Pros and Cons of Holland America Koningsdam | Honest Review

Hey everybody, I'm Josh.

And I'm Rachael.

And we are about to disembark from the Holland America Koningsdam.

This was our first time on this ship and we're gonna tell you what we liked and maybe disliked about it. Let's go!

All right, so as Rachael said, this is our first time on Holland America, first time on Koningsdam. Kind of goes together, right? We ended up getting this as a free casino offer. Originally—

Free.

Yeah, it wasn't truly free, but it was basically through Wynn Las Vegas, and then we did a tier match, offer match that got us into a Veranda room for a deeply discounted price.

Especially when you're talking Alaska.

Right, it was about $1,600, which was a great value because this room would have cost about $4,900. So if you lose a lot of money casinos like me, you should go ahead and do that offer.

It's not lose a lot of money, it's prepaying.

Correct. So we ended up doing an itinerary that started in Vancouver, it will end in Vancouver, and we ended up going to Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan.

We also did Glacier Bay National Park.

Yes. Starting off from the check-in process, it was slow.

It was very slow. We haven't seen a whole lot of options on why it happens, but we think we figured it out.

Yeah.

We're sailing from a foreign country and Technically, Canada into America. So we had to go through US customs before we got on the ship. Which made a lot more sense as we're stood in line. It did take about an hour. The thing on this that I didn't like is we've been able to pull up our boarding pass through our cruise ship app and we weren't able to do that on this one. So they had to print us off a little ticketed receipt at check-in. It didn't take her long, luckily.

No.

And we only had to show it a couple of times. It was very inconvenient not to have that on the app.

Yeah, the nice thing though, once we did get on the ship, is our room was ready right away.

Oh, really?

Which is not always a common occurrence. And we got on at a decent hour.

I think it was like 1 o'clock and it was ready.

Yeah, so that was really nice. We are in a Veranda room and it's an awesome room, by the way.

It is.

Because it has an extended balcony.

I was gonna say, I don't know what the little code is, but I'm sure Josh can put it on the screen or down below.

Yeah, you need to look for this.

You need to look for this specific code and have Almost double the size balcony of what the upper levels have.

It's true.

Yeah, it's on Deck 4 and it's all the space you'll ever need. If you expect to spend time on the Veranda, you should get out there.

The other nice part is being on Deck 4, most of the stuff here on Koningsdam happened on 2 and 3. Yeah, so we were just real quick to go to any of the spots.

Unless you're always going to the buffet or to the pool, you're in a good spot.

The room itself—

Yeah, the room itself, walking in is tight. Extremely tight. They have your closet and storage on the right-hand side. They have your bathroom on the left-hand side. And it's just— it's tight fit.

Yeah, I would say maybe 1.5 people tight. Like, it is tight fit.

But there is a surprising amount of storage. When I first got in here, I was thinking that there was not enough storage. Once you start putting things away, there's sneaky spots that was able to hold everything though.

There were 2 full-size closets with multiple hangers and shelves in The closets as well. That was very handy. They also had an area where there was refrigerator cooler. It wasn't in the way. It almost looks like it's right there, but there's shelving and drawers above it and below it.

I also like that there is a storage spot for all your papers because we're not the kind of people that are going to throw away papers. We're cruise people. Everybody has to keep that itinerary, and Holland America apparently gives you a ton of Papers every single day.

And about every single port. So it wasn't just what was happening on the cruise ship. It was like a map of the port and then other pieces as well. It was— there was a lot of paper.

There's like 3 to 5 handouts every day. And so being able to put it right underneath the TV was very nice and convenient. I will say the outlet situation was good.

It was good for a ship that's probably coming up on 10 years old.

Yeah, 8 to 10 years old. So it's not the newest ship, but it does have a good variety. And it also has USB ports. It has European ports. It's got plenty of US ports. We did not have any issues.

No, we did not. Another sneaky area which I found for storage I have never seen before— there were 2 drawers underneath the bed.

Yeah.

It was interesting.

I think it's for housekeeping, but Rachael said I could have put stuff under. I was too nervous to. One thing that was a little bit of a downside though is that there's not a table other than a tiny coffee table that just sits in the middle and takes up a lot of space. space in a tight spot. Um, so if you want to be able to like eat breakfast in the morning, somebody's sitting at a mirror and somebody's probably sitting on the bed or sitting on the couch by themselves. So that was kind of inconvenient.

