My family and I booked Holland America Line for our first-ever cruise experience, and it was such a refreshing way to spend quality time together. My sister bought a week-long all-inclusive family cruise package for eight via Costco Travel in December 2024 for a July 2025 Yukon adventure to Alaska and Victoria, Canada. This was our first cruise experience, and we were celebrating our mom’s 60th birthday—a diamond jubilee at sea.
My mental model going into the cruise was primed by what I remember from The Titanic movie, and ultimately, living a week on the Holland America Line Eurodam vessel felt very much like that (sans getting wrecked by an iceberg)! There were elements of elevated dining, ornate furnishings, and even the societal breakdown of class based on cabin fare (similar to Snowpiercer). I roomed with my brother, and our stateroom was taken care of by kind stewards from Indonesia (a former colony of the Dutch enterprise). There’s a whole social commentary to be said about the labor dynamics of multinational hospitality brands and the pocket universes they simulate, but for keeping the brevity of this post, I’ll distill it down to this: cruises are just like summer camp for adults.
Since I wanted to make the most of the experience, I signed my siblings, cousin, and myself up for as many activities as possible while on the cruise ship, ranging from doing early morning tai chi to completing an art scavenger hunt to collecting jewelry pieces to painting with watercolors. During the daytime, we sat through educational lectures to learn about the local Tlingit people, the lure of the Iditarod Race, and the lore of the cruise line industry. We also enjoyed evening entertainment hours, ranging from an illusionist show to a classical music concert to a comedy special to a Broadway ensemble. Each day on board offered expansive meal options, ranging from all-you-can-eat buffets to poolside snacks to high tea and fine dining. We never went hungry.
Land embarkations were also peppered throughout the week to give us fresh air. At Juneau, we walked through a trail with views of Mendenhall Glacier and detoured to Manila Square in Juneau and walked inside their Filipino Hall. We rode gondolas at Icy Straight Point and hiked through the Tongass National Forest. We explored Russian influences of religion and architecture at Sitka, and our dad shared his experiences previously working at the canneries of Ketchikan once we arrived at that port. And we ended our expedition with a harbor-side walk through Chinatown in British Columbia, amassing souvenirs and ephemera along the way.
The mobile app was the only horrible part of the cruise. There were too many glitches on it, and every single person in my party complained about its bugginess both on and off the ship (before and after the embarkations). Overall, I’d still recommend the experience of cruising with Holland American Line, and it’s opened my family’s perspective as a future way we can still gather together once my generation raises kids of its own. I’ve observed more than half of the passengers being in their elderly years, and the ship has emphasized the importance of providing accessibility accommodations for those with physical impairments.
Knowing that the livelihood of crew members is contingent on reviews, I’ll leave quick shoutouts here to the staff who made our stay exceptional:
- Executive Sous Chef Norman, in conjunction with AJ, also provided my family with a custom Filipino dish upon our request, and it exceeded our wildest expectations.
- Waiter Supray elevated our dining experience to the next level! He was very courteous in giving us time to consider our menu options and delivered our meals promptly.
- Valerie Perry was a phenomenal host for so much of the educational entertainment on the cruise. My mother also loved singer Erica Rose and how friendly the staff were in taking group selfies.
- Photographers AJ and CJ were fantastic at posing my family for photos. Cat from the jewelry programming made the gamification of travel tags fun.
- Stewards Ayu and Harry were amazing caretakers of my stateroom and deserve to be promoted!
See more of our trip on Google Photos. Interested in experiencing a microcosm of Americana afloat with glaciers and gondolas up close? Use my Holland Americana Line referral link to get a discount (and I’ll get a small commission).
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