Holland America Line Stein Kruse, President and CEO Holland America ms Prinsendam - a cruiseship with reliability issues Seattle, Washington

We cruised on the ms Prinsendam in Norway from 12 to 26 June 2012. The ms Prinsendam has many positives and many negatives.

On the positive side:
- devoted cabin stewards
- devoted dining room matre d' and staff

On the negative side:
- this ship has reliability issues.  As an example we were scheduled to dock in Bergen at 10 AM.  Because of ship power problems (some passengers claimed that the ship was immobile during the night for several hours), we finally docked in Bergen at 5 PM, almost 7 hours LATE.  There is not a lot you can do in Bergen on a Saturday after 5 PM; so our Bergen stop was a bit of a write-off

- in the Lofoten Islands, we were scheduled to dock. Instead, for reasons unclear to us, we were on tender and transported from ship-to-shore (and back) in lifeboats. On the ms Prinsendam, the lifeboats have this dark exhaust cloud surrounding them and you ask yourself why are we polluting pristine places like the Lofoten Islands? On our 17h00 return trip to the ship, our lifeaboat lacked functioning wipers and, in light rain, it was interesting to see the sailor steering the lifeboat struggle to get any visibility

- our stateroom (264) badly needs refurbishment.  The ceiling has 2 warped plates with missing and falling screws, the furniture has been banged up and screwed back together and the moldy rim around the bath encouraged us to shower

- it is customary, at the end of the cruise, to publish a cruise log with some cruise data. In our mind, the data should be accurate.  If we cruised 3500 nm, the log should say 3500 nm and not 3200 nm.  If producing this log is too much work, etc., we suggest not publishing it.

In summary, the ms Prinsendam has devoted cabin staff and the La Fontaine dining room staff were superb.  The ship and staterooms are showing signs of age and there are some reliability issues.  More importantly, the officers should consider passengers as more than ballast: in most cases, we are reasonable individuals than accept and understand issues when time is taken to explain them to us.