Sailing last week aboard the Westerdam in the Mexican Riviera reminded me just how great Holland America Line's entertainment is. It tends to fly under the radar a bit in its recognition, but it really shouldn't. From its stellar new Music Walk concept to its main production shows, the overall program is a shining example of where the line is heading in the future.
In the past, Holland America quietly featured excellent chamber music and other live performances before first rolling out B.B. King's Blues Club across several ships, but now everything is being elevated to a whole new level.
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The blues club alone is worth the cost of admission, as stellar musicians and ace vocalists consistency knock soul, funk, jazz and, of course, blues numbers out of the park. In its first iteration, the venue was housed in the multipurpose Queen's Lounge & Culinary Arts Center, as it still is on the Westerdam in the new "America's Test Kitchen"-branded space.
The full Music Walk experience, as fully fleshed out on the new Koningsdam, is soon to come to the Westerdam, and it will be an excellent repeat of the Eurdodam's recent entertainment remodel. The existing piano and sports bars will be retooled into the exciting Billboard Onboard dueling pianos bar, and the Explorer's Lounge will become Lincoln Center Stage. As experienced on the Koningsdam, the latter two venues add to the already great blues club by taking existing favorites and making them even better.
The Koningsdam also gets extra points for finally breaking B.B. King's out of the culinary venue and into its own separate Queen's Lounge-itself a classy double-decker ballroom space that facilitates more guests than the standing-room-only equivalents on other ships in the fleet.
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What's more, the Westerdam has already introduced fantastic production shows: "Soundstage," "All for Love" and "Ever After." Of the three, the first and third are the most lavish-incorporating a dynamic high-resolution video wall, stunning costuming and very good dancers and singers, who only occasionally struggled with a challenging sound mix and mic issues. "All for Love" is a refreshingly paired-down collection of romantic songs performed with just enough background staging.
Meanwhile, "Soundstage" is a very clever homage to filmmaking that recreates everything from foley recording to realized storyboarded action sequences paired with pop songs, and "Ever After" is a creative reimagining of fairy tales similarly modernized. Each show opens with a great original song as well, and numbers like "Poker Face" are given an expert Broadway-style treatment that also impresses the audience.
While the Koningsdam is the best combination of all the elements rolled into one, including its awesome new World Stage main theater encircled by LED images, it's nice to see how Holland America Line is rolling several back to many of its other ships to maintain a consistent guest experience.
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