Sailing on a short preview cruise of Holland America Line’s latest Pinnacle-class ship brought a front row seat to ten unique parts of Holland America Line. These are not ten little things we found on Nieuw Statendam but ten big parts exclusive to Holland America Line, some of which might be seen on other ships in the fleet.

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How Holland America Line Might Earn Michelin Recognition-

We have sailed on a number of cruise lines that could qualify. Holland America Line, led by Master Chef Rudi Sodamin and their esteemed Culinary Council, have all the bases covered. Intimate Rudi’s Sel De Mer could be the venue that stars first.

Not sure how significant this is? There are no cruise line venues with Michelin stars. We have seen Michelin starred chefs like Giuesppe Argentino on sister-line Seabourn for the Seabourn Food & Wine Cruise series not long ago. But no starred restaurants. This is going to be a hot topic in the very near future, so let’s take a quick look at what it takes to earn a Michelin star.

Michelin focuses entirely on the food. Stars are awarded as follows:

• One star: A good place to stop, a very good restaurant in its category, the cuisine is prepared to a consistently high standard.
• Two stars: This restaurant is worth going out of your way for, has excellent cuisine plus skillfully and carefully crafted dishes of outstanding quality
• Three stars: This restaurant is worth a special trip to experience with exceptional cuisine where distinctive dishes are precisely executed, using the very best ingredients.

Rudi’s Sel De Mer could be a contender here in time.

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Shopping on cruise ships, to me, is a lot like shopping in airports. Lots of name brands and an odd selection. Not so on Holland America Line’s Nieuw Statendam. Name brands yes, odd selection not so much.

Well-stocked with a wide variety of sizes in nearly all styles should be reason enough to browse the stores of Nieuw Statendam. Very large and very small sizes are both plentiful. Styles range from casual you might want to wear lounge around your comfortable stateroom to just shy of the formal wear one might want for an elegant dining night.

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So you’re into the destinations visited on your itinerary and plan to do something other than stay on the ship. You could just go ashore and figure it out on your own. The ship will not stop someplace where it is unsafe to do so. You could also embrace the cruise line’s touring option as simply as ordering a tour each day, online, for each stop along the way. You can do that from home too. Or you can go deep to fully embrace the Holland America Line EXC programing.

Here is where we usually separate cruise lines into two different groups

We Have Organized Tours Available For Purchase
OR
We Can Engage Destinations As Much As You Want to

Holland America Line speaks to both groups before designing a third.

Travelers could simply visit the Holland America Line website, hover over THE EXPERIENCE tab then click Shore Excursionand proceed to book as we might normally do with any other cruise line.

Or we could hover over THE EXPERIENCE tab then click Explorations Central to visit an entirely different way to engage destinations.

The Holland America Line EXC program is one that engages, to whatever our desired level of engagement is. It’s very much NOT a one-size-fits-all program.

“Explorations Central™ (EXC™) is immersive onboard programing designed to make your journey more engaging, vivid and meaningful, ” says Holland America Line on its website, adding “From EXC Talks,™ to EXC Encounters™ to a chat with your EXC Guide™, you’ll feel the spirit of a region come to life.”

Holland America Line has done a lot of work on their existing tour program, bringing us their award-winning EXC Tours program numbering more than 4,000 tours in over 500 ports. 

Also a work in progress, Explorations Central just became available in 2017. To emphasize the value of their tours are, Holland America Line offers a Best Price Guarantee program, available on nearly all ships and itineraries. 

The idea is to go about travel in an organized way as opposed to walking off the ship when it gets to a port. My advice on touring with Holland America Line:

• Embrace online resources and make your best guess on which tours would work for you.
• Upon boarding, do directly to the EXC Explorations Central Desk to talk about it. You will most likely change one or more of your selections after talking to an onboard destination expert.

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New ships usually have the latest technology in place to keep us safe, on course, connected and more. Still, a nicely-equipped ship goes beyond having plenty of places in staterooms to charge electronic devices or an app that works onboard for hand-held daily organizing.

They will have a walking track that runs around the outside of the ship, providing panoramic views of the ocean or places the ship might stop along the way. They will also have other rather low-tech features that don’t get very much attention. Like a place for service dogs to do their business.

I never really thought about it. Where do service animals go to the bathroom? There were service animals aplenty on our sailing too. Many enjoyed this grassy area I passed by on the wraparound promenade deck of Nieuw Statendam.

