We were on the Oosterdam for the November 18 - 25 Thanksgiving sailing. This was our sixth cruise and our first on HAL. We had a group of ten including my husband and two kids, my sister and brother-in-law, my parents, and two friends.

Embarkation was very smooth. We live in San Diego but because of a commitment didn't get to the dock until after 2 pm. We parked our car across the street from the pier, which is very convenient. There were no lines at the check-in, but the computer systems were all down so they couldn't take our pictures our process our paperwork online. Minor inconvenience - we had to go stand in at the front desk the next day to get our picture taken - but since our keycards kept magically demagnetizing we spent a lot of time down there anyway.

We made our way to our aft VA cabins. I was pleasantly surprised by the size of the cabins. They look tiny in the pictures, but are actually very livable for two but I wouldn't want to put three in one cabin. We had two cabins next to each other for our immediate family so we had our room steward, Joe, open the verandah divider between the two cabins. This was great for us so we could go back and forth without going into the hallway. The verandahs (we were on deck 5) were very large. We had a lounge chair, wicker chair with ottoman, and two side chairs and a small table with lots of room to move around. The cabin has plenty of storage, was very clean, and the beds are very comfortable. Read more