This was the first time we sailed on Holland America, we had heard good things about them. Bottom line the cruise was very good. The ship looks a little dated, although we just sailed on the Carnival Breeze last year which was almost brand new so I am a little biased because of that. The crew was very polite and helpful. The food was good and we had plenty of it. We didn't see any of the shows but I heard they were well done. One thing I noticed was there were many older people(retirement age and later) and few younger people and families. I enjoyed it because I prefer a calm vacation and I don't care for the loud party atmosphere of say a Carnival cruise but be forewarned if you expect they same type of atmosphere as other more rambunctious ships you will be disappointed. Now for the gripes. The room layout was a bit weird, it was me my wife and two kids 12 and 14. There was a pull out couch, a bunk bed and two single beds that our room steward was able to put together to form a queen sized bed. The Bunk bed dropped from the ceiling directly above the queen bed, so guess what happened? Yep we banged our heads on it more than once! The balcony was very spacious for the room type we got which I believe was the verandah or verandah deluxe, it had three chairs a small table and a foot rest(ottoman?). We went to four ports of call, Gran Turk, Puerto Rico, St. Maartin, and Half Moon Cay. They were all great and they were all new to us except for Gran Turk. The problem was the time at each port was too short for some reason. The exception was Puerto Rico, we were there from 12noon to 8:30pm. All the others we were barely there for 5 or 6 hours, not enough time to explore. We took a tour around St. Maartin and barely got back at 2:30pm which was the boarding time. Didn't buy any souvenirs as we didn't have time. All in all we enjoyed it and I would recommend it.