COVID UPTDATE: a friend traveling with us got Covid, Her symptoms appeared the 2nd day of the cruise, so she got in Ohio before got on cruise (3-5 day incubation period). Medical staff saw and put on meds to prevent needing hospitalization later, She has multiple risk factors to have a bad outcome if not on meds for Covid.
She was put on 3 day isolation and 2 more days to mask then do ...
This is our second cruise on the Noordam. This November 2023 is the exact same cruise we did prior to COVID.
The check in at Sydney was excellent. Five stars as they now stagger passengers arrival times and this was a huge improvement over long, slow lines in February 2020.
Cabin: Looking tired. The bed was comfortable. The sofa was grubby and looked yuck. It was so worn, the cushions ...
Boarded in Sydney and with the VeriFLY app in hand we were onboard in 15 minutes. Our suite was ready and we dropped off our carry on bags and headed to the Lido.
We had a signature suite which we received via an upgrade offer. We had booked a veranda cabin, and the upgrade offer to a suite was too good of a deal to pass up.
Overall we enjoyed the ship and the 25 day sailing. We had 2 very ...
The main focus of this trip was to visit relatives in New Zealand and Australia. After spending a month travelling around the 2 countries we decided to board the Noordam to sail back to Vancouver. We found the ship very clean and well maintained. The cabin was adequate with a great balcony. There was an issue with the air conditioning in our stateroom which took 3 days to fix but we were ...
We wanted to visit New Zealand and Australia, but had to rule out self guided road trips due to health and eyesight, so this cruise seemed to fit the bill. The ship is a comfortable size. The food was good and the staff was friendly and helpful. We did not get to visit as much as we had hoped. The great scenery on the West side of the country was not included. We spent 5 days in Sydney ...
After reading a lot of negative reviews about HAL we were slightly dubious about our 2nd sailing on The Noordam. The first time we sailed on her was 9 years ago and we hadn't done another HAL ship since
Our first impression was that the ship was very clean and in good order. The staff were really welcoming as we boarded. Our cabins were ready straight away so once we had dropped our carry on ...
We took this Southern Australia cruise to test how cruising had changed since covid. Being for us a local cruise it visited the cities we wanted to visit with mostly overnight stays.
This was our second cruise on the Westerdam and our 9th with HAL.
Overall the cruise was fine given the limitations imposed by covid requirements. All ports were met the crew friendly and efficient as ...
1. Itinerary kept being changed before and during the voyage mainly due to islands with Covid-related issues such as lack of tourist infrastructure for two years. During the cruise, stormy weather also affected some scheduled ports, especially tendering operations. We were about 1,700 passengers, mostly from the US but a large group from Canada and a few from other countries. Due to the length ...
We choose this cruise for a few reasons. 1) we had always wanted to go to this area of the world 2) we love the "at sea" days as much as port days and 3) there were at sea days between every country visited, so on the off chance that someone would have gotten Covid, we would only have missed at most 1 country. As it was, we traveled with another couple,1 person got Covid, and missed 1 country. ...
We chose this cruise for the number of port stops and we weren’t disappointed! We got a great feel for New Zealand. We travelled with children between 7-14 and they all had a great time. Kids clubs were entertaining and staff were wonderful with them. Although decor was a little dated, cabins were a great size and layout. Balconies were spacious. The new flat screen TVs with on-demand movies were ...