My review will be brief as the is the first one I have ever written. My husband, Keith, and I left on Feb 4, 2006 on the HAL Zuiderdam on an Eastern Caribbean itinerary. We had previously sailed on Carnival together 2 years ago and I had sailed on Carnival and Norwegian in the past.
This was our first Holland America Cruise. We were looking for a more relaxing cruise than previously encountered. We found exactly that on the Zuiderdam. While Holland America sometimes gets the reputation as being for "older people", I feel this is a big mistake. There were people from all ages on this cruise. No there were not a lot of kids but there were activities for children in Club HAL. We were glad that there were fewer children on this cruise as you actually could use the hot tubs and pools, which did not happen on Carnival for me at any time. There was more emphasis on things like cooking classes, health classes/weight loss/exercise, card-playing, wine/liquor tasting, magic trick seminars, classes in casino games, and more sedate activities. While things were still very fun, they were so much less "in your face".
We had massively fewer loudspeaker announcements and much more quiet times. However, the necessary information seemed to be communicated all the same.