Yeah, because even the outdoor area with the balcony, it has just a very small round— I would say good enough for—

yeah, you're not—

cups of coffee or 2 glasses.

You're not eating out there.

No.

Bathroom is— it's a hit or miss spot. The shower is great.

But there's not a lot of storage in the bathroom.

There's very little storage. There's— it's one sink and it's, it's a little tight space. But the least liked part of the bathroom—

The angle of the toilet. I don't know what Holland America is thinking about that toilet, but it is weird.

Yeah, it really looks like it could be on the flat side, but instead it's at an angle so that you basically are sitting with your knees touching the shower.

Yeah.

Or you have to do sideways, which sitting sideways on a toilet is weird.

I do think they do that for the enhanced shower size.

I think so too.

Ladies, there is a lady bar in there. They also have an adjustable shower head. So if you don't want to get your hair wet, you can bring it down. I do like some of those options. And one of the coolest things I found about this bathroom is shampoo, conditioner, and body wash all separate. Yes.

And also a nice thing that we saw on our— in our many papers day one is that you can sign up to have Turndown service at night. So it's not just cleaning up in the morning, but also in the evening, which we did appreciate.

You know, another thing I appreciated that I saw in there was the fact that you could order extra pillows, extra blankets.

And we did.

Yeah, any other amenities you may need, you could either do that from their app or hand it to your cabin steward right away, and they were more than willing to help you out.

Yeah, they also gave us blankets.

Mm-hmm.

Like throw blankets for your lap. So that was really convenient to be able to have that. So you're not taking your bed linens off if you want to go stand on the veranda while it is chilly outside. It is Alaska.

Yeah. One of the only issues I could find with this room, in my opinion, was simple, and I probably should have just asked our cabin steward day one, but the remote for the TV— I don't know if the battery needs changed or I just needed a new remote. It was like—

It was a pain.

You had to be at the right angle holding your mouth the right way to get it to change channels or wherever you were at. And I wanted to be looking through because they offer such a cool option of movies on demand that you don't have to pay for.

Yeah, lots of them. Yeah, so that was really cool because a lot of times you just have generic TV that nobody wants to watch. But I think we thought that we weren't going to spend as much time in the room, but then we wanted to because it's cold outside.

Yeah, make sure to hit that subscribe button if you want to see our full Alaskan experience while on Holland America's Koningsdam. We will have daily vlogs showing some of the best tips and tricks to make the most of your Alaskan cruise, including excursions to Tracy Arm Fjord, the White Pass Railway and some amazing wildlife encounters. We also showcased some of the best food and drink options in Juneau, Skagway, Ketchikan, and even Vancouver.

As far as dining goes, we were quite impressed for the most part.

We did Pinnacle Grill, which was included in our Have It All package. It is something that we purchased ahead of time, but that steakhouse was great.

It was great. Yeah, I mean, it was a little bit of slow service, but we were also like at the very end, which sometimes that kind of gets hit or miss. Yeah, but the food was delicious, the service was very good. We had a great time with that. As far as breakfast goes, we did do— there was a free hot breakfast that was room service a couple times. That was great. We did do breakfast in the buffet one of the days.

We also did an Alaska brunch in the main dining room.

Yeah, overall the food quality was very good.

Yes.

In the buffet, we did have some issues. We felt like the buffet process is quite slow.

Yeah, there are many times where you have to queue in a line to get served because a lot of it, they— it's not self-serve, they serve you. But the line is awkwardly set up because the stations are so close together. And in addition to that, they put some self-serve options in the middle of the line. Yeah, so it's very inconvenient and it just doesn't seem like a very smooth process when you're dealing with buffet.

Yeah, the food was good, but like, I think it's set up so that you're getting these fresh-made items. But then if you want anything else after that one fresh item, you're—

It takes forever.

Yeah, it's just slowing you down. And so we did not have the greatest buffet experience. The food quality was good if you could eat it while warm.

I'll tell you one of the coolest things I found on this ship was the option to order some quick casual bites from the eatery called New York Eats, or the pizzeria called New York Eats, and the burger place called Dive In. So there's burgers and hot dogs and french fries at Dive In. You can order it Pre-order it on your while you're sitting in your room, then wander up and get it. And same with the pizza. So you had fresh-made pizza, which I still say beats Sorrento's on Royal Caribbean as well as Celebrity.

