Having had a poor experience on Holland America HAL at New Year I doubt we would have taken this cruise except that we had paid for it.

The embarkation was very smooth and our room was ready for us, after a couple of days we had a letter from the hotel manager Edwin saying that he hoped the issues highlighted in the last questionnaire had been resolved. I wrote back thanking him and that so far so good. I did not receive a reply.

One of our main issues was the entertainment and the poor HAL bands, the 2 bands were excellent the entertainment dire, that is unless you wanted bingo karaoke or pub crawls around the ship. The shows were poor. The lectures, one speaker was excellent the other gabbled and had a very confused knowledge of facts, there was an excellent presentation given by the Chief Engineer Formal nights were a non event very few people wore formal attire people were in the dining room in shorts. One formal evening was billed as a photographic opportunity, there was one highlight the Black Nd White Ball where the officers appeared for about 1 hour. Read more