin Eagles, sloths, poison frogs and lots of varieties of vegetation. We even had a picnic with a local drink made with a hybrid lemon and tangerine fruit as the juice additive. We also of course had a local beer at 10 AM! After that, off we flew to a banana plantation and drove around on some of their old roads. On the way out though, our bus got to ford a river. It’s quite interesting to see all that water out your window and realize you are not on a bridge. The trip was quickly over and we were back to the ship by 12:30 which gave us the opportunity to find a Geocache in the nearby park by the pier.

Before our last stop in Key West, we had two more sea days. Surprisingly we learned that there were to be only 3 formal nights for our cruise, which was fine by me. We had our last formal night on the first of these two days and our last farewell dinner was done the second day, casual. Key West was another opportunity to find Geocaches. The ship had a free shuttle to take us downtown. From there we walked the island finding about 5 caches that day. We had lunch at the beach, and had beers at a bar downtown. The beer was local for us….Yeungling Beer from Pottsville, Pennsylvania. They had a branch brewery in Florida. We even spotted our ship’s Beverage Manager enjoying some what is local beer to us. The day of sightseeing ended too quickly. On the sail away, we had our last mini concert from Rachel and the HAL Cats at the aft pool. They were even kind enough to give us an encore as we sadly watched out last sunset on the ship.

That night we also had our sad goodbyes to Ketut and Ariyana and the other friends we made in the MDR. We put our bags outside our door that night, rose early the next day for breakfast in the Lido and quickly realized it was over. The biggest hint was they started putting down the drapes on the buffet line promptly at 8 AM as the ship was then cleared to empty. We purposely signed ourselves up for the last group to leave as we didn’t have a flight home until the evening. We were one of the last folks off the ship and there were already folks waiting to get on for the next cruise as we left. As we left, we saw the Oasis of the Seas parked across the street, and we saw the crowds of people there to see this brand new ship. For me and my money, I can’t really complain about my cruise on the Maasdam. It has everything you need on a cruise, and you don’t feel crowded in any way, which is what I like. The ship was just as good, if not better than when I last sailed on her in May of 1996. I only hope this time, I don’t wait 13 years again to sail on her.

[aliaschief]

Thank you so much for the wonderful review of your cruise on the MS Maasdam. We sailed 28 days on her this year and can well relate to how this crew continuously gets high ratings.

[sail7seas]

Thanks for your fun review. We have sailed Maasdam a great many times and have four more cruises booked so it's clear how much we love her. :)

So happy you enjoyed that beautiful ship and her outstanding crew/staff/officers.

 

Welcome back and don't wait so long to return to the very beautiful Maasdam. :)

 

[Krazy Kruizers]

Thanks for taking the time to write your review.

 

When we first started cruising HAL we also had bad luck with HMC -- either winds or storms prevented us from stopping there.

[DFD1]

Great review of a good cruise on a fine ship. Thanks for sharing your cruise with us.

[IRL_Joanie]

Thank you for the review of this grand old dame Maasdam!! Now, you've made me want to try her.

 

I am glad you had a wonderful time, and can only say that NO WAY IN HADES will I take that 4x4 Jeep trip you took!!! I do not have the nerve, and possibly the stomache for it. I'm also afraid they'd hear me screaming all the way back in Florida:D

 

Great to have you home again, but as has already been stated, do not wait so long to board her again!!

 

Welcome Home O' Wise One!!

 

Joanie

[Y's Owl]

Thank you for the review of this grand old dame Maasdam!! Now, you've made me want to try her.

 

I am glad you had a wonderful time, and can only say that NO WAY IN HADES will I take that 4x4 Jeep trip you took!!! I do not have the nerve, and possibly the stomache for it. I'm also afraid they'd hear me screaming all the way back in Florida:D

 

Great to have you home again, but as has already been stated, do not wait so long to board her again!!

 

Welcome Home O' Wise One!!

 

Joanie

Yes it was a bit un-nerving, but I have to say it was fun. Something bad could have happened, and almost did when Frodo got hit in the face by a low lying vine once, but the overall experience did pump your adrenalin levels up. It was a real hoot! Indeed it was perhaps our most memorable exerience on the trip.

[lka1012]

What, no mention of dancing around the pool?!

[Y's Owl]

What, no mention of dancing around the pool?!

You are so right Kathy, we did do that one day with Rachel and the HALCats. But space limitations being what they are, I kind of skipped over it.

 

Frodo and I were talking about you the other day and how much fun we had with you many an afternoon sitting around the Lido pool and watching the other passengers and crew walk on by. We had a wonderful Maasdam cruise and you were a special part of it for us. I am glad to see you made it home safe and sound and are ready for another HAL cruise.