Back from 12/31/11-1/7/12 Eurodam sailing

[smaNJ]

First, we sailed on HAL for the first time on the Eurodam from 12/31/11-1/7/12 and had a fantastic time. It was my husband, myself and two children - 11 and 14. I was alittle nervous about whether the kids would have enough to do and have a good time but they absolutely LOVED it. My son who was 11 had quite a number of "buddies" his age on board and was with them constantly. My daughter also had over 90 kids in her age group of 13-17 but she did not use club HAL and totally enjoyed the sea days just laying out in the sun at our cabana.

 

I will try to address some of the concerns of posters first.

 

Vibrations: The vibrations on the ship! Yes there were definately vibrations and they were better or worse depending on where you were on ship. The worst place I found it to be was in the shops. Man, you could stand in some areas and feel as if you would vibrate right out the doors. I commented on it to one girl working the register and she smiled and said it was bad particularly where she worked in the shop which was by the clothing. We also noticed vibration in the Lido decks when we sat to eat. The flowers were vibrating and the lights were moving enough you could see it across a couple tables. Our stateroom was 6057 and we barely could feel the vibration there, at times it seemed to be alittle more but I couldn't say any reason why (docked or not, waves, how fast the ship moved). We really didn't feel the vibration was a problem.

 

Retreat Cabanas: I was not sure how my husband was going to like that I decided to splurge (299.00) for a cabana so I didn't tell him until we got on board. We LOVED them, the best money spent, as my husband said. It was quite up there. Our cabana guys were Ian and Renen and they were so wonderful, funny, bent over backwards to do things for you. And I mean that we didn't ask them to do anything when we got there and they wanted to get breakfasts for us and lunches. They learned our names and likes the first day. My daughter just had to come up at 9 in the morning and they would immediately come to here, call her by name and ask if she wanted her waffles with chocolate syrup. If you didn't want anything they would ask "are you sure, we would love to get you something". Felt bad if we didn't order something up. We would get to the cabana by 9 on sea days, maybe get breakfast. They would come around with mimosas, had fresh fruit bowls everyday there and 2 big bottles of water on ice. The cabana had 2 loungers, 2 chairs and a table to eat at. Outside in main area there were lots of lounge chairs and they were never all taken, maybe half sometimes. Afternoon you could order lunch, you could champagne and chocolate covered strawberries too.

 

Someone mentioned smoke issues. We never had any, I actually never saw anyone smoking up there either. The only places on ship I smelled smoke were in the casino and the sports bar next to it. There was some smokers on the back deck by the adult pool my husband said.

 

The Lido pool area could get pretty crowded, chairs taken and just seemed congested. I am not sure if I would have liked the Lido cabanas as there seemed to be a walkway right in front of them and people would, naturally, look in. No privacy I guess. The retreat cabanas the first day we had alot of people walking through to check things out but after that we didn't see that.

 

I will write more about the ship and ports in a little bit. Hope this helps.

[NattilyAttired]

So far I love your review! We sail on the same ship and itinerary on January 21, so we are quite happy to hear your positive views.

[gelo7]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts about the Eurodam. We really liked the Eurodam and will be back on her in March. Looking forward to the rest of your review. Any pictures?

[barbarah33]

Thank you very much for your comments/review. I am sailing on her in less than 4 weeks and we have rented a retreat cabana so it's exciting to hear how much you liked yours.

[smaNJ]

This was only our 2nd cruise as a family (Disney was the other) and really did like the Eurodam. The crew all over the ship could not have been nicer, helpful, smiling all the time. We also worried that it might be an older crowd, not very kid oriented but there was a wonderful mix of ages.

 

My husband and I also did a couple cooking classes that we truly enjoyed, got to sample in one of them. My husband did a Windows 7 class and another computer class that he enjoyed. We did 2 mixology classes that were fun, got to drink the finished product too! If we would have done the third class we would have gotten a certificate saying we were now mixologists but we really wanted to spend the last hour in our cabana on the last sea day.

 

We did have a Code Red that started the second day and was kept up the whole cruise. It seems that only 20 or so passengers were ill with the gastro illness. One of my sons buddies got it but the rest of his family did not and we never had any issues. The crew did a great job keeping the ship clean and making sure everyone purelled before dinners. They did take away basketballs except for special class and then they would clean them. Also the ping pong tables and shuffleboards were not usable. Luckily the first night we as a family played shuffleboard for quite awhile which was fun.

 

We also did family bingo, maybe 4 other families were there so the chances of winning were high. They did give out Eurodam pins as you left.

 

Will add some more later.

[smaNJ]

One more quick thing before I forget.

