Overview:
Oosterdam is a beautiful ship with fantastic cabins and average food/service. She is ideal for a first time cruiser, but I would not recommend her to the fans of HAL's S-class ships. I will attempt to grade all the areas of this review, from F being the worse, to A being the best. My overall grade for this cruise is B/B- with sub-par cuisine and dining room service making it lower than A.

Public Areas:
I found the public areas to be very tasteful and beautiful. I especially enjoyed the lobby and a pathway to the Northern Lights disco with its futuristic wall lighting. There was not a single room on the ship I did not enjoy. If you are a gambling fan, though, please keep in mind that the casino on this ship is tiny, no larger than that on a Celebrity Horizon or HAL Ryndam, for example, and both of these ships are about 50% as big as Oosterdam. The ship never felt crowded. (A)

Food and Service:
This area was the biggest let down of the cruise. We were a party of 11, had two different tables with different waiters and experienced the same issues. The food was edible, but not once did anything stand out as specifically delicious. For the lobster fans, it was served only once and was the smallest I have ever seen. There was no caviar. We had a late seating and our dinners never took less than two hours. Neither our waiter, nor his assistant spoke conversational English. When asked for suggestions, the response was that everything is good. The stakes had so much fat on them, that I did not eat either of my stakes on the two nights I ordered them. Interestingly enough, whenever our waiter or his assistant would see that someone did not touch / finish his / her meal, he would not ask if anything was wrong or offer something else instead, he’ll simply take the plate away. The maitre d’ showed up once for literally a few seconds asking if everything was ok. The main reason we chose HAL for this cruise was because of the fantastic 10 day cruise we took on Ryndam in 2002. On that cruise, we had a fantastic waiter and maitre d’, who would stop by everyday to tell us what was going on tonight and the following day on the ship (exactly the same experience with still better food on Celebrity’s Horizon in 2003), we ordered some oj / tomato juice the first day and it was on the table every time we would come back to the dining room. None of these niceties were evident on the Oosterdam. We did not try the alternative restaurant, but visually it looked very nice. In all honesty, I had a better dining experience on both Norway and Dolphin IV. (C-)

Cabins:
I stayed in a SS category mini suite. It was a very large room with a large balcony. There were three of us in the cabin and we still had enough space. Excellent room and excellent value. (A)

We also had 3 AA category balcony cabins among our group. These are nice cabins with tiny bathrooms that are smaller than those in standard HAL S-class cabins. (B)

Once couple in our group had an inside cabin. For the first time in my life, I became a fan of inside cabins. The room appeared very large (around 180/190 sq ft), was square rather than rectangular in shape, and had a nice size corner sofa. I would not hesitate to book an inside cabin (a larger one) on the Vista-class ship. (A)

Entertainment:
Your usual cruise fare – nothing super special. The production shows were OK, guest janglers and a comedian were sub-par, but an acapella from Canada, the Mikes, made my day. They were fantastic and definitely deserve an A.

Activities/ Itinerary:
We do not participate much in shipboard activities, therefore, I can’t comment on them. The itinerary was fantastic: Nassau, St. Martin, Tortola, Private Island ex- FLL. I have a new favorite Caribbean island, Tortola. I was also surprised at how inexpensive it is to live there comparing to other Virgin Islands. HAL’s private island is the best private island I’ve seen thus far (NCL and Princess). It was simply fantastic. (A)

Who Goes:
A cross-section of the white middle-age middle-class America. Since we traveled as the group, we mostly interacted amongst ourselves, especially that I haven’t seen some of my relatives for almost a decade. The average age my significantly lower that on my Ryndam cruise, being around 45-50 on this cruise. There was a large group of people in their 20s as well.

It seems to me the mega-ships really fall down is service. The automatic tipping CCL does tends to make the crew work less hard to please.

I firmly believe the cruise lines, put out mediocre food in the dining rooms to coerce one into the extra cost specialty restaurants

Based on my QE2 and SSNorway experience:
50k tons with 1100 passengers is pretty much the limit to good service.

quote:

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Originally posted by Dmitriy:
If anyone’s interested, I just submitted a review of my 01.04.004-01.11.04 Oosterdam cruise. I am pasting the text below.

Food and Service:
This area was the biggest let down of the cruise. We were a party of 11, had two different tables with different waiters and experienced the same issues. The food was edible, but not once did anything stand out as specifically delicious. For the lobster fans, it was served only once and was the smallest I have ever seen. There was no caviar. We had a late seating and our dinners never took less than two hours. Neither our waiter, nor his assistant spoke conversational English. When asked for suggestions, the response was that everything is good. The stakes had so much fat on them, that I did not eat either of my stakes on the two nights I ordered them. Interestingly enough, whenever our waiter or his assistant would see that someone did not touch / finish his / her meal, he would not ask if anything was wrong or offer something else instead, he’ll simply take the plate away. The maitre d’ showed up once for literally a few seconds asking if everything was ok. The main reason we chose HAL for this cruise was because of the fantastic 10 day cruise we took on Ryndam in 2002. On that cruise, we had a fantastic waiter and maitre d’, who would stop by everyday to tell us what was going on tonight and the following day on the ship (exactly the same experience with still better food on Celebrity’s Horizon in 2003), we ordered some oj / tomato juice the first day and it was on the table every time we would come back to the dining room. None of these niceties were evident on the Oosterdam. We did not try the alternative restaurant, but visually it looked very nice. In all honesty, I had a better dining experience on both Norway and Dolphin IV. (C-)

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quote:

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Originally posted by desirod7:
It seems to me the mega-ships really fall down is service.

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It was much better than on the (smaller) ZUIDERDAM, and certainly as good as any 50,000 GRT ship I've been on.

quote:

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I firmly believe the cruise lines, put out mediocre food in the dining rooms to coerce one into the extra cost specialty restaurants

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Besides that, it must be very difficult to maintain high quality on a very large ship.

GRAND PRINCESS and ZUIDERDAM both had good (but not great) food. VOYAGER OF THE SEAS varied from mediocre to terrible.