DW and I just completed a short 4-day cruise on the Westerdam, - Vancouver to San Diego with a port call in Astoria, OR. This was our 5th HAL cruise and we found it a bit disappointing. Maybe because it was both a repositioning cruise and the 1st leg of a 34 day cruise, it felt different.
The cabin steward was OK, but in a deluxe suite we've come to expect more than just OK. Maybe HAL has assigned too many cabins to each steward, but there was a lack of attention to detail. Despite this, we boosted the mandatory tip by a few bucks a day to maintain "good tipping kama."
The dining room service was not the quality and promptness of past cruises. The wine stewards could hardly be bothered.
The quality of the main dining room food was down from the past as well. Of the 4 nights, only once was my meat cooked as ordered. DW had the same problem. The portions seem not only smaller, but that's actually a good thing, but were not presented as well.
We also dislike the HAL policy of allowing smoking on the verhandas. At least the smoker next to us was down wind when we were at sea.
There wasn't even the usual end of cruise questionaire to fill out. Maybe they didn't care what anyone on board for just 4 out of the 34 days thought.
On the plus side, embarking and disembarking were smooth and efficient and the Pinnacle Grill was as good as ever.
Astoria is an interesting port-of-call with rental cars easy to get. Enterprise is the closest, about a mile away, and if you get back while the office is open, they'll give you a ride back to the ship. We explored Washington's Long Beach peninsula while others got cars to go south on the coast or even into the OR wine country.
We will probably give HAL at least 1 more try in hopes that this cruise was an anomaly.
HAL in decline?
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We have had 3 HAL cruises over a span of several years, the last 2 years ago. We have enjoyed them all. The only area that we have noted a decline was in food in the main dining room. We usually had our dinners there and breakfast and lunch at the Lido. We never had breakfast or lunch in the main dining room. On one occassion we ate in the Italian restuarant. The main dining room was so-so. On our first cruise the food was very good all around. Maybe they are trying to steer people to the extra cost Pinnacle?
Never sailed with HAL. My mom has several times, including a recent Northern European trip to St. Petersburg, and couldn't stop raving about it.
HAL's boarding and disembarking is impressively fast and organized. That is the only good thing I can say about HAL when comparing it to Princess (the only 2 line I have cruised with).
Like everything else, the cost keeps going up but not what they can charge. As a result, quality goes down. I have seen the same decline on both Princess and Celebrity. I have not cruised on RCL and Carnival for the past 3 years so I cannot comment on any changes there. (As to NCL, it was a totally diffferent story, and it's been at least 5 years).
When the lobster dinner (at Celebrity) offered only 1/2 a lobster tail, it told the cost cutting story loud and clear. (It used to be 2 lobster tails the time before last).
The number of service staff seems to be less as well as we have seen our cabin steward less often, and dining service slower.
I thought that the whole cruise industry had slipped. Our last trip on HAL was good but (as above) the food was less than great. Also the embarkation at Barcelona (2010) was tedious and the agent for whom neither English or Spanish was a first or even minimally fluent language got our accounts totally messed up.
However, we took a Viking cruise this year and the service and food were great. Almost all my friends who have done river cruises have been enthusiastic.
To be fair river cruises accommodate far fewer passengers than a cruise ship so it is less challenging to be efficient.