Nieuw Statendam

Nieuw Statendam is the second Pinnacle-class ship, handed over by Fincantieri at Marghera in November 2018, in service from that December, and christened by Oprah Winfrey the following February. At just under 100,000 tons and 2,666 guests she is mid-sized by modern standards, less than half the tonnage of an Oasis-class hull. Holland America has no interest in catching up, and that is the whole proposition.

The Music Walk

The honest reason to book this ship is the music. Two decks of the ship are given over to a run of live-music rooms that play most evenings and some afternoons, and the acts are booked bands with a repertoire rather than lounge music filling silence.

B.B. King’s Blues Club is the best of them: an eight-piece band out of Memphis playing Delta blues and soul to a room with a proper dance floor. It is loud, it is good, and it runs late by Holland America standards.

The Rolling Stone Rock Room does the history of rock with a live band, put together with the magazine. Billboard Onboard is two pianos and a request list, which sounds like a gimmick and works because the audience does the choosing.

One correction worth making: Lincoln Center Stage no longer works the way it used to. The resident chamber ensemble that completed the Music Walk on every ship has been dropped; Holland America now runs Lincoln Center programming as a rotating act that moves between ships and plays the main theater rather than an intimate room. If you booked Holland America for a string quartet you could drop in on most evenings, that is no longer the reason to.

What else she is

World Stage, the main theater, is wrapped in a 270-degree LED screen, the one piece of technology aboard that would not look out of place on a much larger ship. Rudi’s Sel de Mer is a small French seafood brasserie (bouillabaisse, Dover sole filleted at the table), and the best meal on the ship. Tamarind does pan-Asian. There is also Blend, a wine-blending room where you make up your own bottle, which is exactly the sort of thing this ship does instead of a waterslide, because there is no waterslide, no go-kart track, no surf simulator and no rock wall.

She is also slow, 18 knots in service, which is not a fault so much as a statement about the kind of itinerary she runs.

Where she goes

Mostly Europe, and mostly long. Her schedule is built on roughly fourteen-night sailings out of Rotterdam and Dover: the Norwegian coast and the Arctic Circle, the Baltic capitals, the British Isles, the Canaries and Madeira. Some seasons she works the Mediterranean out of Piraeus instead. Winters she crosses to Fort Lauderdale for a shorter run of Caribbean and Bahamas sailings. Bookings as long as forty-two nights turn up regularly, which tells you who is aboard.

Who she suits

People who want a comfortable ship, a long itinerary, good food and live music every night, and who would regard a bumper-car arena as a reason not to book. The average age is high and nobody is pretending otherwise. Solo travelers and couples do well here; so does anyone who dislikes standing in line, because at 2,666 guests there is very little to line up for.

She does not suit families with children; there is a kids’ club and it is often close to empty, and a teenager would be bored by the second sea day. Nor does she suit anyone who wants a ship full of things to do: this is a ship with rooms to sit in, and if that sounds thin rather than restful, book elsewhere.