We were fortunate to be on the Eurodam in the Eastern Caribbean January 21-28, 2012 and had a fantastic experience in every way. I promised my wife and the friends we met on board that I would write a full review of our sailing. However, several other cruisers (whom I do not know) beat me to it, and they captured many of the things I would have written about. One fellow passenger has also written a negative review of the cruise, which surprised us, as his experiences in no way mirrored ours. While I don't for a minute doubt that they had a bad cruise, it raises the question of how people on the same cruise can have such vastly different experiences. I'll address some of my thoughts on that later on in this review, but first let me briefly cover some of the major things that I think people are interested in.

Pre-cruise: Flew in to FLL Friday on Virgin America (highly recommended) from SFO. Stayed at the W Hotel on the beach, also highly recommended. Outstanding dinner at "Steak 954" at the hotel. On Saturday morning we took a taxi to "Wine Watch" in Ft. Lauderdale which is a hidden treasure I found online. It is the most unusual wine store I have ever entered; more like a private cellar. They stock over 20,000 bottles of hard-to-find recent and older vintages of wines from all over the world. We bought a mixed case of reds and whites to enjoy on our cruise. I highly recommend this place. It was very hard to find, but if you call or email ahead of time they will deliver wine to your hotel, or even to the pier. We enjoy high end wines, and their selection and prices were outstanding. (This is not the place to go to buy Columbia Crest Cabernet.) The taxi waited while we shopped. We then headed to the pier about Noon. Upon exiting the cab, a porter was right there, took our bags and case of wine, and I tipped him $20 and looked him in the eye to make sure he took good care of the wine. He did. We headed inside.

Embarkation: As others have mentioned, HAL does a superb job of this. We were in a suite on Deck 7 (Rotterdam deck). We found the line for Suite check-in, and were ushered to a special check-in area. Filled out the health forms, presented our passports, had photos taken, and were then escorted onto the ship. Total time: maybe ten minutes. We were met at the gangway by the Neptune Lounge Concierge, Bien, who took us to our cabin. Our room stewards, Sri and Zam, presented themselves to us in short order. Our wine arrived first, and the luggage shortly thereafter (while we were touring the ship). We were unpacked and settled by 3pm. Read more