This was our first cruise with HAL, and although we had a few hiccups along the way, we had a great time overall. Embarkation was a breeze and we were on board within 20 minutes of entering the terminal, around 11:45am. We headed straight to the Rotterdam dining room to enjoy a leisurely lunch and then checked out our verandah cabin.
Our cabin was on the verandah deck, starboard side, about a third of the way from the aft. The cabin was a nice size, with a fridge, queen bed, jacuzzi tub and a fairly large balcony (with one chair, one lounger and one small table). The TV was a flat screen on a swivel, and also had a DVD player. They had few normal channels (CNN, TNT, Cartoon Network to name a few) and a couple of movie channels, as well as the standard ship channels. On our way out we sailed in a storm, which made the satellite reception poor, so we rented a movie for free from HALs "Ship Flicks." They have hundreds of movies to choose from, which was a nice surprise.
We left NYC around 4:45pm Sunday Oct 3, following the mandatory lifeboat drill. Cruising was very scenic and was narrated, which allowed us to identify all of the landmarks along the way. Sunday night we went through a storm with 20-25 foot waves. This led to a lot of elderly people falling, but thankfully no one was seriously hurt.