Holland America Zuiderdam 11/24/2007 - 12/1/2007

This was our ninth cruise, our first on HAL. We are an active, professional couple in our late-thirties, cruising for the first time with our two young sons, who were 18 months old and 3 years old at the time of the cruise. We were traveling with all four grandparents, which totaled 6 adults, plus our two toddlers.

Our cabin Our VD category balcony cabins on Deck 4 front (Upper Promenade - 4044, 4046, and 4048) had plenty of room for two adults, but adding in two cribs made it very tight. Luckily, the cribs were really portable Evenflo PlayCribs, so we often broke down one or both of them during the day. The bed, which we believe was the standard "two twins pushed together to make a queen" fit together nicely without the ridge in the middle that we have experienced on a couple of other cruises. There was a mini-fridge, which was stocked with sodas, beer, and liquor on arrival. We asked our room steward to remove these items, which he did very quickly. We then used the fridge the entire week for our sons' juice, bottles, and snacks. One of our cabins' fridges didn't really seem to get cold, just cool, and we mentioned this to the room steward, but nothing ever seemed to be done about it. There was a couch, which was a pull out sofa. The room had plenty of closet, shelf, and drawer space - even had two deep pull out drawers at the foot of the bed. Rooms 4044 and 4046 were adjoining and we used this feature often for the boys to run around as well as a quieter way to enter the room during naps, bedtime, etc. The balcony did have plexiglass (rather than metal railings or solid) and, since our cabins were side-by-side, we had our room steward open the doorways in between, and we loved being able to walk between our rooms via the balconies. Even without the open doorways on the balconies, we found this balcony to be larger (mainly deeper) than our last cruise on NCL. There was a hair dryer in the room, which you had to keep your finger on a button to keep on - it was a bit annoying. We did notice that the carpet, the balcony furniture, and the edges of the couch were showing some wear, but everything was very clean and certainly functional. Read more