We are a couple in our early fifties and have cruised a few times with most of the major lines over the years. We traveled with friends of the same age who are first time cruisers, our 24 year old daughter and her 78 year old grandmother. We booked two staterooms that were the lowest level balcony guarantee and one inside guarantee and received aft balcony cabins 6177 and 6179 with adjoining balconies and an inside cabin directly across the hall. We were very pleased with our assignment and the fact that they were able to keep us together. This was our first time on Holland. Our most recent cruise had been on Celebrity Solstice and we found HAL to be similar in many ways to Celebrity.

We arrived in Venice one day pre-cruise and spent our first night at Hotel Olimpia near Piazza Roma. The next day we wanted to spend as much time as possible in the city so we left our luggage at the hotel until around 4:30 p.m., walked to the People Mover and were on board the ship within minutes. At the time we arrived there were no other passengers in the terminal so we were able to walk right on with our luggage arriving just after we found our staterooms. The staterooms were spacious with plenty of storage. The beds were comfortable and we especially enjoyed being able to open the balcony partition between our two cabins for even more space. Our cabin stewards were very friendly and kept our room tidy. We had one small issue with the air conditioning not keeping the room as cool as we like and after a couple of days they were able to make an adjustment and the temp was comfortable for the remainder of the cruise. Since the ship is new I am sure they are still working out some of the small issues. I pre-ordered two bottles of liquor, a wine card, coffee card and specialty dining reservations and all were in our room when we arrived. The only issue was that the wine card that I ordered was for 20 glasses and the card was for 10. One visit to the front desk and this was taken care of. It does seem that they are phasing out the cards as they had some trouble locating a 20 glass card but we found them to be a good value for wine by the glass.

We were assigned anytime dining which worked well for us as we were in port until late afternoon most days. This was our first time without scheduled dining and we were very pleased. We usually arrived in the dining room around 7:00 p.m. and never encountered any wait. We especially enjoyed the fact that the Lido had many of the same entrees as the main dining room and when we did not feel like dressing for the dining room we still felt like we had an excellent dinner. The food in all venues was among the best we have experienced on any ship. We dined in Tamarind for our daughter's 24th birthday and thought the meal was wonderful. If the cruise had not been so port intensive we would have definitely visited this restaurant again. The seafood lunch buffet in the Lido on the last sea day was especially good. Read more