in response to questions:
we were on the "volendam" and cruised august 4th last year.
regarding our specific dislikes with the cruise, they were largly due to poor or lacking service overall. we have cruised with ncl (who i was'nt all that impressed with) and disney (twice) before. we were used to friendly staff who took care of everything, and if a problem arose were on top of it immediatly. on hal the room stewards seemed to be stretched too thin-if you had a question, request or problem with your room you could not get assistance from anyone other than the steward assigned to you (and if they were on their break, be it 15 minutes or a 2 hour break, you would not recieve assistance from anyone else). the staff at the bars were horrible, most did not know the first thing about very basic bartending (many bar guests would have to return drinks to the bartender and have to explain to them how to make them-scewdrivers and white russians
). alot of things on board just seemed odd-the coffee, espresso area never had anything other than cream available (no milk of any type-said it was'nt their policy to have it there), but the bars had no cream available (used 1% milk for any cocktails that called for cream, again saying it was their policy)???
the kid's club was a major disappointment for us. we knew ahead of time that there was no way it would compare to disney's-but we had heard alot of positive things about "club hal". club hal on our ship was "club nothing". the kids were given navigators at the begining of the cruise that listed the activites for each age group, but with the exception of the teenagers-all of the other groups were in the same room doing the same things all together. the area for the kids was about half the size of a stateroom, had a tv/vcr and 2 computers (neither of which were available for the kids to use more than 4 hours during the entire 7 days). the kids club ran from 9-12, 2-5 and 7-10 (not open during time in ports). if your child did not have sign out privledges and was inclined to want to leave (or got bored and "antsy") you would be instructed to call the kid's club every half hour from whereever you were on board to check in (no pager system).
because we had such positive experiences on disney we thought we might have been "spoiled", and were being overcritical of our experience with hal-until we used their spa services. the staff in the spa was similar to the disney staff-friendly, helpful, genuinly nice. we were so taken aback by the difference between the spa staff and the crew that i finaly questioned some of the spa staff about the big difference in attitude. they all gave me the same response: hal's change in tipping policy. we cruised 2 months following the change in hal's policy to automatic tipping, and we were experiencing what many passengers had remarked to the spa staff regarding-lack of service, lack of pride in customer service...the spa staff were contracted by steiner and not employees of the cruise line, they shared with us that when hal instituted the auto tipping for employees many of the employees had taken the attitude of just doing what you needed to do "to get by"
.
we also spoke with the director of the kid's program, we had learned that he had previously been a cm on disney. we asked him what the deal was with hal. he told us that hal was pushing publicly to being more "family friendly" and had hired several prior disney cm's with the promise of developing their kid's programs-but had not backed it with any support (he basicly got staff with no training, that did'nt "sign on to work with kids"). he remarked that most of the prior disney c.m.'s left as soon as their contracts with hal expired to go back to disney.
so-as far as hal goes for us: we were not impressed. i don't think that even if we had gone without our kids we would have been impressed. i would never hesitate to cruise alaska again, it is the greatest cruising experience visualy that i could ever imagine (ice flows, glacier bay, whales, the northern lights...), i would just look at the other cruiselines available.
we were on the "volendam" and cruised august 4th last year.
regarding our specific dislikes with the cruise, they were largly due to poor or lacking service overall. we have cruised with ncl (who i was'nt all that impressed with) and disney (twice) before. we were used to friendly staff who took care of everything, and if a problem arose were on top of it immediatly. on hal the room stewards seemed to be stretched too thin-if you had a question, request or problem with your room you could not get assistance from anyone other than the steward assigned to you (and if they were on their break, be it 15 minutes or a 2 hour break, you would not recieve assistance from anyone else). the staff at the bars were horrible, most did not know the first thing about very basic bartending (many bar guests would have to return drinks to the bartender and have to explain to them how to make them-scewdrivers and white russians
). alot of things on board just seemed odd-the coffee, espresso area never had anything other than cream available (no milk of any type-said it was'nt their policy to have it there), but the bars had no cream available (used 1% milk for any cocktails that called for cream, again saying it was their policy)???the kid's club was a major disappointment for us. we knew ahead of time that there was no way it would compare to disney's-but we had heard alot of positive things about "club hal". club hal on our ship was "club nothing". the kids were given navigators at the begining of the cruise that listed the activites for each age group, but with the exception of the teenagers-all of the other groups were in the same room doing the same things all together. the area for the kids was about half the size of a stateroom, had a tv/vcr and 2 computers (neither of which were available for the kids to use more than 4 hours during the entire 7 days). the kids club ran from 9-12, 2-5 and 7-10 (not open during time in ports). if your child did not have sign out privledges and was inclined to want to leave (or got bored and "antsy") you would be instructed to call the kid's club every half hour from whereever you were on board to check in (no pager system).
because we had such positive experiences on disney we thought we might have been "spoiled", and were being overcritical of our experience with hal-until we used their spa services. the staff in the spa was similar to the disney staff-friendly, helpful, genuinly nice. we were so taken aback by the difference between the spa staff and the crew that i finaly questioned some of the spa staff about the big difference in attitude. they all gave me the same response: hal's change in tipping policy. we cruised 2 months following the change in hal's policy to automatic tipping, and we were experiencing what many passengers had remarked to the spa staff regarding-lack of service, lack of pride in customer service...the spa staff were contracted by steiner and not employees of the cruise line, they shared with us that when hal instituted the auto tipping for employees many of the employees had taken the attitude of just doing what you needed to do "to get by"
.we also spoke with the director of the kid's program, we had learned that he had previously been a cm on disney. we asked him what the deal was with hal. he told us that hal was pushing publicly to being more "family friendly" and had hired several prior disney cm's with the promise of developing their kid's programs-but had not backed it with any support (he basicly got staff with no training, that did'nt "sign on to work with kids"). he remarked that most of the prior disney c.m.'s left as soon as their contracts with hal expired to go back to disney.
so-as far as hal goes for us: we were not impressed. i don't think that even if we had gone without our kids we would have been impressed. i would never hesitate to cruise alaska again, it is the greatest cruising experience visualy that i could ever imagine (ice flows, glacier bay, whales, the northern lights...), i would just look at the other cruiselines available.
