MS Volendam

Design and description

Volendam is an R-Class cruise ship operated by Holland America Line as a subsidiary company of Carnival Cruise Lines. She has three sister ships in the fleet, Zaandam, Amsterdam and Rotterdam. She was the second of these ships to be launched, the Rotterdam being the lead ship of the class. Volendam is 238 m (781 ft), a 32.3 m (106 ft) beam, and a 8.1 m (27 ft) draft. She has ten decks, and contains cabins for passengers (called staterooms) on decks one through three (Dolphin, Main and Lower Promenade decks), and decks six, seven and eight (Verandah, Navigation, and Lido decks).

The ship's theme is flowers, and she features floral designs throughout. The atrium contains a sculpture spanning three decks which was created by Luciano Vistosi. Volendam was christened by former professional tennis player Chris Evert on 12 November 1999, who became the ship's godmother.

As part of the Holland America Line's fleet upgrade to include a program of Microsoft digital workshops on board, Volendam launched its program on 27 May 2009. She also contains other standard elements onboard Holland America Line vessels, such as the Explorations Café, a show lounge, a spa, and children's clubs. There is a total of eight bars, two pools and two hot tubs. Dining options include the Rotterdam Dining Lounge, and the Pinnacle Grill, which is the ship's signature restaurant and features evenings recreating New York's Le Cirque restaurant. The Lido Deck (Deck 8) features two pools, two hot tubs, a grill, a recreation area (poolside; includes ping-pong table, chess board and more), and the Lido Restaurant. The Lido Restaurant serves food from around 07:00 am – 12:30am, the Lido Restaurant closes to prepare for lunch after breakfast, and dinner after lunch. The Lido has different sections for different cultural cuisine, such as Filipino, Indonesian, Moroccan, Italian, Swiss, and more. Each and every night, the Lido Restaurant offers different kinds of cultural foods, each specified in a menu before entering. The Lido Restaurant also features the Canaletto Italian Cuisine for those who wish to have their own sectioned off area to eat.

After being refurbished in 2006, she entered drydock in Singapore during 2011 for a refit.

Ports of call

She first entered the Australian market in 2009. Volendam cancelled a visit to Batemans Bay during a trip circumnavigating Australia in 2010, only giving 48 hours notice due to "operational issues" which was interpreted by local media as a failure by the town's council to meet the requirements set out by Holland America regarding the town's wharf some twelve months prior to the expected arrival of the ship. During 2011 she was chartered to visit match relevant destinations during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, which was hosted in New Zealand.

In 2016, Volendam sails out of Australia/New Zealand and South Pacific, and during the Northern Hemisphere summer sails out of Vancouver BC, Canada, conducting cruises of the Inside Passage to Alaska along with fellow Holland America vessels Zaandam and Nieuw Amsterdam. She hosted an Inside Passage cruise in September 2012 to celebrate a hundred years of The Vancouver Sun. In 2013 when Volendam returned to Australian waters, she visited Kangaroo Island for the first time, after a new landing pontoon was installed on the island to allow for it to become a cruise ship destination. After she left Australia for Asia, she visited a variety of Asian countries including Japan, China, South Korea and Vietnam.

On 9 March 2016 she witnessed a Total Solar Eclipse in the Makassar Straight while sailing through Indonesia as part of an extended tour of Asia, hosting a number of astronomy groups and eclipse followers. The successful observation was under the captaincy of James Russell-Dunford, who retired immediately after at the next major port of call in Singapore.

In Popular Culture

In the 2005 film Into the Blue, Voldendam makes a brief cameo when she was docked in the Prince George Wharf port of Nassau, Bahamas