Holland America Line - Oosterdam Review

This was a Saturday-Saturday, January 19, 2008 cruise out of San Diego to the Mexican Riveria.  We flew out of St Louis the day before in case of bad January weather.  Flights on SWA thru Phoenix were fully booked-missing a leg might have left us with no seats open on later full flights.

Tip: We stayed at the inexpensive Holiday Inn-Bayside on North Harbor Drive-West of the SAN airport (not the more expensive Holiday Inn (not rated well) across N Harbor Drive from the cruise terminal.)  They provided free shuttle to the ship if you signed up for a slot.  They also picked you up at the airport if you didn't want to pay $8.00 for a taxi. They gave a free drink coupon for the bar for each, free Mexican food during happy hour starting at 5pm, too.  You could easily make dinner out of it.  The restaurant on site was quite good. 

We took the 10:00am shuttle to the cruise ship.  MS Zaandam was also docked and sailing for Hawaii.  Check in was quick.  Through metal detectors and x-ray scanners, but no ban on large quantities of bomb making liquids, hooray!  They did not have stateroom key/charge cards for us and that caused the clerk some confusion.  She later brought us over our cards in the waiting area.  We had to wait until 11:30 am to board by number/color/ ship.  While in the large holding area, menus and wines could be viewed.  Entertainment was the occasional shooting of a guest who checked the box of being near someone vomiting recently on the CDC questionnaire.

Tip:  Wine cards are available for $67 + 15% gratuity = $77 for 20 glasses of house wine.  This is a bargain and not greatly publicized.  It gets around re-corking half-finished bottles ($40 average) at open seating (who knows where you'll sit next time).  See the gift selection book for soda, coffee and 10 wine cards.  Note:  You can bring bottles of wine onboard, but not liquor or beer.  Pack that in your checked baggage.  You can buy bottles of liquor for your stateroom at bar prices from room service at room service prices (very high prices-same as the high-priced minibar items in the stateroom refrigerator).

Guests did not have problems recognizing which ship he was calling for, but the clerk confused himself.  We were one of the first to board so we had no problem finding a seat in the Lido buffet for lunch.  The Indonesian table waiter learned our names and remembered them through the entire trip.  I had the sushi for lunch:  great. 

Tip:  it pays to be as early as possible, even somewhat earlier than the documents say.  You have all the people in front of you with unique problems to be resolved the further back in line you are.

After lunch, we took our carryon to the rear Lido pool to view the harbor and downtown San Diego.  It stayed in the 60s with a breeze.  The Midway Museum on an aircraft carrier was to the south.  The Star of India sailing ship was to the north. 

They announced that we could go to our staterooms at around 1:30 pm as promised.  The check-in clerk didn't say anything, but those card/keys she got from her supervisor didn't work on the door and the 1st officer used his passkey to let us in.  I had to go to the Front Office to get the cards activated.  The bothersome thing to me was that this second in command had difficulty locating our stateroom to see if we were the stupid ones inserting the key wrong.  I had to ask where the Front Office was located ("on the first deck").

We stayed in stateroom 8045, a large, inside.  It's easier for us to sleep in with no early morning sunlight; the balcony rooms have no privacy and were too cold from the 20+knot wind when the ship was moving.  There is no clock (not even an LCD on the phone) in the room:  Take care if you have an early excursion.  After looking for the itinerary for a cruise, I look for the stateroom location and size.  I don't care for the description about x sq. ft. for standard/large (we're not telling you which yours is).  I want to know exact size:  A difference of 30 sq. ft. is substantial.  AAA has the exact sizes of each stateroom of each ship on its web site.  There were three closets, one with shelves, a safe (that you had to enter a new code each time you lock it-don't slip a digit), a sleeper sofa, plenty of space under the larger than previous cruises bed for the empty luggage.  Good luck taking a shower in that little phone booth.  And careful in this room for showers in the late afternoon before dinner, we got two temps of water:  boiling and scalding.  Temperature of the room was controlled a very responsive dial thermostat: room temp varied with the outside temp.  I did not try the free shoeshine service.

The ship was clean.  The Indonesian wait staff was a lot better than Caribbean or Eastern European staffs we've had on Carnival, Celebrity and Royal Caribbean.  The rest of the staff was nearly typical of other cruise lines:  Soho London in the spa and entertainment.  It seemed as though there were a few more Americans mixed in than usual.

Entertainment was okay.  Singers and dancers had talent, but the choreography was so-so.  The Cruise director was not great.  For some reason, he gave accolades to his assistant director, the shaved head DJ Jazzy.  We didn't care for him at all.  The areas he ran like the disco and karaoke were disorganized.  DJ becomes noticeably more flamboyant as the evening wears on.  There is also an entertainment staff member with curly hair who thinks he's a comedian, embellishing his jokes week after week.  He entered the karaoke contest to sing Ray Steven's Ahab the Arab.  He usually entered the wrong number for the karaoke machine so that the contestant had to stop and wait for the correct song.  There was another assistant, also with shaved head, that kept things going.  There were others that seemed to keep things going quietly while DJ and "Curly" tried to break into show business.

What turned me off about the cruise director was he selected the two similar big acts: both with a blonde and a short man.  One pair were magicians, the other were piano players.  With the similar hot babe paired with a short "loser" jokes, I was almost asleep by the time the piano players did their impersonation of (duh) Sonny and Cher.  There was a large comedienne named Julie Barr (?) with pink AND purple hair who's appeared on MTV and Comedy Central.  We did not attend her adults-only performance.

