Yahoo! GeoCities Member Banner Exchange Info 

Veendam
Reviewed by: Nora Sarsons
email: nsarsons@home.com

Alaska Cruise Review: LONG

Dates: June 28 - July 5th, 2000

Ship: H.A.L. MS Veendam

Itinerary: Alaska Inside Passage round trip from Vancouver.

Note: My sister-in-law Judy and I live in Vancouver so no air/ bus travel was required. This was my fourth cruise. I have been on Royal Caribbean twice, both on the Song of America to the Caribbean and Mexican Rivera and a ship called the Vera Cruz to Alaska. This ship apparently burned and sank a few years ago. Judy has had one other cruise aboard the Celebrity Century to the Caribbean..

Embarkation: We arrived at Canada Place early at around 12:00. As I am visually impaired we had pre-boarding arranged. Embarkation was extremely efficient with lots of assistance and direction to the proper check-in position. There was a place reserved for people with disabilities to sit and wait until the ship was ready for boarding. At about 12:30 the Hotel Manager arrived to escort us aboard!!!! This took all of 5 minutes including the security check near the gangway. On boarding we were escorted by a steward to our cabin. The ship was completely full and at check-in I was informed that our stateroom had been changed from a category C outside double on Verandah deck to a category A mini suite up on the Navigation deck. What a lovely surprise. I think this was probably because they needed all the two person sofa beds and our original cabin had one of these. The mini suite we had only had a single sofa bed. Our good fortune though.

There was an embarkation lunch up in the lido and we went there after we had checked out our cabin and met our steward Tri.

Cabin: This mini-suite was on the starboard side of the ship and was 7 cabins from the stern. It had twin beds, a couch, TV/VCR, desk/dresser with nine good sized drawers, a mini-bar/fridge, night tables with locking drawers, wonderful closet space with those shelves that can be pulled down. The safe was in one of the closets. The bathroom was a nice size with very small soaker tub/shower and lots of room to store toiletries. The verandah was wonderful for this trip. There was a lounger, a chair and small table plus those lovely red tartan wool rugs. We spent a lot of time just watching the scenery go by.

Ship: This is a beautiful ship with lots of space and we felt it warm and friendly. There are lots of comfortable places to sit and relax and there is so much outside deck space. I found it extremely easy to find my way and only got mixed up once or twice on Deck 7 where the galley prevents one from going the full length of the ship on that deck.

Dining: We were seated at a large 10 person table with four couples. Dinner time was always a fun affair as we all hit it off immediately and were very sad to say goodbye after a week. The service in the diningroom was wonderful and the variety and quality of the food was very good indeed. How I managed to not gain any weight is amazing!!!! For the formal nights our table was joined by the Chief Electrical Engineer who bought all the wine. We were glad we had asked for a large table as this is where the officers sit on formal nights. We found out that the captain does not eat in the diningroom but up in the senior officers diningroom on the Bridge. We really enjoyed the view from the diningroom windows. Our table was near the stern windows and on a couple of occasions the sunsets were amazing. We only ate in the diningroom once for breakfast and that was on the last morning as the lido was too crowded. We had three lunches in the diningroom and all the others in the lido or we had room service. I was very happy with the help I received from the staff in the lido. If I was on my own one of the staff would go through the line with me and tell me what was available and then they would get my coffee and then find me a table. It really made it easy for me to be independent. I did mention above that I gained no weight and this is not because I starved!!!! I was so active all the time that I guess I burned off all the calories. In actual fact, I came home one pound lighter than the day I left!!!!

Entertainment: I only attended two shows, the Indonesian crew show which was wonderful and the 50's/60's night which was also good. We also attended the captain's reception and the farewell information talk. There are very good musicians aboard and I really enjoyed the Rosario Strings who played in various spots o the ship. There was a show band and another group who played in the crows nest in the evenings. I did not see any movies as they were always at times when I was doing something else. They did, however, have some good recently released movies.

I did not go to the casino either - mainly due to the fact that the scenery kept taking me outside and there just wasn't time.

We did the walk a mile around the lower promenade deck every morning and some afternoons. It is a wonderful place to walk with its beautiful teak deck and the marvelous scenery going by. Also on this deck there are lots and lots of very comfortable padded teak lounge chairs and those wonderful plaid wool rugs to keep you nice and warm.

One of things that amazed me was that although the ship was pretty well full, there was never a problem finding a chair anywhere and there was lots of room out on deck. The ship has such good outside spaces so there is lots of room for everyone. There are three large lounges all with huge windows so that if people don't want to be outside or the weather is bad, there is lots of place to watch the scenery go by or to whale watch. The crows nest atop the ship is the best place for whale watching and o matter how early one goes there in the morning there is always someone there first..

