Going on a Holland America Express Cruise sounded really fun except for the fact that we were vegan. I knew that the Holland America Koningsdam was a fish heavy cruise and that we were going to have a few problems. In fact I was really worried about it and ended up writing in 3 months in advance to make sure that they could leave us details on what items would be vegan friendly on the cruise. A representative assured me that there would be a list of vegan friendly options in our room. However when we arrived, there was no list. In short I ended up losing 7 lbs on a 7-day cruise. Here’s how that happened.
I Went To Customer Service First Thing
The first thing I did when we got on the ship and noticed there were no vegan options left in our room was go down to the customer service desk to ask about the vegan options. I informed them that we were supposed to have a list of vegan options in our room, but there was no list.
The guy behind the desk told me that I should call down to room service to ask about the vegan options. So I went back up to our room and called down and they told us to just ask the people that were serving us.
In short, nobody had a list of vegan options for us and it was being passed on from person to person to person.
We Tried The Lido Buffet
Empty Lido Market On Holland America Koningsdam At 3am… This Is A Good Representation Of How Much Food We Had To Eat
We went up to the Lido deck first and they display their menu items at each station. In the Homestead station, there was one vegan item clearly labeled vegan. But everything else was not vegan. We went from counter to counter asking if their food was vegan and most of them gave us looks like they had no idea what we were talking about.
So I started to clarify, dairy-free, meat-free, and they still couldn’t give us confident answers.
I asked for soy milk from one of the waiters and he told me that they didn’t have anything like soy milk. But we later found out that they have soy milk, rice milk, and oat milk at one of the kiosks called Sweet Spot.
When we went to the espresso bar, we asked for soy milk and he pointed towards the dairy milk. I tried asking again, and he pointed again to the dairy milk. I gave up.
So it seems like dairy-free is not a common thing on the ship and it wasn’t common knowledge between every single waiter or server.
There was one point that we went and asked if they had any vegan desserts at the Sweet Spot and she told us that there was a certain dessert that was vegan. It was some sort of creamy chocolate thing. I double checked with her and she confirmed that it was vegan so we ate it. When we went to get it the next time, I thought I might as well ask again because different people were there and they told me it was not vegan. After several more attempts to get a confirmation, we finally found out that it was in fact not vegan and we had ate it.
If we had a dairy allergy that would have been massively horrendous. But besides that fact I’m pissed that I ate it.
They did have a clearly labeled vegan cake. It was really bad. It was dry and tasteless. If anyone tried it they would automatically write off vegan food just because of that.
Yet they had 500 other selections of non-vegan desserts for everyone else. It just didn’t make any sense. Why wouldn’t they offer a few vegan options?
We ended up having fruit for something sweet.
We spent our first few days continuously asking people if things were vegan or not and nobody could give us an answer. In fact the guys behind the counters seem genuinely confused, and I guess it’s understandable. Most people on a cruise will eat anything you put in front of them. People aren’t asking whether or not dishes have meat or dairy in them. But, still, shouldn’t the chefs and servers know in case of allergies?
Ironically, everyone seem to understand what gluten free meant.
We Talked To A Chef
One day after we came back from an excursion, we were very hungry. We went upstairs to the Lido Market and a pasta place was open. I asked if the marinara sauce was vegan. The guy behind the counter told me no. I was blown away. Then a chef came out and confirmed that it was vegan.
More unknowledgeable staff.
The chef began to tell us that there were various vegan options at different kiosks. He told us that the pizza place had vegan cheese and that we could always get a vegan dessert at the Sweet Spot. And then he told us that if we wanted a specially prepared vegan meal, we’d have to ask ahead of time.
After we talked to him, we went up to the pizza place to get a vegan cheese pizza, and surprise, surprise, they had no vegan cheese. This led us to mistrust the chefs. So we decided not to bother asking for any special meals because we didn’t know if they would be vegan or not.
After that we pretty much ate the same thing over and over again. They had coconut yogurt for breakfast and then we had french fries and salad for lunch and supper. Sometimes they had an item marked vegan and we would have that. They had salsa and guacamole in the afternoon, and we had that. And we had fruit.
They had absolutely no baked goods that were vegan.
We Didn’t Try The Dining Room
The chef that told us there was vegan cheese in the pizza place also told us that we could get vegan items in the dining room. Unfortunately, we dressed extremely casual and we didn’t feel comfortable going to the dining room. So perhaps there were vegan options there, but we never got a chance to try. If someone had told us ahead of time that the dining room was the best option for vegan options, we would have brought more formal clothes.
We Didn’t Starve, But We Had 0.5% Of The Choices Everyone Else Had
The amount of food on the Holland America Koningsdam ship is insane. You can pretty much get anything you want.
Unless you are a vegan.
We didn’t starve, but I did end up losing 7 lbs. We ate healthier and less than we do at home.
I have no pictures of food from the cruise because there was nothing worthy of taking a picture of.
My mom, who will eat anything, felt bad eating in front of us because she was constantly eating breads and sweets and all kinds of things that we couldn’t have. They didn’t even have dairy-free margarine.
I just don’t understand why they don’t have more vegan options on their Lido deck or in their burger place called Dive In or in their pizza place called New York Pizza. There are so many people that have dairy allergies, I’m surprised they aren’t offering things like that.
I wish they had just followed through with their promise and left a list of guaranteed vegan options in the room. It would have made it much easier, and we would have ate much better. But after being on the Koningsdam ship for 7 days trying to figure out what was vegan, I honestly don’t think anyone on the ship has a good grasp of what vegan means, so I don’t think they were able to leave that kind of list.