I thought this was better pizza than Celebrity.

It was really good pizza.

Yes. So those casual dining options were much better than I expected.

Yeah.

There also are other specialty dining, but we did not partake. So there's Rudy's, which is like a seafood Mediterranean Tamarind, which is Asian, and there's a Morimoto by the Sea that they do now and then. Yeah, we didn't do either one. And there's also Canaletto, which is an Italian restaurant, which I hate the placement of it.

Yeah, it wasn't weird.

Canaletto is— yeah, it's, it's basically just at the very beginning of the buffet, but you don't even know it's different. Yeah, because I think that they're preparing the food at one half of the buffet at night, so I I like to be taken somewhere. I like to be feeling like I'm in a different environment when I'm paying extra for a specialty dining, and I didn't see that there.

Yes, agreed. Now for coffee, there was options, and their drip coffee was really good. So they did have multiple stations throughout the buffet area and on the pool deck, I believe, to get coffee. And then there was also an option for paid-for coffee down at Grand Dutch Cafe.

Which was great. Grand Dutch Cafe is their like standard, um, coffee place that's on the lower level in the middle of the ship. They have very good Dutch-style items. Yeah, like in the mornings— that's in the morning— we ended up having croissants there multiple times.

Yeah, that raspberry-filled croissant was delicious.

Yeah, super good. And then there's also like afternoon stuff. So after 11:30 you can get, um— we ended up having— I don't know what they all were called.

First tea was like that, um, Ham and cheese sandwich with an egg on it.

Yeah, like an open-faced ham and cheese sandwich with an egg.

And then today we had crepes or Dutch pancakes. They were technically—

So there was a savory crepe and as well as a sweet crepe. Yeah, it was really good. We also did brunch down in the main dining room, which I thought that was great, and it was very Alaskan themed. So I would hope that Holland does that in other areas if you're not going to Alaska, where they do a theming To the destinations that you're going to.

Yeah.

As well, in the MDR, we had a great experience. One night was faster than the other, but the food quality was good. They don't, they don't give you a hard time about ordering multiple dishes too.

No, but their serving size is appropriate. You're not getting like this ginormous serving that you're not able to eat either.

Yeah, so we were able to try a lot of different things. We weren't shamed, and they were good. Shows and entertainment is a mixed bag.

I would say so too, but I also don't think we came on this expecting to have great shows and entertainment.

We did not. But we had also heard some people say that Holland is not the best at entertainment in the theater.

Yeah.

So main theater, we're, we're very accustomed to Royal Caribbean and Celebrity, which I think that they have a very good over-the-top singing and dancing shows.

Yeah.

And here it ended up being 4 nights where a magician or comedian One night was a movie and 2 nights were just dancing. Just dancing with pre-recorded music.

I was like, to pre-recorded music?

Yeah.

Yeah, it was weird. And the theater is pretty, but it doesn't look like it's very big.

No, it's not very big, but they do have a lot of live music. If live music is your thing, you know, there's BB King's, there's Billboard Onboard, and there's Rolling Stone.

But Billboard Onboard had dueling pianos, which we really enjoyed.

Yeah, that's our style. So it was nice because it would go in between Dueling Pianos and then Rolling Stone Rock Room, like alternating every hour or so. And then BB King had music all the time. So if you're looking for live music at night, you have plenty of options. And that's basically from 7 PM on.

Yeah. Now during the day, they do offer many, many options of activities. I know there was pickleball. There were like, you could find daily crosswords and puzzles. One of the coolest things I found on board here was a library where you went in and they had a multitude of books that you could check out and just return. And it's truly on the honor system, but there wasn't just one copy of a book, there were multiple copies. I thought that was one of the coolest things I've ever seen.

Yeah, they also have an art room with an art instructor. They have bingo, they have Deal or No Deal.

I didn't—

They have trivia.

Did they have trivia? I wasn't sure. And then up in the crow's nest, they had a bunch of games, like board games.

Yeah.

So that was pretty cool as well.

So a wide variety of things to do during your sea day, whether you want to be in a group or not.

