History: We are a family of four. We live in Montreal's suburbs. Our children are 8 and 6 and this is our 2nd cruise with them. We try as much as possible to have one family vacation during the winter. We have been on NCL Dawn last year. So this was our first Holland America cruise. We appreciate to sail from New-York as it allows keeping us from taking the plane and loose time and money in airports.
The Ship: Beautiful! We appreciated the wood, leather, steel seats, and decorations throughout the ship. We found maneuvering around the ship to be a bit difficult but not too much for our 8 year old daughter to be able to get directions anywhere we add to go... We found that the ship felt almost cramped in that the ceilings felt low, the lounges and other spaces smaller and much less open, specially the mid ship pool. There where never enough space whether on a table or a long chair. I know that the aft pool has a lot of space but children are not allowed to swim in that pool. So we had to hang around the mid ship pool... Not a bad thing except for the chair. We appreciated the retractable roof which allows swimming event if we just got out of New-York (but the water as opposite of the Dawn's pool was not heated which would be appreciated for the first and last days). But starting the third see day it would be nice to have it open a little more often. The roof was rarely opened and when it was, it wasn't wide open. So it was more like an indoor pool with an open window. It may also be the reason why the sound was really bad when the band played around the pool.
Some of the design features of the ship Lounges are a bit odd. For example, the Vista and the Queen's Lounge have many obstructed views and not so much sitting,