Best part of the cruise is the food.  Holland just started open seating on the Oosterdam for the lower half of the dining room.  The open seating allowed us to make more friends the previous cruises.  We were happy to run into many at different meals, on-shore and other events.

Assigned seating is still available as long as you make it through the door within 15 minutes of opening.  Open seating also reservations if you have met new friends you wish to dine with.  The only time we had to wait a couple of minutes was when a "group" was trying to get everyone together at the right time.  I recommend rack of lamb, lobster and fillet, and the turkey.  However, everything is great.  I had the sugar-free dessert every night.  Each was very light and tasted better than most desserts back home.

We had breakfast in the Lido buffet every day.  I ate large there.  Tip:  for some reason, they did not display the sugar-free syrup.  Ask the server at the custom toaster at the end of the main line.  And you can have eggs made to order besides the ready made scrambled, eggs Benedict, or made to order omelet.

We had lunch just once in the dining room.  It was very good, numerous choice, three-course menu.

We had a couple of snacks from (free, 24-hour) room service: tomato juice for bloody marys and shrimp cocktails.  The shrimp were small but plenty.  The menu read better than on previous cruises.

We made some attempts at the free ballroom dancing group lessons.  That being free, I couldn't understand why some people were paying $11 for an hour of an instructor to tell them what next to do on an exercise bike or yoga group session.  My wife got the facial-combo-special (cheaper than buying each separately), 10% off for the first day only!  I got a $45 manicure the last night so I could type this review well.  J  "The Greenhouse" spa wanted $150 pp to use the hot tub and heated stone couches.  I didn't see many users.  $10/day on Celebrity was more than enough to charge for this.  The exercise room was adequate for the number of users on this cruise.  I used it 4 times for half the workout as at home.  Even with the large breakfasts I had, walking around town and the ship caused me to lose 4 lbs by the time I got home-not unusual for me who usually sits at a computer all day at work.

I was disappointed with the ports.  I thought they'd be nicer and less dirt poor, especially Cabo San Lucas where some non-cruising friends of ours go.  You have to run the gauntlet, especially in Cabo, of trinket sales, water taxis, and the worst, most devious, the time-share hostage takers.  My wife had to buy something in each port (and still, an ankle bracelet from the $1+/inch gold from the cruise ship the last night).  We received some free goodies from turning in coupons from handouts when we remembered to do it.

We took the trolley tour in Mazatlan after a hard sell by the street hawker coming down from $36 charged by the cruise line to $20 each (if we didn't tell the other takers.)  It was a good narrated tour of the heights, markets ("Lobster, giant shrimp:  $10 per kilo, not pound!")  If you have the 4 hours, it's worth it.  You end up at Diamonds International where the tour guide buys a free drink.  (Everyone that looks like they're in the buying mood can get free drinks, gifts at all of the high-end jewelry stores.)  The tour then takes you back the cruise ship after the 45 minute shopping stop.  The tour has some pull with the cliff divers to dive after all of the tour gets a good spot.  They're happy to oblige as they can collect more tips from a group.

Puerto Vallarta was probably the best town.  The street hawkers weren't stepping in your way and the downtown area (fairly Americanized) got you in with the tourists that are staying in resorts and jaded to the sales.  PV and the day before and after were the only times for serious lying out in the sun during this week of January.  Cabo and Mazatlan were cooler, in the 70's-okay for shopping and sightseeing.  All the beaches were hazardous to swimmers.  The currents easily take you out to sea to drown.

We'd most likely pick Holland America for our next cruise if they go where we want.  Celebrity is still a close second.  Carnival and Royal Caribbean can't compare.  We would not return to these ports.  If they were a very good deal to stay a Puerto Vallarta, that town might be considered for a stay at a resort.  I don't know what people see in Cabo.  None of the bars/restaurants were a bargain to tourists, only taxis and tee-shirt items.  Most places gave you 10 pesos to the dollar (official rate was closer to 11 to 1).  If you considered buying a place, a $1million place in Cabo San Lucas would be $140 thousand in Mazatlan.

Disembarkation was the smoothest we've had.  We weren't forced out of our stateroom by 8 am to sit in a public area waiting for our group to be called.  They preferred that everyone stay in their stateroom.  That let us watch old movies on the adequate flat panel satellite TV monitor.  Finding our checked luggage after customs was not too bad.  If you're looking for a porter to cart them for you, good luck.  All of our pieces were large roll-arounds that you good strap together.  I don't know what the transfer price is from the cruise line.  You could load into a shuttle bus for $5 a person and stop at each airline entrance.  Our cab ride was $10 for the two of us.

San Diego airport is small and was cold from plane gate doors opening.  The dolt we had to watch us check in at the auto kiosk (she only attached luggage tags and moved the luggage after the machine spit them out), couldn't even tell us what gate to proceed to without asking.  Southwest Airlines has 2 gates one way and 8 another way in the same terminal with separate security checkpoints for each one.  The worst part of cruising is the air travel with the worst businesses in the world.

BTW Oosterdam has an Internet special for obtaining departing boarding passes 24 hours in advance.  Only $8.95 for 15 minutes (+$ .75/minute over) plus a small one-time access $3.95 fee plus a nominal $0.25/sheet if you print anything!  It cost me $12.70 for my boarding passes and a quick look at the weather in St Louis.