Our experience with HAL pre-cruise was fantastic: I called up to fix a name change a couple weeks before we left, all worried-like cause I'm used to dealing with airlines. Didn't have to wait on hold for long - they said they'd fix it and had no trouble doing so, and by the way, did I know that the price of our cabin had gone down like 50%? I said, yes I definitely did, but I didn't think that would change anything, given we'd already paid for it and were past the ability to get a refund? HAL *preemptively* told me I should have our travel agent give them a call and see what they could do. Long story short, we got a bunch of extra cruise credit, and an upgrade from the cheapest inside cabin to one of the nicer verandahs. So I was pretty excited to see that - I'd been on one shorter cruise, but in a cheap inside cabin much like the one we expected to be in this time.

When we arrived, the line was pretty long, so I was expecting to be in line for hours, like the one previous cruise I'd been on (with Carnival, who after this much better experience, I'll never use again). But nope, despite quite a long line, we were on-board about half an hour later. Also unlike Carnival, as soon as we got on board, we were allowed to go right to our room and drop off our carry-ons. Embarkation was super smooth.

Our room was indeed quite nice - felt plenty spacious, and having a balcony was great. The balcony was pretty small, pretty much just big enough for the two of us, and a personal table and chair each, but it was still great sitting outside. The bed was quite comfortable, too, though I wasn't a huge fan of the blankets or pillows (I was happy I brought a pillow from home; I'm picky). The room was never noisy, and we only rarely felt the movement of the ship. We also loved having a proper bathtub, and the bathroom was spacious enough (much moreso than several of the hotels we stayed at!). Read more