Background Information - We sailed on the Veendam, Western Caribbean itinerary, departing Feb 25 - Mar 4, 2007. We are a mid-late-30s couple with no children. I (Charles) have cruised 5 times previously, once with HAL. This was her (Kellie's) first cruise. We booked this cruise for our honeymoon, but we did not make that fact known to HAL.

Embarkation - We flew in through Atlanta to Tampa on the morning of the cruise. The flights were mostly uneventful except that it was raining heavily in Atlanta, and our checked bags were noticeably wet when we got them back. I had called HAL directly to arrange ground transportation, and they refused to help me, claiming that I needed to make those arrangements through my travel agent. Since I wasn't having much luck with customer support from my TA (a discount cruise website), I decided to skip the HAL shuttle and take a taxi instead. The taxi worked out just fine, $22 flat rate plus $5 tip = $27 for two people and bags, vs $18/pp one-way for the HAL shuttle.

We arrived at the terminal around 11:30am. Embarkation was apparently running behind. They didn't start boarding until after 12 noon. It took almost an hour from then to get to our number. The port was crowded with no open seats. We stood for about half that time, before claiming a seat emptied by earlier passengers. Kellie wanted to take photos of everything, but was somewhat rudely told not to take pictures in the port. Read more