We chose this cruise primarily for the Panama canal.
Pre cruise
We flew from London Heathrow into Miami the evening before. Holland America booked the transfers from Miami to our Fort Lauderdale hotel, the hotel itself and the transfers to the ship the following day, all of which worked very smoothly, with no significant waiting around for any service. Holland America representatives were on ...
Itinerary, ports of call;
Depart Fort Lauderdale
Half Moon Cay, Private Island, Bahamas
Williamstad, Curacao
Cartagena, Columbia
Panama Canal
Colon, Panama
Puerto Limon, Costa Rica
Georgetown, Cayman Islands.
Arrive Fort Lauderdale
The ship
We found the embarkation and disembarkation very slick and efficient.
My favourite lounge was the Explorer’s Crow’s nest ...
What a delightful cruise.
Excellent crew/staff on the cruise ship, wonderful excursions. The ship was small and ready for a refurb, but it made good use of the space. I highly recommend Alligators by Night and Rubber Planation and Indigenous Village in Manaus, as well as Piranha Fishing in Santarem. Trinidad was a great port, the friendliest one we visited in Caribean.
Tamarind pop-up ...
My family of four including 2 kids, age 11 and 7, sailed on Rotterdam for 9 days in February 2024 and had a wonderful time! This is our 3rd HAL cruise and they continue to impress. The crew on board Rotterdam is fantastic! I'm so impressed with how hard they work and their ability to remember all of our names by the end of the 1st day of the cruise. HAL still does housekeeping twice a day which I ...
We had a very nice 9 day Southern Caribbean cruise that visited Aruba and Curaçao. We missed our stop on Half Moon Cay due to the weather. We booked Club Orange and a Retreat Cabana in advance, both enhanced our experience greatly as the ship sailed full. We tried to dine in all of the specialty restaurants except the Pinnacle Grill which we’ve dined in many times on other ships. We really ...
Amazing time!
Great food in all places
Great service all around
Ports, we love the Aqua Trax at Halfmoon Cay. We appreciated the clean up and move of clam shells down the beach.
Grand Turks- Margaritaville stay- their is a beach at Port. John Glenn exhibit to the right is cool then a smaller beach behind it.
Amber Cove - did a bus City tour. Tour guy Homberto was great. Stopped ...
Here’s what I wish I knew before I went. Excellent location for access to the front of the ship, spa, wet steam, dry sauna, hydro pool, gym, kid-free sundeck on deck 12. The food was excellent everyday except the first day in the Lido. On that day I got the lasagna from the buffet that was not very good. However I was told the lasagna in the dining room was much much better. In fact the lasagna ...
We are cruising with HAL for almost 10 years. And this is the first time we feel obliged to express some critique. We are in our 70s and we do expect that HAL will provide quality time for people like us . This time too many elements of good cruise were missing.
First, the usual entertainment at night, at the main stage, was extremely poor. The three shows with dancers were at high school ...
Easiest embarking ever. We were on board by 11:30 am sitting at the Lido having lunch. Disembark was super quick and easy thanks to the face scanning technology at the Ft Lauderdale cruise port.
This was our 7th cruise on an HAL ship, out of 57 total cruises ( other lines mostly Celebrity, RCL, Oceania).
Food varied from being poor to fair in the Lido, Deck 9, to very good in the Main ...
We were on a 7 night Western Caribbean cruise with scheduled stops in Ocho Rios, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel.
Embarkation was fairly fast. At Fort Lauderdale, you are put in a group of 30 people and you board when your group is called, so it was about 45 minutes to board, with no issues at all with getting to our cabin.
The ship itself is beautiful and well kept. We noticed that none of the ...