I booked a 10 night Holland America Western Mediterranean cruise on the Noordam for five people after having enjoyed a 10 night Eastern Mediterranean cruise in August 2007 on Celebrity. What a mistake to change from a quality service -oriented cruise line like Celebrity to the hostile, servile experience on HAL! The booking was made through the same internet agency I have used successfully for the past six cruises I have taken on Disney and Celebrity. I also booked hotel stays in Rome prior to and after the cruise on my own. The hotel Ponte Sisto in rome is a delightful boutique hotel across from the Trasteverre section of Rome. The service there is excellent and the rooms are very pampering. Last year our experience with Celebrity was wonderful. Unfortunately, this summer I chose a cruise which embarked from and returned to Rome with the intention of visiting Mallorca, a stop only HAL offered among cruiselines I considered. As luck would have it, the Mallorca stop was cancelled prior to the start of the cruise, but after airfares had been purchased for five, as well as hotel reservations, and vacation schedules had been set. Malta was substituted as the stop instead.( Malta was actually one of the nicest ports we visited on the cruise.) The problem was the service offered by HAL , not the itinerary. It began aboard ship with the lifeboat drill. Understanding that the drill is a necessary evil of all cruises, we were ready for the hopefully brief interlude prior to dinner and relaxing. Instead we were herded onto the deck in oppressive heat and told to huddle together with women and children in front, men in back, while the unintelligible crew attempted to pronounce surnames with very limited success. The Captain of the ship announced that the passengers were too noisy and that he had never been forced to make three requests for quiet in the past. Further, he announced, we passengers would stand on the deck until we became quiet enough for his satisfaction. A mutiny nearly ensued at this time. Never before had I witnessed such complete lack of crew training or control by the ship's officers. The inability to smoothly deliver service to the passengers was demonstrated again and again on the cruise. The luggage belonging to one of my sons was not delivered to his room prior to dinner. He was "invited " by the crew to search the storage room himself for the missing piece. At dinner, due to the lack of long trousers ( in the missing luggage) my son ( and therefore my entire party) were denied entry into the dining room, causing a retreat to the casual dining alternative. That option proved hopeless due to the requirement that we chose a dinner entree prior to being seated and the complete lack of service by the waiters who were clearly in training while working in the cafeteria style setting. Drinks were served only after long waits, entrees arrived before any other course, and mixed drinks contained an imperceptible level of alcohol. The night was not yet over because the bed in the children's cabin failed to open, requiring my husband to supervise the crew's attempts at 10:30 pm to open the bed. An officer was called to the cabin and she refused to answer a request as to how long it would take to arrange a place for my daughter to sleep until 30 more minutes had passed. She, as well as every crew member and officer on the ship, was required to ascertain from a superior what to do , often requiring a "report" to be made at a designated time through multiple layers of bureaucracy. HAL did attempt to apologize for the bedding gaffe by sending a plate of chocolate covered fruit to our cabin, but the pate was infested with insects. Our cabin, a guaranteed inside (we had been upgraded on previous Celebrity and Disney ships) was the smallest cabin I have ever occupied. It was comfortable enough , and the bed was excellent. I also found the ability to use the fore deck on the ship quite convenient, and I was often alone on the deck in the early morning for viewing of the entry into ports. It is a nice feature of the ship. The ocean view cabin used by my children was awkwardly arranged, not allowing for entry to the bathroom from the bed on the far side of the cabin due to the lack of space around the second bed (which was finally opened by the crew) for my daughter by the second day of the cruise. The public rooms were fine, but the central atrium staircase was virtually always roped off from use by passengers. The crow's nest on the top deck did offer a nice room in which to view the water and the gym's position on the front of the ship was pleasant, though not as large as the fitness centers on Celebrity's Mercury or Galaxy, nor the Disney Wonder or Magic. The dining room was crowded but we were able to obtain a reserved table overlooking the ship's wake and the dining service there was very good. I do not recommend the as you wish dining choice, however, because lines were often formed at the dining room entry at popular dining times. The entertainment was typical for cruise ships in general ( although much lower quality than the Disney shows), a magician stands out as one of the better night's entertainment. The dancers were subpar for the most part, with only one Broadway caliber dancer, and the singers were average. However, a session with the performers and backstage crew was a nice option in which to ask questions about the experience of appearing as a performer on the ship, which my daughter enjoyed. In addition a lecture by an expert on Carthage was extremely informative. The excursions were ho-hum, compared with those offered last year by Celebrity. We booked a private guide in Florence and Pisa who was spectacular (Guido Sarzani) but the HAL -provided guides were not very exciting. The HAL staff uniformly irritated passenger, including a very abrupt excursion office person who snapped" your bus number is on your sticker" to a passenger who asked for her assistance in line on the way to the buses at one port and declined to answer a question from another passenger at the excursion desk without the provision of the passengers keycard. ( This after the passenger had waited in the invariably long line to get the "service" of the desk.) The internet cafe promised a nice feature, NYTimes crossword puzzles on tables under glass upon which passengers could write with grease pencils. Unfortunately, and it seems predictably, the cafe had no such pencils with which to do the puzzles. Also, the internet was agonizingly slow to non- existent even after the exorbitant prices were paid for access. This was the source of many complaints overheard at the main desk . I was so disillusioned by the experience on HAL I am not sure I will ever choose to take another cruise. Members considering HAL as an alternative to Celebrity should think very carefully before taking the chance I did on a cruiseline which, on the surface seemed comparable. Only the price was comparable, if not slightly more expensive, for a decidedly worse experience.