Embarkation – HAL staff / Port Everglades personnel need to do a better job of directing incoming passengers to fill out the Medical Condition forms before they get on the escalators. Otherwise, the check in and boarding process went well. However, once across the threshold and onto the ship we were merely directed to the elevators to take us away to our rooms with no real sense of being warmly welcomed aboard. Our experiences boarding both Royal Caribbean and Princess cruises have been a warm welcome reception by ship personnel, making us feel truly welcomed and valued as their passenger. Not the case when boarding the Zuiderdam.

Stateroom 6065 – Not acceptable upon arrival. Desktops were dusty and had rings from the drink glasses of the previous occupants. The verandah was filthy, with clumps of hair and smoking debris. The small table on the verandah had a heavily corroded base and a severely chipped table top surface. We cleaned the desktop surfaces of the dust and glass rings and asked the stateroom attendant to clean the verandah, which he did, albeit inadequately, leaving behind some debris. Later in the day we again asked the attendant to clean the verandah and only with our supervision was it properly cleaned. Later that evening we encountered a housekeeping supervisor in the hallway and invited him into our room to speak with us. We explained to him the condition of the stateroom upon our arrival and he said he would speak to our stateroom attendant. We did not feel that the supervisor was engaged with us and was not empathetic nor apologetic about our concerns. To the best of our knowledge, the supervisor never returned to our stateroom to make his own inspection nor did he ever contact us in person, by phone or by message as a follow up to our concerns. These same stateroom / verandah conditions were experienced by our travel companions in the adjacent stateroom 6063. We asked for, and were provided an ashtray but it was never cleaned or emptied until the 4th or 5th day when we expressly requested the stateroom attendant to clean it. He did not seem to be adequately trained to know that an ashtray needs occasional cleaning. In general, we found the staterooms and the entire ship to be worn and in need of updating.

Service – Dining room service is impeded by cramped quarters. At times, the wait staff was unable to properly serve dishes or replace the table service due to the inability to access the proper side of the customer. On our previous 14 cruises we have never been refused a shrimp cocktail even when ordered off menu. Only after dining in the Pinnacle Grill and arriving at the understanding that shrimp is readily available every evening were we able to coerce our waiter to bring us shrimp cocktail when not on the menu. On the third or fourth evening coffee was not served until after we finished dessert. This was brought to the attention of the assistant Maître d’, who explained that the coffee takes a long time to make and was not started in time to be served with dessert. In our opinion, this is again a training issue as coffee should always be prepared in advance of serving dessert. On a positive note – our Wine Attendant, Anne, displayed superior customer service and was the most engaging and customer focused HAL employee we encountered. Read more