My husband and I are 59 and 60 years young. We have cruised two previous times, to Alaska and Bermuda on different cruise lines. We chose this cruise based on what we could get for "free" with Marriott points. We ended up upgrading our cabin and paying port charges and taxes, so it was not free, but still a nice price. We chose our room based on it having a window, not a porthole, and being in the center of the ship for stability. Although it was on the lowest deck, we found that it was just as nice as rooms on the deck above and better than those on the lower promenade deck, from which we would have had views of people walking past our window all day long.

Embarkation from Tampa was relatively easy. We flew in the night before and stayed in a downtown hotel, which provided free shuttle service to the port, which was 5 minutes away. It took about an hour to get through the line and we were on the ship enjoying lunch by 1pm of embarkation day.

The Veendam holds only about 1200 passengers--small by today's standards. It is an easy ship to familiarize oneself with and we quickly learned our way around the ship. Read more