 

If you buy a soda card and do not use it, it will be refunded at the end of the cruise. If you buy a 25.00 and use only 10. you will get 15 back but if you use 25. you will not get anything back. If that made sense. One card we did not use at all and got it all credited back. The other we used all but 14.00 and lost it. Just a FYI.

[kazu]

Thanks for your review and your posts. Very nice of you to address the questions of the vibration on the ship.

 

Welcome home:)

[Krazy Kruizers]

Welcome Home

 

Glad your family and you had a wonderful cruise.

[smaNJ]

Hi Everyone,

 

Am running back and forth trying to finish laundry and get the Christmas decorations put away so bear with me.

 

I will try to post some pictures also.

 

Dinners: Ate at the Pinnicle Grill 2 times, once on first formal night and the second for a lunch. We all loved it both times. The service and food was perfect, fantastic! It is an upcharge for dinner but we felt was totally worth it. Our kids loved dressing formal and eating there, it was there first experience and they wanted to eat like this a couple more times. We highly recommend the Pinnicle Grill.

 

Tamarind: We did this one night for dinner. My husband and I really liked it here but the kids were less than enthused, they would have preferred eatting in the Lido. Next time. OH well. The service here was very good too but still thought Pinnicle was better.

 

Caneletto: Not good here. The service was really pretty bad. We got our water right away and then were ignored for over 15 minutes, not even asked for drinks. It was not busy and they had many waiters buzzing around. We finally grabbed someone got our drink order in and dinner order in. Waited at least 30 minutes, during that time we did get bread. Finally my son's order came out, we thought the rest would follow. Wrong. We still did not have our drinks and had to stop someone again to get them. My son finished his meal and was just sitting and we still hadn't gotten our meals. We ordered; son - spaghetti and meatballs, daughter - lasagna, me- penne ala vodka and husband - spaghetti and meatsause. My husband got the manager to let him know. They said they fed our son because they feed kids first. Which is good but I said they should have asked. Couldn't get a reason why the rest took so long. The food was good but the service was not. Don't think we would eat dinner there again. Will say that the manager for the inconvenience did send a bottle of wine to our room the next day.

 

Main dining room: Ate there the last formal night. This was ok. The food was good - they had King Crab legs that night which were yummy. We also had shrimp cocktail that was rubbery. We did have shrimp cocktails first formal night in Pinnicle and they were great. Not sure what happened here. My daughter had salmon and a steak and she really liked both. I actually don't remember what my husband had but my son and I did the crab legs.

 

Lido: We did eat here for some lunches and dinner and pretty much liked the food there. Really no complaints.

 

Overall I think the food was pretty good and better than Disney.

 

 

I did make some magnets for our door. Found out that doors are not metal, but they did stick to the wall next to the mailbox outside our cabin. I even made sure to personalize them in hopes they wouldn't disappear. One did get taken about half way into the cruise. I let our cabin stewards know in case they saw it anywhere. We never did get it back.

 

I will post about the ports and shore excursions we did later.:D

[cruiseapril]

Thanks for the review.

 

The Eurodam is our next HAL cruise.

 

We're interested in your port experiences.

[smaNJ]

Hi cruiseapril, I will be posting about the ports and any excursions we did. Hope to get to it later today. Thanks!

[Coolcruise02]

Thanks for the info, can't wait! Sorry to hear you didn't enjoy Canelleto. We loved it on the Veendam.

[smaNJ]

Grand Turk: In Grand Turk we rented a golf cart from Nathan. My kids and husband thought I was nuts to do this but it really was easy. Once we got off the ship we walked out through the gate in front and Nathan was right there waiting with the golf cart. Someone from our ship also rented 2 jeeps from him. We told him our name, got some directions and was told to either bring the cart back half full or just give him $10. We opted for the $10. We went all over the island, down dirt roads/paths to beaches. We really had fun. The island is not big at all and as Nathan said you could probably go end to end in less than an hour. I had read on the boards that there was a beach coming back from the lighthouse that had "dead" conch shells. We found the road to it, entrance is overgrown, had stone pillars in front and the road down is quite overgrown but you can make it all the way down to the beach with no problem. The beach was definately full of conch shells! We picked 4 we liked and put them in the cart. The lighthouse was very pretty and really nice views from there. The island itself does not have alot to see or do unless you want to swim on the beaches. We did stop at Jacks shack for lunch, drink and swim abit. I had asked a few locals what place was better - Jacks or Margarittaville and they said Jacks and that it was cheaper. I did see that Margarittaville had a pretty nice pool though. The island is poor looking, might have had a hurricane that some homes were still trying to recover from. Also, lots of burros, horses, cows, dogs, goats running freely on the island. Only had to slow down a couple times to let some get out of the way. You drive on the left side of the road which isn't a problem, there really isn't any traffic to worry about here if that was a concern.

