Sailed on the Zuiderdam Jan 7-14.. First time with HAL. This was my 16th cruise... have sailed previously with Celebrity, RCCL, NCL, Carnival.

Embarkment was a breeze. Arrived at the terminal around 12:15 and we were on the ship by 1pm. During embarkment we were each given a questionnaire regarding whether or not we had been sick with fever, vomiting etc within the last week. We were aware that there had been approximately 2-300 passengers sick on the previous cruise. We also received a letter stating that there had been a number of people ill on the previous cruise and should we decide not to cruise we would receive a full refund and help in returning home. Measures had been taken to sanitize the ship plus additional measures would be in place throughout the cruise. Which did create a lot of additional work for the crew, plus they were also short handed as a number of them were also ill..... enough about that for now.

Had really been expecting a super clean, updated ship since she had just returned from drydock. Were disappointed that there still seemed to be a lot of areas that had not received the attention they should have, but we were still happy to be onboard. Read more