Holland America’s Nieuw Statendam Entertainment Review
Holland America Line’s Nieuw Statendam, part of the Pinnacle class of ships, offers entertainment options focused on music and dance. This is exemplified with their “Music Walk” on Deck 2 that includes three music venues and the World Stage theater. You can also see it in the art throughout the ship.
Music Walk
Nieuw Statendam’s Music Walk is a set of three music venues, all on Deck 2, that offer evening musical entertainment. They are open to the ship, meaning you can wander through without having to plan ahead as you would at a production show.
Mid ship is B.B.King’s which focuses on blues music and features a house blues band that performs nightly. There is also balcony seating on Deck 3.
This venue was also used for a “coffee chat” with some of the engineers onboard, as well as trivia, dancing, and other events.
Billboard Onboard is the dueling piano venue that plays more pop music with vocals. This venue was also used for bingo.
The third venue of the Music Walk is across from Billboard Onboard: the Rollingstone Rock Room.
A house band played every nice and offered more of a concert feel in a small venue.
The World Stage
The main theater on the Nieuw Statendam is the World Stage. Located on Deck 2 & 3 forward, it is the location for all production shows as well as a few “exc talks” which are more educational experiences.
The venue itself is one of the main attractions. It is set up as almost a theater in the round, with seating surrounding the stage near 270 degrees.
All of the walls are covered in LED display panels that can be used to push the show out into the audience.
The resident group in the World Stage is Step One Dance Company. During my 7 night cruise they had three different shows that they performed. Each night they performed they had an identical 7:30pm and 9:30pm show.
My favorite of the shows was Humanity. The dancers interacted with the screens for cool effect of dance and technology with modern pop music. No photos were allowed during the shows but I found it innovative and a lot of fun.
They also had a production called Musicology where they acted out different instruments… or something. It wasn’t exactly my favorite. The final night was a Billboard Top Hits show that combined the Billboard Onboard piano players with the dancers, highlighting hits from the past 70 years of music. It was a lot of fun with a good amount of cheesy parts.
Additionally there was a headliner musician that performed two nights (two shows each of the nights). During my cruise, the performer was Stephen Barry, an Irish vocalist that could tell a good story and have great banter with the audience.
One night there was a vocal performance by a group called Cantaré. Their show was very well rehearsed but then I never saw the performers again after that night.
In addition to the production shows, the World Stage was used for exc (excursion) talks that included talked about actual excursions you could take but also educational talks including one about how the ship is run like a city and one about the history of Holland America Line.
These talks were glossy, well rehearsed, and most of the time entertaining with a bit of education.
The World Stage was also used for the Deal or No Deal show. This was my first time seeing Deal or No Deal on a ship. Essentially you pay to play along and can win real prizes (I won a free game of bingo and some scratch cards — which were all losers). Two random guests are selected to play along from the stage. You could just watch for free if you didn’t want to pay.
In addition to Deal or No Deal and Bingo, there was plenty of ability to gamble in the casino.
Casino
The casino is located on Deck 3 above Billboard Onboard and the Rollingstone Rock Room. There were table games (with minimums starting at $6) and a lot of slot machines.
Smoking is allowed in most of the casino.
Overall
I liked the emphasis on music for entertainment. The dancers were fantastic and the shows all very professional. I would rate it higher than Norwegian entertainment from the Spirit but I still prefer Virgin Voyages’ entertainment offerings as it is a bit more edgy and exciting.