 

San Juan: We got to SJ about 1pm and got right off the ship. We did not have any excursions lined up which ended up being a good thing for us as I had a medical issue and had to see the doctor on board. We walked old town and saw the forts, I really liked this town and next time would love to spend more time here and do some tours. Maybe next time do the rain forest also. This was a great place to wander around we thought.

 

St. Thomas: Here we did a Champagne Catamaran Snorkeling Tour to St. John. The kids only snorkeled once before and this was alot of fun. It rained off and on but was never a problem as it would clear up again. The snorkeling was fun, saw alot of fish, stingray, sea turtles and someone on our group saw 3 sharks. Glad it wasn't me! On the way back we were given soda, champagne and rum punch. They also had cheese, bread and fruits. I would recommend this.

 

Half Moon Cay: When we got here it was very overcast and cold but we got off right away on the first tender. I had thought about renting a cabana here or a clamshell. Really wish I rented the clamshell. There is some shade but not alot once the sun starts to shift. The clamshells were all sold out, we checked on board the day before. We also rented snorkel stuff but unless you take a tour out to the reef there is nothing to see. They have a small reef near shore but my kids said there was nothing there. We found a place down by the pirate ship for shade for me, heard the music pretty load here. If you don't want to listen to that loud of music move further down or closer to the beginning of the beach area.

 

I hope this helps, if anyone has any questions let me know. I will try to add some pictures tomorrow.

[OVgirl]

One more quick thing before I forget.

 

If you buy a soda card and do not use it, it will be refunded at the end of the cruise. If you buy a 25.00 and use only 10. you will get 15 back but if you use 25. you will not get anything back. If that made sense. One card we did not use at all and got it all credited back. The other we used all but 14.00 and lost it. Just a FYI.

If we have credit left on a soda card, but it's too little for a refund, we buy cans of soda to empty the card and give them to one of the crew. The last time we gave them to the Cabana stewards. Just a thought.

[aliaschief]

Nice review and glad you enjoyed your cruise. Agree that the Canaletto restaurants can be inconsistent from ship to ship and on my recent cruise stated they could improve the quality of their pizzas. Thanks.

[smaNJ]

Give the extra sodas to crew.

 

That is a great idea and we actually tried to do that but they both said no. They did take a few other things we had left though.

[aloisia]

Thanks so much for your review. We`ve reserved a Retreat Cabana & enjoyed reading your comments. Getting excited! :D

[boulders]

Thanks for your review. I'm going on the Nieuw Amsterdam, sister ship to the Eurodam, with ds6 and dd13 in a few months. We also have a retreat cabana booked. I'm glad to hear your children enjoyed your cruise.

[sugarcharlie]

 

I will try to address some of the concerns of posters first.

 

Vibrations: The vibrations on the ship! Yes there were definately vibrations and they were better or worse depending on where you were on ship. The worst place I found it to be was in the shops. Man, you could stand in some areas and feel as if you would vibrate right out the doors. I commented on it to one girl working the register and she smiled and said it was bad particularly where she worked in the shop which was by the clothing. We also noticed vibration in the Lido decks when we sat to eat. The flowers were vibrating and the lights were moving enough you could see it across a couple tables. Our stateroom was 6057 and we barely could feel the vibration there, at times it seemed to be alittle more but I couldn't say any reason why (docked or not, waves, how fast the ship moved). Hope this helps.

 

Alright, this is part of a well written review that covered what they felt was a very nice cruise. I don't know why we don't see any other reviews of ships even mentioning a vibration issue. If flowers and lights are noticeably moving from vibrations, there is definitely a problem. I don't need any people here telling me that all ships vibrate or that this topic is overblown. I have sailed before and ships do not vibrate (especially in port when docked) like has been reported here in posts over the last month. If it was only mentioned by a single poster or on many different vessels, I would chalk it up to normal chatter, but that's not the case.

 

I appreciate the time Eurodam cruisers have taken to post about their cruise experience and this vibration issue. I expect that eventually this matter will be addressed by HAL or it will be corrected. In the meantime, unless you have cruised on the Eurodam recently, please don't try to tell others who are reporting this that it is a normal phenomenon, or that they are imagining it.

[sugarcharlie]

Are there any other sites that have reviews of Eurodam cruises? I looked in the "member review" section of CC but there haven't been too many recent ones there.

