Our November 18, 2013, 11-day Panama Canal Sunfarer was going to be a great bucket-list check-off for my wife and I. We reserved a suite cabin, but at the last minute we upgraded to a Neptune Lounge SA cabin which, by ship standards, was spacious and lovely. The Neptune Lounge concierge team had memorized our faces and names before we came on board. Our suite designation also entitled us to free laundry services daily! That meant taking one less bag and saving money on the airplane. Tremendous.

Big problem though. Our air conditioning was broken and could not be fixed for the entire cruise. There was no place to put us that would be cooler except an inside lower-deck stateroom. Many cabins were over-heated, in fact, but not consistently. Our next-door neighbor on one side left when we got to Aruba. On the other side they said they were freezing cold. Our room with the blinds drawn and the lights out during the day was measured (by the staff, 3 x a day) at more than 77.7 degrees. Some days it was in the mid 80s.

Also, we had problems with our food. We ordered kosher meals through the very confusing form that HAL require special needs passengers to fill out. The form implies that you can only get one kosher meal a day and go without the rest of the day. Not exactly true, but not all of the staff knows that. One assistant maitre'd had no clue. We had reported our confusion before arriving to ship services, who told us to meet with the director of cullinary services (I think that's what he was called), but he refused to meet with us, even for 5 minutes, for four days! After that, he was very nice and apologized to us while sweating in our room. But it took him four days. After we made nice, he spoke to us upstairs in the Ledo area. As we were talking, two women passed and said, "I hate this ship! It's the worst I've ever been on." I thought he would have then excused himself and then gone to the upset woman to deal with the issue. Nope. Solving new problems was not on his agenda. Fortunately, on Day 1 the Cullinary Director gave us his best maitre'd, Yogi, to take our dinner orders and trouble-shoot our problems. He was terriffic. Read more