Yeah. There are 2 pools on deck. One is in an area where they can close the canopy. So the nice part is, is after you leave your port, likely you're going to be in cold Alaska and they're going to have to keep that closed. So it feels like a solarium. Now it's not an adults-only area, and there are 3 hot tubs with this It's not a very big pool at all.

And the hot tubs are tiny.

Yeah, hot tubs are even smaller.

I think there's like one that's 8-person hot tub and then 2 4-people hot tubs. Even if you have 4, it would be—

I was gonna say, you better be friends in that 4.

You're gonna be touching knees with each other.

Yeah, it was interesting. The thing about the pool deck that I really did enjoy is up on the pool deck there were many seats that were already set for eating. So you have your Dive Bar up there, which is your burgers, hot dogs, and fries, and then you have the pizza place and And that was easily accessible by all the areas to have a quick bite to eat.

And they also have movies there. So they do set those up for you in the evening. And on the back of the ship, there is another pool. It is much smaller and there's 2 hot tubs. We did enjoy that during one of our days that we were leaving port. It's a beautiful setting.

It's cold.

Yeah, unfortunately in Alaska, it's not warm.

Yeah, it's definitely much colder than the other one.

Yeah, but it's a beautiful setting and if you can like Stick your head out of the water every now and then, you can see a beautiful view.

The other part I love about the pool deck, just like on Celebrity, is you don't have to check out towels.

Thank goodness.

There's so many towel options. You just grab one and return it.

Now as far as excursions go, one, they're expensive.

They are.

But they are organized. We ended up doing 2 excursions through the ship.

Yep.

As far as organization goes, it was really good. One of the days, it was a small group, 140 people did one excursion. And so we all met in the theater. Everything went very smooth.

Yes.

The second one we did where we met, uh, on the dock and that also was smooth. And they have your tickets on your app.

Yeah, which makes it very convenient. You don't have to worry about forgetting your ticket in the room and having to go back. They do encourage you when you're doing your excursions to make sure you're carrying ID. And depending on the excursion, you might have to carry your passport as well.

We did go to the gym. The gym was nice.

It is. It's up on the 9th floor, I believe. It does face forward so you can see outside to the ocean. If it's super bumpy and wavy, beware of that. Yeah, we had a little bit of issue with that on the first day we were up there because it was jolting around.

And we intended to go today, but we were— there was seasickness happening on the lower level, so we knew we weren't gonna go up there to do it today. Yeah, but it is a good amount of things as well as a wide variety.

Yeah, they also have an area that is just used for stretching and another area used for cycling. So I think that was good. It's right off of the spa and salon as well.

Which the spa looks very nice. We did not partake there. They do have a thermal spa which has a gigantic hot tub.

That's oddly placed though.

It is, but you could get a thermal suite day and then there's like stone chairs that you sit with a very beautiful view. Saunas in there that you could partake in.

The overall vibe of the ship, I would say it surprised me. We were kind of expecting a little bit more Hoity-toity, a much older crowd, and we probably were middle-of-the-road age, I would say.

I think so.

Yeah, there were families that had younger kids with them, um, and there were younger couples all the way up to older couples cruising as well. We are cruising at the end of May this time, so that could be a little bit of a different factor, but I thought there was a good vibe. And yeah, it was— this could be an Alaska thing— it was a lot more casual than we expected.

Yeah, there was a lot more flannels in the dining room than I expected, even on formal night.

Yeah, and hoodies.

Right, which we fully expected to come in and think that people were going to be wearing tuxedos all the time, especially on formal night. They weren't. We didn't feel bad about the way we were dressed.

Even on the first formal night, we decided to skip it and just go have pizza.

Yeah.

And then we saw the second formal night, we're like, never mind, we can go to the main dining room.

We could have gone to all these things.

And the layout of the ship, I think it's easy. There is a small confusing part. It's whenever you take the elevators, they have them named by musicians.

Like Beethoven, Mozart.

So when you're— the door opens, it says Beethoven floor. And if you don't know that Beethoven is the 4th, I think 4th floor.

I'm pretty sure it shows it in a number, but some people are bothered by that.

Yeah, that would be like the weirdest thing. But otherwise, the number's still on the side when the door opens, so you can find it. But that's sometimes a little bit confusing.