I had imagined from what I had read on RTC that there would be many, many wheelchairs and walkers and not many young people. This certainly was not the case on our sailing. There were lots and lots of children, babies and teens - the best bunch of kids I have ever come across. They were pretty well kept busy with the Club HAL activities. I think there were not more than three wheelchairs aboard, perhaps one or two walkers and a very few canes - including my white cane. We had a bunch of honeymooners and a lot of middle aged folk. We were amazed at the good mix of ages. There were lots of nationalities as well, Australians, British, Canadian, East Indian, European as well as American.

I found the staff from the senior officers all the way down to the deck cleaners to be courteous and extremely helpful to me without being intrusive. I just knew that I could ask assistance of anyone and I would get it.

Shore Excursions: In Juneau we went up the Mt. Roberts Tram for a view of the area. Although it was lightly raining we still got a great view from up there. We also took the Wildlife Cruise/Mendenhall Glacier combined tour. The trip is run by Allen Marine and is only marketed to cruise ships as they need to know that they have a certain number of passengers for each trip and the captain told us that it is much easier if the cruise ships do the booking and they do the navigating and finding the wildlife. These were both first rate. We saw all sorts of wildlife including Bald eagles, harbour seals, Stellar sea lions, Bald Eagle nest, humpback whales. The boat was extremely comfortable, warm and clean. There were lots of snacks and drinks available. I highly recommend this trip.

In Skagway we took the combination White Pass Rail/coach/Liarsville tour. This was wonderful and took approximately 5 hours. We got out up at Fraser, British Columbia. And switched to a coach for the 12 mile ride down to Skagway. There were a couple of stops on the way down for photos. The Liarsville portion was also fun.

In Ketchikan we took the Totem Bright Park tour. This was very pleasant and informative. Our bus driver/tour guide was extremely informative. We booked all these tours through the ship on the fax-in forms that accompanied our documents. This saved a huge amount of waiting in lines to book on the ship. The tickets were waiting in our stateroom on our arrival on sailing day.

I think that the highlight of the trip for me was our day in Glacier Bay. I had been there 24 years ago and before we got there I wondered if I would think "been there, done that". Quite the contrary. As we entered the bay early in the morning I started to get excited and this lasted ALL day. I spent at least five hours out on deck, not wanting to miss a thing. The deck space is so good on this ship that there was absolutely no problem finding a place at the rail or finding a place to sit. The staff brought out wonderful hot pea soup, hot chocolate, hot cider during the day to keep us nice and warm. I wore my polar fleece vest over a turtleneck as well as a goretex jacket, a wool toque which I knitted especially for this day and gloves. It was not a brilliantly sunny day but there was high cloud and it was very bright without being glary. The colours were absolutely wonderful in the water and on the ice. We saw and heard lots of calving which is something one never forgets. The Park Rangers who came aboard early in the morning gave a very good narration from the bridge which could be heard all over the ship. They also came around and talked to us and answered questions and posed for pictures. All in all this was a wonderfully thrilling day and I won't forget it ever. It really helps that we have a lot of video to refresh our memories too.

The biggest change I saw in Alaska after 24 years I think was Ketchekan. Buildings that had been on the waterfront back then are now four or five blocks back and all the new dock and streets are now there. We got some very nice shirts in Ketchikan and in Juneau.

The last day of the cruise coming down the inside passage was so warm that people were in both pools all afternoon and many people were sunning in shorts and swim suits.

The only thing on the whole trip that caused us any concern was that on the first day our luggage did not arrive in our cabin until after 7pm. Funny, as we were almost first at the dock and we knew the luggage had been put in a HAL luggage cart by a HAL baggage handler. We think what happened was that our cabin was changed after we left the luggage with the old cabin number on the tags. We hoped that it hadn't been put on the other ship that was at the dock that day. It was an unusually hot day for Vancouver so we had not even carried a sweater or jacket with us as we had only a 15 minute drive to Canada Place. However, after we finally got our bags all went wonderfully smoothly and it comforted us to know that lots of other people waited until the first port in Juneau to get their luggage as the airlines had lost the luggage. I was amazed to hear that there were even some passengers who actually missed the boat in Vancouver!!! Some of them thought the ship left at 5:30 and not 5:00. Imagine not looking at your tickets to check the time of departure.

I was really tired when I got home but it is a week later now and I feel rested. I could jump on that ship today and do it all over again in a heartbeat. I think that Holland America does a wonderful job and I would highly recommend the line and this itinerary to anyone.

I would be happy to answer any questions about the ship or the trip.

TTFN Nora in Beautiful Vancouver