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As cruise line dress codes go, Holland America Line’s is about as ambiguous as any other cruise line.

They do not mess around with odd dress codes that difficult to translate into what is hanging in your closet at home. No Casually Elegant here: It’s Formal Night…which actually makes sense in practice.

The Reality We See On Every Ship:
The people who want to dress up are going to dress up.
The people who do not want to dress up are not going to dress up.
No one is going to be celebrated upon arrival in the dining venue for the selection of their ensemble or turned away from the dining room for wearing jeans.

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The old metaphor goes
“if you’re going to do it, do it right”.
At Holland America Line when it comes to the Food & Beverage offerings, that might updated to
‘if you were going to do it right, go away. That’s just a starting place here’

The aforementioned Holland America Culinary Council could have been a ‘too many cooks in the kitchen’ sort of situation rather easily. Wise alignment with a congenial bunch of celebrated chefs has each contributing to a culinary program of which the sum that is far more than its individual parts.

I do not believe the Holland America culinary program is where it wants to be yet. This is more a work in progress with some exciting features that have yet to be fully utilized. Case in point: A button for drinks.

In the Lido Marketplace on Nieuw Statendam they were testing a new system. Push a button for paid beverage service (liquor, beer, wine, coffee drinks, etc) and someone comes to take your order. Testing at breakfast, lunch and dinner: It took no more than a minute at any time.

How it works is rather simple: Each button is assigned a table. Each server is assigned a number of those tables. When the button is pushed a FitBit-like wrist device goes off and displays the table number where that button was pushed. It’s kind of like when we get pagers at a restaurant to know when our table is ready.

A better example in a horribly-crafted sentence: The Dive-In Grill where burgers are cooked to order and we get a pager to know when they are done so we can go back to doing absolutely nothing because we sure would not want to waste our time waiting for anything, ever and this is the only time I will mention that obvious undercurrent of reality on this ship. Such is the thought process going on in the heads of crew here.

No, really. It’s one complete run on thought. This may be a foreign thought so another example of that thought process:

Holland America Line offers a fresh fruit basket that they will replenish throughout the voyage, for everyone. Still, they don’t just put it in your stateroom, they give a little card where guests can choose the kind of fruit they want. Apparently our cabin steward did not see our completed list the first day and felt bad about it.

That evening, we received sliced bananas and peeled citrus fruit to make up for the oversight. At the time, we thought that a little odd, really did not need to eat bananas and citrus sections at the time, but appreciated the caring attitude there.

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Special Needs can often make a difference between sailing and not. They can be temporary needs or long term.

Holland America does the best job we have seen yet on dietary and physical concerns. Documentation of that statement is coming up shortly.

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Travelers who research cruise lines, especially those who visit Cruise Critic message boards as part of that effort, know things others do not.

This is not to say Cruise Critic members moaning, complaining, praising or expressing any other outcome is the advice count on in and of itself. Far from it. Still, those boards have value viewed with at least these two filters

• Repeated comment patterns– lots of people chiming in on a topic
• What They Don’t Talk About which in this case is entertainment

I’ll stop right there on this one or we’ll be here all day. Think about it though. Recall your last cruise, the music played on board and the other passengers you were sailing with. Did it fit?

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Nieuw Statendam’s Music Walk covers everything from admirable classical compositions to popular hits, rock & roll and more. A relationship with Holland America and Billboard, Rolling Stone and Lincoln Center brings a wide range of quality entertainment. There really is something for everyone here, even me.

The title of this one was originally Music Walk Brings Exciting Entertainment Revolution. Indeed it does, and the synergy between three different venues that make up the music walk is the key.

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This could be the most unique parts of Holland America today and is going to require a little work on your part to fully embrace. Begin by reading or reviewing The Collectively Intelligent Vision Continues At Holland America Line.

That article will set the tone for the next step in the evolution of Holland America Line represented by Nieuw Statendam. This is not a story of which new features are on the new ship and might be rolled out to other ships in the fleet.

For now, know this:
Loyal Holland America fans will find everything they ever liked about the Holland America of the past, as long as they might go back with the cruise line. Better yet: there are more opportunities to customize your experience than ever before and they are all worthy of your consideration.
Travelers New To Holland America Line will find more they like, whatever their background, cruise history and interest.

That interesting story is next.