Overall, the cruise, and the Maasdam, was great! The ship was clean, the elevators were all operable and the restrooms were all open. Generally I don't even know, or care, who the Cruise Director is but Rick Barnes was not only everywhere, all the time, checking that every guest was happy but was a great lecturer too. If there was a passenger on board who didn't know who the CD was, they must have locked themselves in their bathrooms for the entire cruise.

Rick's enthusiasm was reflected in the crew too. We found that most all the crew members were engaged in providing a positive experience to everyone they encountered. I think the MDR staff did a tremendous job and our meal experiences there were the best overall of all the HAL ships we've sailed. Even though we were moved to the lower dining room because the early fixed upper dining room was over flowed, our waiters adapted quickly to seeing us nightly at our fixed time and provided excellent service while still juggling open dining tables around us. The food and choices were generally good, cooked to order, hot things hot and cold things cold. Our wine steward was just precious and was very knowledgeable about the wines on board. We never had to look for her as she was always there even before we knew we needed her. One thing we heard was that we've heard that the new contracts for crew limit them only to beer and wine consumption and no hard liquor. Some of them seemed perturbed by it; but of course, others didn't.

We have used the unlimited laundry service on our last 3 HAL cruises, paying for it twice, and not once had an issue with missing or substituted clothing or found stains or other damage done. This makes packing for longer cruises so much easier to do as we send laundry out almost daily and it comes back clean, pressed and/or folded within a day's time. Kudos to the laundry services on board HAL ships! Read more