We are a family of 5, traveling with 3 daughters in their 20’s. Let me start by saying that we had a nice time on this cruise and it was a good value for the money for a holiday cruise. But there is certainly room for improvement by HAL.
First the high points. I have nothing but the utmost respect for the crew. They work incredibly hard, always with smiles on their faces. A special ...
I will start with the title of this review. Embark, disembark all OK - most lines have this in the bag.
We chose this cruise on Noordam, because we love Vancouver, we wanted to go to Sydney and we love sea days.
This cruise bore not the remotest resemblance to our 2 x cruises on Volendam Dec.16 and April 18. Where has the elegance gone? The fresh flowers everywhere? The sophistication? ...
To the traveler who complained that his November 23 cruise from Auckland had the food service "locked down", at least you didn't get Norovirus like more than 200 of us did on the trip from Sydney to Auckland! Someone brought Norovirus onboard in Sydney (we had been fine from Hawaii to Sydney). The result was mass illness - passengers, crew, entertainers; all due to NO lockdown of self-serve for ...
Loved the itinerary because we often went on shore excursions outside of the small cities we stopped at (e.g. Tauranga, Akaroa, Dunedin, Napier). We visited the larger cities on our own. New Zealand is all about the great outdoors and nature, not so much about small cities.
The ship is a little dated and will be sent to dry dock in the Fall. I can only hope they redo the decoration and some of ...
We chose this cruise because we had not been to Australia or New Zealand and the itinerary was very attractive. Check in was somewhat chaotic. The ship was comfortable and our cabin was larger than usual. The entertainment was sometimes very good and at others poor. We enjoyed the shore days, the ports were all very interesting. Trips organised by the ship were very over priced and we made ...
Unfortunately, HAL has gone downhill in our opinion.
We haven't cruised with them for a few years due to dates and prices, so were expecting similar experiences that we had before.
The ship itself is kept extremely clean and the staff are wonderful.
The main issues were the food, entertainment and the Loft (lack of).
Firstly, the food in the main dining room for the first few days of ...
When we booked the cruise we were unaware that our departure was from the White Bay Cruise Terminal. Only good point was you sail right under the Harbour Bridge. On the back deck when leaving Sydney, the atmosphere was very lack luster, no music to signal the start of the journey, although there were drinks available, you had to guess if they were alcoholic or not. There was no photographer taking ...
All ports were good. Cruise Tours were very expensive so we organised our own. Left from White Bay and getting aboard was smooth and easy. Once we departed things were a bit disorganised. On stern pool deck there was a table of drinks but no assistance from wait staff as to price/type of cocktail. There was none of the usual atmosphere of departure (same at every port). Only advantage was going ...
We had sailed with HAL on 3 previous cruises. We chose this cruise for the itinerary and had just been on Celebrity Solstice six weeks prior to this one and so comparisons between them were fresh in our minds.
Where Solstice is clean crisp lines with what we thought were much higher ceilings, Noordam is lower ceiling, less open spaces, fine arts but darkened lounge areas.
Noordam did not ...
We chose this cruise because we wanted to have Christmas and New Year on a cruise and the HAL had been recommended by some American friends.
We had a wonderful surprise when we were upgraded from a SS midship to a Neptune suite at the back of the ship.A really big cabin with an L shaped veranda at the back.
Having access to the Neptune lounge was a plus, the 2 concierges could not have been ...