My wife and I sailed on the Zuiderdam Eastern Caribbean cruise October 1, 2005. This was my first cruise and my wife's second although her first with HAL. We are in our early 30s and although we've read in these reviews and others that the average age is in the high 50s, it didn't bother us a bit. We saw many people from their 20s to 80s although the average age did tend to hit the higher range.
We arrived fairly early on embarkment day at approximately 10:00 a.m. We waited in a room along with other early arrivers. Porters arrived and took our bags and indicated they would let us know when we could start the embarkment process. They never came back and I saw several of our bags just sitting outside amongst the disembarkment passengers unsecured. We only found out people were being processed by going outside the building and seeing a huge line at this point. The line went fast though and the overall embarkment process was very smooth.
Overall, we were pleased with our room. We stayed in a Superior Suite (the smallest of the suites) and it was very spacious. We spent a lot of time relaxing in the room and were glad to have the extra room. However, it didn't appear to be cleaned very well initially as we found a left over spoon on the verandah and my wife found a large hair in one of the jacuzzi tub's jets. Also, you may want to bring your own hair dryer. The one in the room wasn't very powerful and it took my wife longer than normal to dry her hair.