Nieuw Statendam Review
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This was my first time on Holland America and it will be my last. Not because of anything the cruise line did but because of the caliber of cruiser on board. If you are a senior citizen, you will love this cruise, it seems to be geared more toward an older crowd. Shipboard activities leaned towards retirees I think. Games were bridge, majong and bingo. We played team trivia one day only to not play it again. The old crotchety lady who joined us and 2 other older cruisers, complained and shushed and berated us the whole time for being too loud and giving other teams the opportunity to hear our answers. And, she didn't contribute a single answer just bitched to us about,,"that's probably not right" Hello, our team got 12 out of 15 no thanks to her.
The ship itself is absolutely beautiful, the artwork throughout the ship is sublime and we were always finding something new tucked away in another area of the ship.
I am not sure if this is the norm for HAL but there were an awful lot of cruisers who were pushy, entitled, elitist and generally rude on our sailing. I saw several times where people with walkers or wheelchairs pushed there way into an already crowded elevator and push a floor several floors away so that the people already on the elevator had a difficult time getting off. When asked to let them through, the former, scoffed and got upset as though they were the only one on the elevator and it was for their own private use. I also witnessed at least once a day, someone berating or belittling the staff with very stupid and rude questions at the Lido Market. One lady got mad at the pasta server saying" Do you even know what your doing? You ARE going to cook that?!" Even the older gentleman in front of me rolled his eyes at the comment and said that "These are the things that give my wife and I comic relief over the next few months."
Cabin Review
Large Oceanview Stateroom
The cabin was very spacious and accommodated myself and 2 adult children with room to spare. Lots of places to hold everything we brought. On past cruises I brought an over the door shoe holder to have extra room and I definitely did not need that for this cabin. Bathroom was large and shower was wonderful, not cramped at all. Beds were very comfortable. My son slept on the "sofa bed" and he is 6'2". It was a little bit cramped but he said he was comfortable and fit on it well enough. The queen size bed is 2 smaller beds pushed together and the only way you could tell was there was a small trough running down the middle. My only complaint would have to be there is not much flat surface in the room for a room service tray if you are like us and had the desktop filled with paraphernalia. We were kind of messy in that regard. They do have a small table maybe 18" square that works fine for a tray though. The window is quite large and the view was relaxing.
Port Reviews
San Juan
Fun tour of old and new San Juan, we even got to go into the capital building.
Half Moon Cay
This was gorgeous! However, with 2 ships there at the same time there was well over 3000 people on the beach. Too many! Soft sand and beautiful turqoise warm waters.