The Nieuw Amsterdam is a lovely ship. The food is very good; in fact it's downright delicious in the Tamarind and the Pinnacle. According to our friends and my husband, the filet and strip steaks were some of the best they had ever had. My lobster in the Pinnacle was also super. The only thing lacking in the Pinnacle were really good side dishes. Service in each restaurant was outstanding. On the other hand, service in the main restaurant was sorely lacking. On many occasions I either did not receive the side dish I requested, or I got it 15-20 minutes later. I attribute most of the poor service to the lack of communication of the staff. Their English was very limited and so, I assume, was their understanding of orders. For example, one morning two tables and us got hard-boiled as v. the poached eggs we ordered. The food, though, once we got it was overall very tasty and satisfying. The buffet food was also quite good, even though the waitstaff appeared very disinterested and not eager to help. The phone system in the cabins was a disaster. One evening we waited over 15 minutes for a person to answer and then the phone was disconnected. The system is called "at your service"-NOT! There is no way to reach any staff/cabinperson without going through that one phone line. Plus, there are no instructions in the cabins (i.e. in ours and our friends') on how to operate the system (like speaker phone, etc.) or even the TV or DVD. You would think that for a company like HAL that's been in business for a few years information sheets would be standard and available in each cabin.We did opt for the laundry service and it was wonderful-$84 for all our laundry for the 12 days. And even though we just signed up for laundary, my husband's dress shirts were pressed. Now the really disturbing part--I had read on this board that some of the NA rooms were connecting and thus did not have the usual three closets. In particular, the posting referenced our room-6097 and the adjacent one-6095. It was disturbing to me since the ship/cabin diagram did not show any connecting rooms. So-I asked my travel agent to look into it. She emailed HAL who emailed back that the NA "head housekeeper" had checked it out and 6097 did indeed have three closets. Thus I felt that the earlier posting was in error. Much to my chagrin, when we first got to our cabin, I found out that HAL had, in essence, misrepresented the number of closets since there were only two. So we had to put our shoes in that vacant spot for a few days. After much agravation and even showing the email from HAL to our travel agent, we got a shoe rack and a small ship credit. Unfortunately it does not make me trust what HAL publishes. This is too bad because it is a lovely ship and we had a good experience on our last HAL cruise.As far as the ports are concerned, they were fine and we only had to tender one time. We never took any HAL excursions, finding it cheaper to rent a car either at the port or make arrangements via the internet ahead of time. If you book in advance, you do save money as v. onsite, as evidenced by some prices we heard quoted to other travelers.