[adrift@sea]

Alright, this is part of a well written review that covered what they felt was a very nice cruise. I don't know why we don't see any other reviews of ships even mentioning a vibration issue. If flowers and lights are noticeably moving from vibrations, there is definitely a problem. I don't need any people here telling me that all ships vibrate or that this topic is overblown. I have sailed before and ships do not vibrate (especially in port when docked) like has been reported here in posts over the last month. If it was only mentioned by a single poster or on many different vessels, I would chalk it up to normal chatter, but that's not the case.

 

I appreciate the time Eurodam cruisers have taken to post about their cruise experience and this vibration issue. I expect that eventually this matter will be addressed by HAL or it will be corrected. In the meantime, unless you have cruised on the Eurodam recently, please don't try to tell others who are reporting this that it is a normal phenomenon, or that they are imagining it.

 

We were also on the 12/31 Eurodam cruise and can say there is most definitely a vibration that we found noticeable, especially in the Dining Room. There are two large tables (tables for 10) that seem to suffer the most from the vibrations. The one table (which appears to be the worst) located aft port side vibrated so that the flower bowl, china, glasses, etc. appeared to be dancing on the table. Several times people that were seated at this table asked to be moved in the middle of their meal; they were accomodated and moved to other tables in the dining room. I will post the exact table number(s) as soon as I get through the pile of papers from the trip.

 

While we felt this vibration a number of times in the Lido, on the Lido aft deck, etc., we did not find it disturbing but in all of the HAL ships we have sailed on in three decades, this was the first time that we experienced this kind of vibration.

[sugarcharlie]

We were also on the 12/31 Eurodam cruise and can say there is most definitely a vibration that we found noticeable, especially in the Dining Room. There are two large tables (tables for 10) that seem to suffer the most from the vibrations. The one table (which appears to be the worst) located aft port side vibrated so that the flower bowl, china, glasses, etc. appeared to be dancing on the table. Several times people that were seated at this table asked to be moved in the middle of their meal; they were accomodated and moved to other tables in the dining room. I will post the exact table number(s) as soon as I get through the pile of papers from the trip.

 

While we felt this vibration a number of times in the Lido, on the Lido aft deck, etc., we did not find it disturbing but in all of the HAL ships we have sailed on in three decades, this was the first time that we experienced this kind of vibration.

 

Thanks for your input. Now I would like to figure out how to get HAL involved to explain what is causing it and when it will be fixed. I called ships services and they said they hadn't heard anything about vibrations at all on the ship. Maybe some of the folks getting off this Saturday will post their experience or whether they were able to find anything out.

 

When I booked I was only asked whether I wanted early or late seating for dinner, not whether I wanted to set at a vibrating table!

[tonyjonj]

I saw a review that mentioned renting a golf cart on Grand Turk from Nathan. Where can I go to find out more info on this?

[smaNJ]

I saw a review that mentioned renting a golf cart on Grand Turk from Nathan. Where can I go to find out more info on this?

 

I found the information through these boards. Here is the contact info. for Nathan. I emailed him first, then he sent a reply with his phone number. You give him your credit card # and you reserve a golf cart that seats four. Two forward seats and two rear facing seats.

 

Nathan's email is: nathanandlinda@tciway.tc

Phone: 6492314856.

 

When we got the cart he gave us a map with 2 more contact numbers but I see they don't have area codes but here they are. 346-5975 and 232-2456.

 

Good Luck, we really had fun with them. Any other questions, let me know.:)

[Alisamontreal]

I was also on the Dec 31 sailing (I'm the one who posted last week that I broke my elbow on the Grand Turk segway excursion).

 

I wanted to add a comment on the vibration. We were a group of 9 in 4 cabins on Deck 6 - upper promenade. Our most forward room was 6054, furthest back was 6070 (my parents). It was their room that had the most vibration - truly more than I have ever felt on a ship of that size (or anysize for that matter). The more forward rooms had much less.

 

My parents made a number of calls to the front office, had visits from HAL reps (who all acknowledged that there was a problem) but were unable to rectify nor to move them as the ship was full. After a few days it seemed to lessen, but HAL gave them a $350 credit for the inconvenience they suffered due to the vibration.

 

As for other areas of the ship, we found the vibration most noticeable in the restaurants (both Tamarind AND Pinnacle even though they are 9 decks apart!) and in the theatre. There is definitely an unusual vibration problem on the Eurodam, and I hope they address it soon!

 

PS - we also had 2 retreat cabanas, and the attendants were amazing - as the reviewed described. Once my arm was in a cast, there was nothing that Ian and Rennin didn't offer to do to help. It was a pleasure to have such a lovely private area to relax, meet up with the rest of our family, and take the sun without finding the crowds for a deck chair. The retreat was the highlight of our cruise.