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Holland America Line

MS Maasdam

Your Rating:
Reviewed by:Jim Crider
# previous cruises: 10 to 20
Date of Trip: February 17, 2005
Itinerary: Caribbean - Eastern

This was an expensive mistake. It's old, slow, worn out, moves around more than it should, and was laid out internally by someone who had no consideration for its passengers being able to get easily from one place to another.

In addition to excessive pitch and roll, much of the ship vibrates like an out-of-tune Magic Fingers bed when its underway at cruising speed. It's unpleasant at best.

Smoky. The asymmetric layout of the public spaces mean you can't avoid rude smokers who revel in cigar and pipe smoking indoors and blowing smoke in non-smokers' faces.

The Rembrandt show lounge has horrible sight lines, particularly from the balcony.

There's a strange escalator to nowhere in the atrium.

Stairs and elevators fore and aft only, nothing midship.

Most oddly, there is no way whatsoever to get from the front of the ship to the main level of the Rotterdam dining room in the aft portion of the ship without going up or down stairs, then back down or up to that level. Well and truly bizarre.

On the plus side, there was a full wrap-around promenade deck as well as access to the foredeck and several elevated observation decks over the front and rear of the ship. And the sliding dome roof over the pool was actually opened and closed at different times (although having it almost entirely closed while having the deck side BBQ with charcoal grills ablaze seemed, well, wrong).

Service: it started slow, but quickly improved. The service crew in the dining room was first rate. Alas that the food they served was... merely okay. The best meal we had on the trip was in the Pinnacle Grille, which is extra-cost to the tune of $20/head. That the 2nd best meal we had was a pizza lunch in St. Johns, Antigua, and the third best a double-cheeseburger from Wendy's in St. Thomas, should speak volumes about the quality of the food in the main dining room.

The Lido buffet (breakfast and lunch) was about par for the course. Nothing spectacular.

Room service? Ha! When they bothered to answer the phone (rarely -- at least once I had to have the front office intercede), it was 30-45 minutes to get simple sandwiches.

And there were several times (notably from 4:00-6:00 PM) where there was NO food service anywhere on the ship. As we had main (late) dinner seating at 8:30, having a few "midrats" available then would've been nice, but HAL doesn't think so, apparently, unlike most other cruise lines.

We had a Verandah "Suite" on the Navigation Deck. Despite what the marketroids at HAL call it, it wasn't really a suite, just a cabin with a balcony.

Space: okay.

Storage: not very good. Shortage of drawers, primarily.

Bathroom: itty-bitty whirlpool tub that was too small to actually use that way, and wildly variable water pressure from the shower that mostly hovered around "warm baby spit". No storage whatsoever in the bathroom save for a small tray at the base of the mirror.

Bed: good. "Three sheeting" to cover the (scratchy and infrequently washed) blanket a Good Thing. Plenty of pillows.

The room had a refrigerator/minibar (extra cost if you drank anything), TV and VCR. TV channels very, very limited, although the movie channels were nice. No interactive features on the TV (such as shore excursion booking, bill review, room service orders, etc.).

The balcony was small but adequate, with a chair, low table, and chaise lounge. Lots of salt crust on the door frame and bulkheads.

The production show cast was new for this cruise, and one of the shows ("On Track") was all-new. They did well. Too bad half the crowd couldn't see them because the sight lines in the lounge, particularly from the balcony, were simply ghastly. The room was shopworn and even the extruded aluminum nose molding on the stage was beat up.

We didn't attend many of the other shows as they didn't really interest us after the first couple nights proved disappointing. We did attend the Indonesian Crew Show, which was very good and had moments that were riotously funny.

We left from Norfolk, Virginia, had a sea day, stopped at HAL's private Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas, another sea day, then St. Thomas, Antigua, St. Maarten, and San Juan, Puerto Rico, then two and a half sea days back to Norfolk.

Norfolk: Nice place, we'll go back for a visit sometime. The port facility is evolving, but the ground crew is polite and efficient.

Half Moon Cay: Too bad it was somewhat chilly and cloudy until it was time to leave. Nice facilities, and we had one of the 9 private cabanas, which was also very nice.

St. Thomas: Here's where the wheels started to fall off. We were originally scheduled to be here until 8 PM, but that was changed to 6 PM, be onboard by 5:30. Which meant there was no way our 4.5 hour shore excursion to St. John's (prebooked online through HAL) would get back on time from its 1:30 PM departure. During the sea day prior, we attempted to figure out how they were going to pull that off. Shore excursion manager was VERY rude and said "It's not our fault". Front office (formerly Purser's Office) staff was useless, supervisor was VERY rude and said "It's not our fault". We cancelled, taking the 10% hit. St. Thomas is one of our favorite places, though, so we did some shopping, had the aforementioned lunch at Wendy's, and rode the Paradise Point skyride tram up to see the performing parrots and enjoy the views. As this was the first really warm day of the trip, we also took advantage of the new Cold Stone Creamery in the Havensight Mall near the pier and had a quick ice cream treat before returning to the ship.

St. Johns, Antigua, is evolving, but we took a bus tour and saw a lot of this very beautiful island. Good driver, good guide, and we were able to see things like Nelson's Dockyard, which is both gorgeous and historic. We were supposed to be there until 11 PM, but we left at 7 PM. I figured out why: as old as the passengers were, if they had to wait until midnight to open the shops and casino onboard, almost no one would be awake and shipboard revenue would suffer hugely!

St. Maarten: Wow. We were last here in 1998, when we had to tender because there was no cruise ship dock. It now has a fantastic dock and port facility. We went to the St. Maarten Park, which is the local zoo, and has an emphasis on parrots. Great! Phillipsburg has made a bunch of other improvements beside the cruise dock, adding a (concrete) boardwalk along the beach, with bars and restaurants, and sprucing up Front Street and Old Street (now Old Street Mall). Back Street still needs some help, though. You can easily (and safely) walk along the marinas between downtown and the cruise port. With 5 ships in town, including 3 with more than 3000 passengers each: Carnival Triumph, Caribbean Princess, and Explorer of the Seas, our 1200-odd passenger Maasdam, and the 1200 passenger Galaxy anchored and tendering, there were around 12,000 extra people in town, so it was indeed CROWDED.

San Juan: Another of our favorite places, but as we were only there for the morning (apparently just to clear Immigration), not much chance to do anything besides find our favorite harborside bench, watch the Silver Whisper disembark its well-heeled passengers, and take a few photos.

Sea Days 3 and 4: ugh.

Our cruising friends, who are 77 and 71, but still spry and active, said this bunch made them feel like teenyboppers. My wife and I, in our 30s, were among the youngest non-children-travelling-with-parents-and-or-grandparents aboard.

If there had been an emergency that rendered the elevators inoperable, a fair number of crew would've been dedicated to physically carrying passengers unable to navigate stairs to the lifeboat stations. These are people who like their Buick Park Avenues but think the Buick LeSabre is way too sporty.

HAL's reputation as "God's Floating Waiting Room" is thoroughly intact, based on this cruise.