We chose this cruise because the rates were fantastic, we could cruise from home, and the itinerary was excellent (circled the Caribbean). We have sailed Holland America before with good results. The embarkation and debarkation went smoothly. This ship, the Veendam, is a disgrace to the company. It had just returned from dry dock, so things should have been good. Right? Wrong! The contractors had installed new carpeting but the job wasn't finished. So we saw crew members finishing up after the ship had sailed. Many bathrooms overflowed, ours included. Some were so bad the passengers were relocated to another cabin. The elevators weren't working half the time. We got stuck in an elevator twice.

The staff in the lido were inexperienced and didn't have enough supplies of the food that was on the day's menu. The most popular activities seemed to all be scheduled at the same time so all the passengers were complaining about that. We stayed in a lanai cabin for the first (and last) time. The cabin was small, the curtains had to be drawn at night as people could see into your cabin, the sliding glass door to the promenade deck was hard to open and could be dangerous if it closed on you, and our reserved lounge chairs kept being occupied by other passengers, and when we asked them to vacate the chairs we had paid extra for we got dirty looks. We will sail HAL again, but on the newer ships.