We gave ourselves this cruise as a 25th anniversary present. We have sailed on several cruise lines including HAL, our last cruise was great this one was the worst ship I have ever cruised on including those of my navy career. We embarked about 1:00 pm and once we got situated we went up to the Lido deck for a snack, there was water everywhere and towels were being used to mop it up. We should have seen it as a sign, we went to our cabin to wait for the life boat drill and found the toilet did not work, it would not work for three days and as luck would have it neither did the shower, we were stuck running around the ship looking for restrooms that worked. I made multiple calls to the front desk soon the front desk began ignoring our calls, I made several appointments with the guest relations manager to discuss our issues but he either sent an underling or just skipped the appointment altogether. starting out in a cabin about 100 ft. from the front desk might lead you to think that we would receive a somewhat higher level of service from them, it didn't. I went to the front desk to complain several times but the staff was pretty clear that the ship had problems everywhere so we should just accept it, on our seventh day our cabin was flooded not from the bathroom but from the galley upstairs, we were asleep when it happened and my wife was shocked by a piece of medical equipment, 7 or 8 cabins were actually flooded, when I went to the front desk they did not seem to our problems to be that big a deal, we packed up in the middle of the night and moved to another cabin, it would be the first of three more cabins we would ultimately end up in. No one ever came to talk to us about damage to our luggage and personal property, the most important thing being the medical equipment which had burned out. Two days after we got settled in the new cabin we got a call from the front desk to tell us that our cabin was ready to be re-occupied, when we refused we were threatened with removal by local authorities They eventually came up with two more cabins for us to move to.

The food was for the first 11 days was good in the Vista, there was a substantial quality downgrade during the second 11 days, We had dinner at both Le cirque and the Pinnacle grill, the food sounded good but taste was a different matter either bland or too much salt. We ultimately just spent most of our time at the Lido for meals thank goodness we had so many ports so we got off the ship most days. We went on a number of shore excursions most were OK, three of them were horrible, all were extremely expensive and could have been booked online or ashore far less expensively.

In conclusion HAL staff and facilities were a tremendous disappointment for us on this cruise, It was clear from the disdain and lack of empathy on the part of the majority of the staff that that the problem is systemic, the fact that customers are ignored by what few management staff are actually ever present, the Captain who actually stood in front of a group and blamed the passengers for most of the problems and the general belief by the staff that you cannot take any legal action against their company makes it clear we will never ride this line again. The ship had been through an overhaul process for two weeks prior to the start apparently a labor dispute had occurred and so a work crew was brought along to finish what didn't get completed. They worked all over the ship each day which added to the lack of ambiance. It is amazing that a large corporation like this would take a ship that had not been completed during an overhaul process and shake out all of the problems on the backs of it's customers. I can't believe these people actually consider this their business, they are pretty bad at it.