Hawaii was on our bucket list and we had the time for 16 days. HAL made it seem longer! This was cruise 17 for us. Third on HAL. No rookies here! On all the best lines e.g. Viking. HAL has cut back too far. Loss of Lincoln Center is a good example. $4 extra charge for orange juice is another. Cruise featured chaos at embarkcation and 3 1/2 hour delay in leaving SAN. During cruise ship had ...
We chose this cruise because we've enjoyed Holland America cruises in the past, and because the itinerary was what we were looking for.
Sadly, Holland America has declined sharply in recent years. This cruise was like staying in a second-rate Las Vegas hotel:
*smokey casino, with smoke drifting into other areas of the ship
*deafening music in all the music venues
*no classical music ...
The good... the food and the wonderful staff at the restaurants and Lido. The room is nice and the room stewards are amazing. The boat was generally pretty clean for as many sneezing, coughing, and dirty people there were. The hot tubs were clean. Laundry service is well worth the cost. The bartenders and wait staff around the outdoor pool area are the hardest working people I've seen on the boat. ...
Spending Christmas and New Year's at sea in Hawaii is a dream come true. It's a long trip from San Diego to Hawaii but it's worth it. The seas are rough for the first few days and the last couple days heading back but in between is fabulous.
No whales were sighted but we saw dolphins near Ensenada. There were many awesome sunrises and sunsets as we expected and were not disappointed. We had ...
Our cruise through South America to Antarctica exceeded our expectations. Where do we start?
The service on the ship was outstanding as was the food in the main dining room and the Lido deck. We got off to a rough start when we discovered our room was directly below the Rolling Stones Lounge, but the staff kindly moved us to a room with a balcony from which we could admire the icebergs in ...
Back to Back this and Dec. 22. Historical Mexican itinerary. Unfortunately had to miss Rosalina due to winds. A great deal of tendering ports which for many, would be the draw back. As usual great food, and staff exceptional. The combo mix bar for trivia and football days does not work well together. Trivia very well attended. Ship definitely showing its age in many places, but still is ...
Couple 60s, 26 cruises with various cruiselines worldwide.
This 10/12/23 cruise was our 3rd HAL cruise and our first since mid 2019. Previously we cruised on the old Statendam and in 2019, Maasdam. Both were excellent, entertaining, enriching, educational overall fabulous cruises.
We had such high hopes for returning to HAL on the Noordam December 10 2023 round trip Sydney-NZ-Sydney cruise. ...
I choose this cruise because I was looking forward to exploring and getting to know SE Asia. It was a terrible experience overall. The ports of call were in dirty, large cities where it was difficult to get out of the city areas without taking long bus rides. The tours were long, boring and we could barely understand the guides. When we went to the shore excursion desk, they didn't know anything ...
This is a very comfortable ship which is spotlessly clean and which has excellent friendly staff.
Our Neptune suite had a comfortable 3 seater lounge and 2 queen sized beds as we elected to have the very large dual mattress bed separated so as not to disturb one a other. The balcony was extremely spacious.
The onboard entertainment was impressive. The choice of eating venues was enjoyable. ...
We were on this ship, same itinerary last year for 7 day cruise. This year 11 day cruise, per day price was double, like all else in our world now. Ship has been kept up very nicely, very clean, all worked well. We had mid-ship veranda. Very nice comfortable room, bed very good. Bathroom small but worked well for us. Nice slate floor and large shower. Bigger people would have trouble with toilet ...