Yeah, I thought the layout was pretty Pretty standard, but the one downside for me is that we're very accustomed to there being like a Royal Promenade, a Centrum, a grand location where you could do all the ship stuff. And part of the issues we had is like Orange Night. It was in BB King's, which there's only so much space for people to be there. It was very crowded. And it filled up an hour before the Orange Party even happened. So I had my fancy orange shirt and I didn't get to use it.

Yeah, we stepped in there and there just was no extra seating. There's no place to stand. You almost feel like you're stacked in front of people and it just—

Yeah.

It wasn't enjoyable.

Yeah, so I would like— I would like it a little bit more if there was that grand area for all of the ship to be.

Yeah.

Or close to be if people wanted to partake, but it didn't feel like you could.

Yes.

As far as the casino goes, that's why we're here. You know, it was a casino offer. It's not large.

No.

But it had a non-smoking area and it had a decent variety of games. We even played some table games.

Yeah, and it was interesting to me that it wasn't as packed as I was expecting it to be. At least the first couple nights. It did ramp up later on during the week. But the first couple nights we could sit 2 of us to a machine and not have any problems.

Yeah, I believe that the table games, it was starting around $15 minimums. But, you know, obviously slot machines, you can do as much as you want. The one thing that threw us off a little bit was they have a cashless system where once you put the money in on your card, it's basically on your card for the rest of the trip. So if you're like us where sometimes we like to play where we split the money, don't put all of it on one ticket like we did night 1 and suddenly couldn't get the money off.

Yeah, the other part of this that I— and maybe it's just because We're not used to it. I can't figure out the casino loyalty program. I don't know how many points I need to make it to a specific level. Maybe there is no levels. I don't know. But I do know that one of the ladies next to me said, oh, as soon as you hit this, you get so many drinks a day. Well, we hit that.

But we couldn't find anything.

I don't know. There's just no signage that kind of explains it. I'm sure if we would have done our research, probably would have known a little bit ahead of time. But it's just a small piece that while you're on the ship I would like some explanation on it. And maybe all you had to do was ask, but it is one of those things like we're used to having that sheet that tells you exactly like this many points gets you a cabin, this one gets you extra free drinks.

Yeah, on Royal Caribbean and Celebrity, there's a sheet at the host desk that you can walk up to and it'll say at 1,200 points you can get a free interior cabin on select, select ships. At 2,500 you get free drinks basically for the year, you get a Prime Cruise, you get Oh, these cups, yeah. So that, that's convenient. And here there was, there was no mention of it around.

Yes.

One of the unfortunate things that we did see was that it felt like at a lot of the bars it was either understaffed or there's a process system that really did not make things fast.

I think it's part process and part understaffed. You having to sign a ticket every time you get a drink to me seems ridiculous. You should know, like, yeah, I'm paid for, I'm good to go. There's a little sticker, there's initials on your card, so you know you're Packages working.

Yeah.

But they still have you sign every single thing.

Everywhere but the main dining room. Main dining room, you could just ask for it, and honestly, those drinks came faster than anywhere else on the ship.

Any other service, yes.

But you could be sitting at the bar by yourself or like 2 other people. There's a lot of times there's just 1 bartender instead of 2 or 3, which you might see on some other cruise ships. And with the process of printing out the receipt and scanning the cards and stuff over and over, Even if you're doing multiple drinks at the same place, it just takes a lot more time. And you saw a lot more people stacking up waiting for their drinks.

I agree. I think that was probably one of the biggest downfalls between that and we already talked about it, but the buffet system. Those were a couple, and I truly think they're process issues that—

Yeah.

Could be improved and it would make your experience quite a bit. But overall, I really enjoyed Holland America.

I did too. I had a great time and our Room steward Andy was amazing.

Top-notch.

Always greeted us by name.

Yeah, that was exciting.

Very friendly. And we had a great time on Holland.

Now, would we come back?

Yeah.

It's hard to say. I was gonna say it's hard to say because are you gonna offer us to come back?

Well, I think that's the key.

Did we earn enough? Did we spend enough to come back?

So I would come back if the itinerary is right.

Right.

I feel like the ship itself is— it's right along the same lines as a lot of other cruise ships we've been on.

Yep.

The experience was good though.

Yeah, it was a good experience, and I really liked some of the itinerary-specific options and theming that Holland America offers. So I wouldn't, I wouldn't say this is our last Holland America cruise.

I wouldn't either. If you're enjoying our videos, don't forget to hit that like and subscribe.

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Later.